Venture

Meet The New Unicorns Minted In August 2022

Illustration of a unicorn

The number of new unicorns on The Crunchbase Unicorn Board continued to fall, with 12 companies joining the board in August 2022.

That number remains the lowest count since August 2020, when nine unicorns joined the board. The 12 new unicorns added $19 billion in value to the board in August, which is still down from July when 14 new companies added $26 billion in value.

Search less. Close more.

Grow your revenue with all-in-one prospecting solutions powered by the leader in private-company data.

China brought two transportation unicorns to the board with a new electric vehicle company and a robo taxi service. Other overseas unicorns include an e-commerce wholesaler from Korea, a delivery platform in India, and a fintech application from Indonesia. The seven new unicorns from the U.S. focus on healthtech, blockchain, energy and entertainment. 

Of the new unicorns, SeatGeek enjoys the highest number of investors, with 44 including Accel and TCV. And Shiprocket counts 31 investors including Bertelsmann India Investments and Tribe Capital

Transport

  • Shanghai-based electric vehicle company Zhiji Auto raised a Series A funding of $444 million valued at $4.4 billion. The company was jointly created by the SAIC Group and Alibaba.
  • Chinese state-owned automaker SAIC’s autonomous taxi service arm SAIC Mobility raised $193 million at a value of around $1 billion. Based in Shanghai, SAIC Mobility is partnering with autonomous vehicle provider Momenta to develop the service. 

E-commerce and logistics

  • South Korea-based Tridge, a wholesaler for buyers and sellers of agricultural produce, raised a $37 million Series D at a value of $2.7 billion led by DS Asset Management. It last raised a $60 million funding a year ago led by Forest Partners.
  • New Delhi-based e-commerce logistics platform for shipping Shiprocket raised $33 million at a value of $1.3 billion. The funding was led by existing investors Lightrock and Temasek Holdings.

Health care

  • Nurse recruitment platform Incredible Health, based in San Francisco, raised an $80 million Series B led by Base10 Partners and New York-based Stardust Equity. The company was valued at $1.7 billion. The company also announced it’s signing up more than 10,000 nurses every week and has reduced the average time to hire from 82 days to 14.
  • Cambridge-based biotech Orna Therapeutics raised $221 million at a $1.5 billion valuation led by Merck. The company is developing RNA therapeutics to treat cancer, infectious diseases and genetic disorders. 

Web3

  • Northern California-based Paystand, a blockchain billing and payments platform for business- to-business transactions, acquired Mexico-based Yaydoo, reaching a unicorn valuation through the transaction. Together, the companies have processed $5 billion in payments and connected 500,000 businesses.
  • San Francisco-based Zebec raised $8.5 million, which valued the company at $1 billion. Zebec is built on the Solana blockchain, and its first product allows users to receive their payroll in USDC or stablecoins. Shima Capital, Resolute Ventures and Circle Ventures invested in the funding. 

Entertainment

  • New York-based ticketing platform SeatGeek raised a $238 million Series E valued at $1.2 billion, led by Accel, which also led its Series B. The company raised funding as it pulled back on a SPAC deal. 

Energy

  • Washington state-based nuclear energy company TerraPower raised $750 million in funding led by Bill Gates, its founder and chairman, and South Korea-based SK Group. TerraPower is a developer of nuclear energy solutions as well as nuclear medicine. 

Fintech

  • Indonesia-based DANA Wallet, a digital wallet application, has raised $555 million, some of it in a secondary financing. Now valued at more than $1 billion, the company is part owned by Ant Financial. The funding was led by Lazada Group and Sinar Mas Group. The company says it has 115 million users in Indonesia for its fintech application. 

Real Estate

  • Residential real estate company Flow, founded by Adam Neumann, raised $350 million in an initial funding led by Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the company at $1 billion. The company is based in New York and is seeking to build a new service model for renters and homeownership. 

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. 7, 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.

Update: Paystand acquired Yaydoo

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the Crunchbase Daily.

Copy link