First Unicorn From Egypt Joins The Board In February 

Five companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in February — the fourth month in a row for new unicorns to number in the single digits.

Among these new unicorns is the first company from Egypt to join the board: Cairo-based fintech MNT-Halan, which provides digital wallets as well as buy now, pay later offerings and business loans. The service has 1.3 million monthly active users with more than 5 million customers in Egypt. With this strong foothold, MNT-Halan plans to expand to surrounding countries in the region.

A further three companies joined from the U.S. and one company from China.

A year ago, in February 2022, 56 companies joined the Unicorn Board, before new unicorn numbers progressively dropped throughout the year.

Funding to current unicorn companies was also down in February, tracking at $2.9 billion raised by 27 companies, including the new unicorns.

Current unicorns total 1,439 companies on a global basis that are collectively valued at $4.9 trillion with $852 billion raised in funding, per the Crunchbase Unicorn Board.

Up valuations

Contrary to assessments that many unicorn valuations would not hold up in the current funding environment, four companies raised funding in February at increased valuations since 2021, with two companies reaching decacorn status for the first time.

San Francisco-based AI research company Anthropic’s valuation was up by 200% in less than a year through a corporate funding led by Google that valued the company at $3 billion.

Cybersecurity company Wiz, an Israeli- and New York-headquartered company, attained decacorn status this past month. Its Series D funding valued the company at $10 billion — up 67% from its Series C funding valuation of $6 billion.

Beijing-based manufacturer of electric vehicles Zeekr, was newly valued at $13 billion, up 46% from its $9 billion valuation in 2021.

Silicon Valley-based drone company Skydio saw its valuation increase 120% to $2.2 billion in a funding led by Linse Capital. Skydio was last valued at $1 billion in its 2021 Series D funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.

Here are the companies that joined the board in February 2023:

Fintech

• New York-based Liquidity Group, which provides nondilutive loans to SaaS companies, raised $40 million from Tokyo-based MUFG Bank, valuing the company at $1.4 billion.
• Lending and payments company MNT-Halan raised $260 million in equity led by Chimera Investment. It also raised $140 million in debt. MNMT-Halan was valued at $1 billion.

Energy

• Michigan-based Our Next Energy engineers batteries for electric vehicles. It raised a $300 million Series B funding led by Fifth Wall and Franklin Templeton that valued the company at $1.3 billion. The company also raised $220 million in funding via a grant from the State of Michigan. The funding will help Our Next Energy outfit its first battery cell factory.

Media

• Streaming TV platform Atmosphere, based in Austin, raised a $65 million Series D funding, which valued the company at $1 billion. The service provides bundled TV for restaurants, bars, gyms and doctors’ offices.  The funding was led by Sageview Capital.

Biomanufacturing

• Beijing-based Bluepha, a bio materials manufacturer, raised $58 million in a Series B extension which valued the company at $1 billion. The company is developing materials to reduce the use of plastics for packaging.

Unicorn queries

• Unicorn leaderboard (1,439)
• Unicorns in the U.S. (715)
• Unicorns in Asia (453)
• European unicorns (191)
• Emerging unicorn leaderboard (364)
• Exited unicorns (421)

Methodology

The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are added to the Unicorn Board as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to The Exited Unicorn Board.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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