AI Companies Adept And Character.ai Among 9 Companies That Joined The Unicorn Board In March

Nine companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in March — the fifth month in a row for new unicorns to number in the single digits, though counts were slightly up over previous months.

Of these nine companies, two are in AI, two in Web3 and two in health care. The Web3 and AI companies were founded as recently as 2021.

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Five of the companies are U.S.-based. China, Germany, Seychelles and Ireland each counted one new unicorn this past month.

Two exits

Two companies exited the unicorn board. Shenzhen-based facial recognition company Intellifusion went public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. And Arizona-based e-cigarette company NJOY was acquired by tobacco company Altria for $2.75 billion.

Here are the newly minted unicorns

AI

San Francisco-based Adept AI operates in the field of human and computer interaction, removing repetitive tasks. The 1-year-old company was valued at $1 billion in a round of funding led by General Catalyst and Spark Capital.
ChatGPT competitor Character.ai, based in Menlo Park, California, raised $150 million in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The 2-year-old company with a founding team that hails from Google was valued at $1 billion.

Web3

Scroll.io is a layer 2 blockchain solution that processes transactions and then ports them back to the ethereum network. Based in Seychelles, it raised a $50 million funding led by strategic investor OKX Ventures valuing the company at $1.8 billion.
New York-based BFMeta extends blockchain to mobile terminals. It raised an undisclosed seed funding amount led by Goldman Sachs which valued the company at $1 billion.

Biotech/health care

New York-based fertility clinic network Kindbody raised $100 million led by Perceptive Advisors. The company, which plans to expand its clinic footprint, was valued at $1.8 billion.
Cell therapy manufacturing company Wilson Wolf Corp. from Minnesota raised $257 million led by life sciences research supplier Bio-Techne. The company was valued at $1.3 billion.

Hardware

Shenzhen-based drone company United Aircraft raised $291 million in a Series D funding which valued the company at $1.5 billion. The funding was led by Chengdu Heavy Industry Fund. The unmanned aircrafts can be used for national security, power grid inspections and disaster monitoring.

Energy

Joint French and Irish solar energy company Amarenco, based in Cork, Ireland, raised $320 million at a value of $1.1 billion. The funding was led by Arjun Infrastructure Partners.

Fintech

Berlin-based Raisin provides retail customers with higher interest rates for their savings, matching them with banks looking for depositors. It raised a $65 million Series E funding at a $1 billion value led by M&G Investments.

Unicorn queries

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