Another Month When Fewer Unicorns Were Born

Last month again saw fewer unicorn companies join The Crunchbase Unicorn Board compared to months past, paralleling the continued decline in venture dollars invested in companies globally this year.

Fourteen unicorns — private businesses valued at $1 billion or more — joined our unicorn board in October, bringing the total new entrants to the board this year to 295. That’s down sharply from the 614 new unicorns in 2021, but still well above the 173 minted in all of 2020.

October marked the fourth month since July when fewer than 20 companies joined the board. Recent months have had the lowest counts of new unicorns created since August 2020, when nine new companies joined the board.

The 14 new unicorns added $36 billion in value to the board this past month. That compares with September, when 12 companies joined and added $19.6 billion in value. In contrast, 50 companies joined the board in October 2021, adding $98 billion in value.

Last month’s new unicorns hail from nine countries. Of those, six are U.S.-based, and five are from Asia — one each from China, Japan, Indonesia, India and Israel. Three hail from Europe with one new unicorn each from the U.K., Spain and Liechtenstein.

Funding to all unicorn companies reached $6.6 billion for October 2022, a total of 25% of venture capital this past month.1

Overall in 2022, around 28% of venture capital was invested in unicorns, far below the 44% invested in unicorns in 2021.

Most highly valued

The most highly valued new company on the list is Guangzhou-based electric vehicle company GAC Aion New Energy Automobile, a subsidiary of Guangzhou Automobile Group. The company raised $2.5 billion in a Series A strategic investment which valued it at $14.3 billion. It is the most highly valued private Chinese electric vehicle company out of 17 currently listed on The Crunchbase Unicorn Board.

Exit

One company exited The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in October:

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based gene editing biotech company Prime Medicine went public at a valuation of $1.7 billion, raising $175 million in the process and marking the only IPO from the board last month. The company was most recently valued at $1.2 billion in 2021.

Crunchbase Pro queries listed for this article

All Crunchbase Pro queries are dynamic, with results updating over time. They can be adapted by location and/or timeframe for analysis.

Unicorn queries

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 Nov. 2, 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