Meet The New AI Unicorns Of 2023

One in five of the new billion-dollar startups to join The Crunchbase Unicorn Board this year were artificial intelligence companies, an analysis of the board shows.

The 15 AI companies that joined as of Q3 2023 collectively added $21 billion in value to the board and were dominated by generative AI companies in text, translation, video, coding and human computer interaction.

These 15 companies are a small proportion of the 200 private companies tagged with AI on the unicorn board, as funding to this sector has grown over the past decade.

The board’s top three most valuable private companies in the AI sector are: AI cloud data company Databricks, valued at $43 billion in its 2023 funding, an increase of $5 billion from its value in 2021; autonomous driving startup Cruise, last valued at $30 billion; and generative AI firm OpenAI, with a $29 billion valuation.

Despite fervent investor interest in AI, the number of new unicorns in 2023 has dropped precipitously year over year.

Let’s look at companies in the AI sector that became unicorns in 2023.

Large language models

Cohere

• Description: Large language model developer for enterprises
• Headquarters: Toronto
• Year founded: 2019
• Last valuation: $2.2B
• Total funding raised: $435M
• Funding stage: Series C
• Lead investors: Index Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Inovia Capital

Zhipu AI

• Description: Large language model developer
• Headquarters: Beijing, China
• Year founded: 2019
• Last valuation: $1.6B
• Total funding raised: $342M
• Funding stage: Late
• Lead investors: Qiming Venture Partners, Meituan, Alibaba Cloud, Guangxi Tencent Venture Capital, Ant Group

AI21 Labs

• Description: Large language model company
• Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel
• Year founded: 2017
• Last valuation: $1.4B
• Total funding raised: $274M
• Funding stage: Series C
• Lead investors: Pitango VC, Walden Catalyst, Ahren Innovation Capital, Samsung Next, B2venture, SCB 10X

Light Years Beyond

• Description: Generative AI tool
• Headquarters: Beijing
• Year founded: 2023
• Last valuation: $1.2B
• Total funding raised: $280M
• Funding stage: Acquired
• Lead investors: Wang Huiwen, Source Code Capital

Imbue

• Description: AI research lab
• Headquarters: San Francisco
• Year founded: 2021
• Last valuation: $1B
• Total funding raised: $232M
• Funding stage: Series B
• Lead investor: Astera Institute

Video

Runway

• Description: AI generative video
• Headquarters: New York City
• Year founded: 2018
• Last valuation: $1.5B
• Total funding raised: $237M
• Funding stage: Series C
• Lead investors: Lux Capital, Amplify Partners, Coatue, Felicis 1, Google

Synthesia

• Description: AI generative video company
• Headquarters: London
• Year founded: 2017
• Last valuation: $1B
• Total funding raised: $157M
• Funding stage: Series C
• Lead investors: LDV Capital, FirstMark, Kleiner Perkins, Accel

ML Ops

CoreWeave

• Description: Cloud infrastructure company that pivoted from Ethereum mining
• Headquarters: Roseland, New Jersey
• Year founded: 2017
• Last valuation: $2.4B
• Total funding raised: $427M
• Funding stage: Series B
• Lead investors: Magnetar Capital, Blackstone Group

Analytics

Quantexa

• Description: AI data analytics
• Headquarters: London
• Year founded: 2016
• Last valuation: $1.8B
• Total funding raised: $370M
• Funding stage: Series E
• Lead investors: AlbionVC, HSBC, Dawn Capital, Evolution Equity Partners, Warburg Pincus, GIC

AI platforms

Replit

• Description: A developer platform that uses AI to complete code
• Headquarters: San Francisco
• Year founded: 2016
• Last valuation: $1.2B
• Total funding raised: $202M
• Funding stage: Series B
• Lead investors: Y Combinator, A.Capital Ventures, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz

DeepL

• Description: AI language translation
• Headquarters: Cologne, Germany
• Year founded: 2009
• Last valuation: $1.1B
• Total funding raised: $100M
• Funding stage: Series B
• Lead investors: B2venture, Benchmark, IVP

Adept AI

• Description: AI for human and computer interaction
• Headquarters: San Francisco
• Year founded: 2022
• Last valuation: $1B
• Total funding raised: $415M
• Funding stage: Series B
• Lead investors: Addition, Greylock, General Catalyst, Spark Capital

Character.ai

• Description: Large language models for conversation
• Headquarters: Menlo Park, California
• Year founded: 2021
• Last valuation: $1B
• Total funding raised: $150M
• Funding stage: Series A
• Lead investors: Andreessen Horowitz

Typeface

• Description: AI content creation platform for enterprises
• Headquarters: San Francisco
• Year founded: 2022
• Last valuation: $1B
• Total funding raised: $165M
• Funding stage: Series B
• Lead investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures<2/li>

Defense

Helsing

• Description: AI software defense tech company
• Year founded: 2021
• Headquarters: Berlin
• Last valuation: $1.8B
• Total funding raised: $341M
• Funding stage: Series B
• Lead investors: Prima Materia, General Catalyst

Illustration: Dom Guzman