Venture

New Unicorn Slowdown Extends Into August 2022

Illustration of a unicorn

The abrupt fall in new unicorns in July 2022 continued into August. The month saw 12 companies from around the world join The Crunchbase Unicorn Board, per a Crunchbase News analysis. 

These newly minted unicorns raised a total of $3.2 billion over time, and added $19 billion in value to the board. 

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This signals a big change in the venture markets from August a year ago when 45 companies joined the board, adding $82 billion in value at that time. 

New unicorn counts are also slightly down month over month from July when 14 newly valued unicorn companies joined the board.

Of the 12 new unicorns, seven hail from the U.S., two from China, and one each from India, Indonesia and South Korea. Companies are from varied sectors, from real estate to car hailing, wallets to marketplaces, and electric vehicles to shipping. 

Adam Neumann‘s Flow is one of the companies to join the board this past month with a $350 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz that valued the company north of $1 billion. It has yet to build a website, but plans to build a company that reinvents the rental market experience in a world of remote work. 

The most highly valued unicorn from this past month is Shanghai-based Zhiji Auto, an electric vehicle company jointly created by SAIC Motor and Alibaba Group. Zhiji was valued at $4.4 billion in a Series A funding. 

Funding in 2022

Unicorn startups have raised just over $102 billion this year as of the end of August. This contrasts with the peak in unicorn funding in 2021, where unicorn companies raised $305 billion in private financing, with 85% of that in late-stage and private equity rounds. 1

Exits

Three companies exited the board via the public markets in August 2022. They include South Korea-based car sharing company Socar, last valued at $1 billion in a corporate round in March, and more recently valued around $632 million as of Aug. 31 in the public markets. 

Kentucky-based waste and recycling company Rubicon went public via a SPAC deal. It was last valued at a billion dollars in 2017, and its current value is around $258 million on the public markets. 

And Washington, D.C.-based predictive analytics company FiscalNote went public via a SPAC merger. It was last valued at $1.4 billion in 2021. Its current valuation on the public markets is close to $1 billion. 

Despite the slowdown, the Unicorn Board keeps growing in size and currently hosts 1,395 private companies. 

Update: The new unicorns of August 2022 now count 12 companies adding $19 billion in value to the board. Seven of the new unicorns are U.S.-based companies.

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Methodology

Funding rounds included in this report are seed, angel, venture, corporate-venture and private-equity rounds in venture-backed companies. This reflects data in Crunchbase as of Sept. 1, 2022. 

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. 

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


  1. This includes private funding to all companies currently tagged as a unicorn or exited unicorn through August 2022.

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