Ten new unicorns from around the world added more than $18 billion in value to the Crunchbase Unicorn Board in February, but in a sign that the long-term situation for many companies is in flux, one startup dropped out entirely after its valuation was cut to less than a third of its unicorn valuation.
Two Chinese companies have joined the board, having raised about $1 billion each: a one-year-old model company and a six-year-old satellite network company.
The next most heavily funded new unicorn in February was a two-year-old US-based robotics company.
The theme of artificial intelligence was prominent again at last month’s board meeting, with two of the newcomers to the board being in the AI space, and many of the other new entrants incorporating the technology into their products.
Four of the new unicorns are from the US, three from China, and one each from France, the Netherlands and Italy.
So let’s take a closer look at the new unicorns of February 2024 and the sectors they come from.
artificial intelligence
Moonshot AI, a one-year-old foundation-backed LLM company, raised $1 billion in Series B led by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and Sequoia Capital China. The deal valued the Beijing-based company at $2.5 billion. San Francisco-based cloud-based GPU company Lambda raised $320 million in Series C. Led by Pittsburgh-based US Innovative Technology Fund, the 12-year-old company raised the funding at a valuation of $1.5 billion.
safety
Texas-based endpoint management company NinjaOne has grown in recent years due to the shift to hybrid work and the need for IT teams to monitor remote devices. The company says it has about 17,000 customers. The 10-year-old company raised $232 million in Series C led by ICONIQ Growth at a valuation of $1.9 billion. San Francisco-based crowdsourced security platform Bugcrowd raised $102 million in Series E. The 11-year-old company is valued at $1 billion in funding led by General Catalyst.
Fintech
Penny Lane, a Paris-based bookkeeping platform for small businesses, raised $43 million in Series C, bringing its valuation to $1.1 billion. The three-year-old company’s funding was led by DST Global and Sequoia Capital. Amsterdam-based financial auditing firm Data Snipper raised $100 million in Series B. The six-year-old company was valued at $1 billion by Index Ventures. The company plans to use AI to automate tedious tasks, freeing auditors to focus on higher-level work.
space
Low-earth-orbit broadband satellite network company Yuanxin Satellite has joined the unicorn club after raising $943 million in Series A. The funding for the six-year-old Shanghai-based company was led by China Development Bank.
transportation
Zhizi Auto, a two-year-old China-based electric hydrogen truck company, raised $53 million in funding at a valuation of $3.3 billion.
Robotics
Sunnyvale, California-based humanoid robotics developer Figure has raised $675 million in Series B funding, giving the two-year-old company a valuation of $2.7 billion in a series of funding rounds that included Microsoft, OpenAI’s Startup Fund, Nvidia and Bezos Expeditions.
Sales and Marketing
Downgrade
Ten new companies joined the board while one company left.
Online checkout company Bolt has been removed from the unicorn list after it launched a share buyback plan at a valuation of just $300 million, The Information reported. The move slashed the company’s value by 97% from its most recent valuation of $11 billion in January 2022.
Crunchbase Unicorn Related Queries
methodology
The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list of privately held unicorns with a post-funding valuation of $1 billion or more, based on Crunchbase data. New companies are added to the Unicorn Board when they reach a $1 billion valuation as part of a funding round.
The Unicorn Board does not reflect internal company valuations, such as those established through the 409a process for employee stock options, because these valuations are different from and likely lower than priced financing rounds, and does not adjust valuations based on investor impairments, which change from quarter to quarter, because different investors do not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.
Unicorn funding includes all private financings not only to companies that are classified as unicorns, but also to companies that subsequently rise to the Exit Unicorn Board.
The exits analyzed here include only a company’s first exit.
All funding amounts are quoted in USD unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currency into USD at the prevailing spot rate from the date a funding round, acquisition, IPO, or other financial event is reported. Foreign currency transactions are converted at historical spot prices, even if these events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced.
Illustration: Dom Guzman
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