Meet The Companies That Joined The Emerging Unicorn Board In October 2022

In October, only four companies with disclosed valuations above $500 million but less than $1 billion joined the Crunchbase Emerging Unicorn Board. The board currently hosts 355 companies valued collectively at over $242 billion. 1

As late-stage funding plummeted more than 60% year over year in the third quarter of 2022, far fewer companies were raising late-stage fundings at high valuations. Here we look at companies that were able to raise, despite the slower funding environment.

Fintech companies made up two of the newly minted emerging unicorns in October. A further nine companies already on the board raised funding this past month.

Fintech

• San Francisco-based Tally, a service that helps users pay off credit card debt, raised an $80 million Series D led by Sway Ventures, an earlier investor. The company seeks to alleviate the $900 billion in credit card debt that impacts 30% of Americans. Tally has more than doubled its valuation since its last funding in 2019 led by Andreessen Horowitz. Kleiner Perkins and Shasta Ventures led prior funding rounds.
• U.K.-based NatWest Group invested $57 million in Warsaw-based Vodeno, a builder of embedded financial solutions for businesses. It also created a U.K. subsidiary majority owned by NatWest to offer banking as a service to NatWest business customers.

Creator tools

• OpenAI led a $50 million Series C funding in San Francisco-based Descript, valuing the company above $500 million. Descript provides simple audio and video editing tools for creators, making it as simple as editing text. Descript was founded by Groupon co-founder Andrew Mason. The company boasts a huge roster of angel investors. Spark Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Redpoint led earlier funding rounds.

Agriculture

• India-based DeHaat, a marketplace for farmers in India, raised a $46 million Series D led by Sofina, an existing investor. The company claims more than 1 million farmers in its network. Prior investors Lightrock India and Prosus Ventures also invested in the funding.

A new addition to the board from earlier this year is Paris-based BeReal, a photo-sharing app gaining traction with Gen Z users and said to have 20 million daily active users. TechCrunch recently disclosed BeReal’s Series B of $60 million. Announced in May 2022, the round was raised at a $587 million valuation (600 million euros).

And Barcelona-based human resources automation service Factorial graduated from the emerging board to The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in October at a $1 billion valuation close to double its Series B value of $530 million in September 2021.

Methodology

The curated Crunchbase Emerging Unicorn Board includes private companies with known valuations of $500 million or more but less than $1 billion, based on Crunchbase data. The list is updated whenever a new company reaches that valuation range or there is a change in valuation for a company already on the leaderboard. Companies that are subsequently valued at more than $1 billion will be removed from the board and promoted to The Crunchbase Unicorn Board. Companies that exit will also be removed from the Emerging Unicorn Board.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated OpenAI’s investment in Descript. OpenAI led the startup’s $50 million Series C funding.

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