Seven Companies Joined The Unicorn Board In May, With xAI Alone Adding $24B In Value

A total of seven companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in May, down from 10 new unicorns in April and eight in May 2023. AI companies counted three new unicorns. Web3 was the second leading sector with two, and five of the seven new unicorns are U.S.-based.

The largest new entrant was xAI, which raised $6 billion and officially joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in May 2024. The company was valued at $24 billion.

So far this year, around 50 new unicorns have joined the board, adding close to $100 billion in value.

In addition, several companies already at unicorn valuations raised billion-dollar funding rounds at higher values. This includes CoreWeave, Scale AI, Wiz and Wayve. CoreWeave was valued at $19 billion, almost 8x its 2023 valuation of $2.4 billion, due to demand for its AI- driven data center infrastructure.

Unicorn exits

The majority of unicorn exits this past month were below their last private values.

Hangzhou-based Zeekr, an electric vehicle company, went public on the NYSE at a $5.2 billion value. Zeekr was last valued in 2023 at $13 billion. And Bengaluru-based insurance provider Digit Insurance listed at a $3 billion value on the BSE and NSE exchanges in India, $1 billion below its 2022 valuation.

Global investor Permira acquired a majority stake in Israeli unicorn BioCatch, a biometric intelligence company, for $1.3 billion. This was the single exit above its last private value, a secondary financing in 2023 which valued BioCatch at $1 billion.

API security company Noname Security, based in Palo Alto, California, was acquired by public cloud security company Akamai Technologies for $450 million, well below its $1 billion valuation from 2021. And Israeli parking app Pango acquired London-based ride hailing app Gett for $175 million, a steep discount from its 2018 value of $1.5 billion.

Here are the new unicorns in May by sector.

AI

Elon Musk‘s xAI, a 1-year-old foundation model company based in Burlingame, California, raised a $6 billion Series B funding at a $24 billion value. Participants in the round include Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding Co. among others.
Bay Area-based WEKA, a data platform for AI workloads, raised a $140 million Series E funding from existing investors. Valor Equity Partners led the funding for the 10-year-old company, which valued WEKA at $1.6 billion.
London-based Builder.ai, a no-code AI powered app developer, raised a $250 million Series D led by the Qatar Investment Authority. The 8-year-old company announced a partnership and equity financing from Microsoft earlier in May.

Web3

Los Angeles-based Farcaster, a decentralized social network built on Ethereum, raised a $150 million Series A. The funding to the 3-year-old company was led by crypto investor Paradigm, with participation from a16z crypto, Haun Ventures and Union Square Ventures among others, valuing the company at $1 billion.
Humanity Protocol, a blockchain unique identity platform using biometrics, raised a $30 million seed funding led by Kingsway Capital. The company, which was founded less than a year ago, was valued at $1 billion.

Financial services

Los Angeles-based Altruist, a digital wealth management service for wealth advisers, raised a $169 million Series E led by Iconiq Growth. The 5-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Data and analytics

San Francisco-based Sigma Computing, a cloud analytics platform incubated at Sutter Hill Ventures, raised a $200 million Series D. The funding for the 9-year-old company was led by Avenir Growth Capital and Spark Capital, and valued Sigma at $1.5 billion.

Related Crunchbase 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.

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

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

Clarification: This story has changed since its original publication: Builder.ai also joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in May 2024.