Three Months To $5B, And More Unicorn News

Nine companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in September, including one that took just three months since its founding to reach a $5 billion valuation.

All told, the Unicorn Board now includes just shy of 1,550 companies and $5.2 trillion in value.

Four of the new unicorns are U.S. based, two are from India, and there is one each from Japan, Germany and Chile.

The $5B new unicorn

Among the notable entrants to the board last month was the first U.S. company to be valued at $5 billion within months of its founding. That was AI research lab Safe Superintelligence, founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. (Outside of the U.S., we have seen companies — typically subsidiaries — reach unicorn values in under a year. For example, Huawei Technologies’ smart car subsidiary Yinwang Smart Technology was valued earlier this year at $16 billion within seven months of its founding.)

All told, around 290 venture-backed technology companies (including exited unicorns), have reached a $5 billion value or greater over all time.

Exits and a lowered value

Two companies from the Unicorn Board were acquired last month.

Data protection company Own Company was acquired by Salesforce 1 for $1.9 billion — below its 2021 value of around $3.3 billion.

Heyday was acquired by Branded to form a new company Essor, an owner of direct-to-consumer challenger brands.

We also saw a unicorn raise a new round at a lower valuation than previously, prompting it to fall off the Unicorn Board. That was Wrapbook, a payroll and accounting platform for production and entertainment companies, which raised $20 million in a round led by Bessemer Venture Partners at a lowered valuation of $750 million. Wrapbook was previously valued at $1 billion in 2021.

September’s minted unicorns

Here are all of the newly valued September unicorn companies, by sector.

AI

• Palo Alto, California-based Safe Superintelligence, raised a $1 billion Series A with the intention to build safe intelligence. Valued at $5 billion, the company has 10 employees across offices in Palo Alto and Tel Aviv. Investors in the round include Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
• Tokyo-based foundation model developer Sakana AI raised a $70 million Series A led by New Enterprise Associates, Lux Capital and Khosla Ventures, which was also an early investor in OpenAI. Sakana, now 1 year old, was valued at $1 billion with this round.

Energy

• Battery product developer 24M Technologies, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, raised an $87 million Series H led by Nuovo Plus. The 14-year-old company was valued at $1.3 billion.
• Clean jet fuel company Twelve, based in Berkeley, California, raised a $200 million Series C led by TPG, Capricorn Investment Group and Pulse Fund. The 9-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.
• Another clean jet fuel company to reach unicorn status was Santiago-based HIF Global. The 5-year-old company raised $20 million from Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, and has raised a total of $220 million in 2024 to date.

Fintech

• India-based Veritas Finance, a loan provider for small businesses, raised $29 million in private equity from existing investors. The 9-year-old company was valued at $1.1 billion.
• Bangalore-based Moneyview, a credit platform, raised $5 million from existing investors Accel India and Nexus Ventures. Moneyview acquired Jify, an employee benefits platform that permits employees to get earnings in advance of payday. The 10-year-old company was valued at $1.2 billion.

Fitness

• Munich-based Egym, developer of connected gym equipment with personalized health tracking, raised a $200 million Series G led by L Catterton and Meritech Capital Partners. Offered as a corporate wellness platform, it is used across 18,000 fitness and health facilities. The 13-year-old company was valued at $1.2 billion.

Property tech

• San Francisco-based Rentberry raised a $90 million Series A led by Berkeley Hills Capital and GTM Capital. The 9-year-old company was valued at $1 billion and provides a rental service platform that allows for price negotiation between tenants and landlords.

Related Crunchbase unicorn lists

• The Crunchbase Private Unicorn Company List (1,549)
• New unicorns in 2024 (89)
• New unicorns in 2023 (98)
• Unicorns in the U.S. (767)
• Unicorns in Asia (490)
• European unicorns (204)
• Unicorns from LatAm (36)
• Emerging unicorn leaderboard (393)
• Exited unicorns (475)

Related reading:

• AI’s Big Day — Startup Safe Superintelligence Raises $1B At Reported $5B Valuation

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