New Unicorn Creation Has Dwindled From 2 Per Day To 2 Per Month

Only two companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in July — the lowest monthly count since we started tracking new unicorn pacing by month at the beginning of 2020.

Both new companies are in the Web3 sector, and neither are from the U.S.

The pace of new unicorn creation marks a big shift from 2021, when the average was more than two unicorns per work day. Even in 2022, new unicorns still averaged more than one per work day.

So far this year, new unicorns have averaged one every three to four work days.

July’s new unicorns:

• Months-old Zyber 365, an India-based blockchain operating system company that raised a $100 million Series A funding led by Sram & Mram. The company was valued at $1.2 billion.
• Three-year-old Flashbots, a developer of software for more efficient maximal extractable value mining on the Ethereum blockchain. The Cayman-based company raised a $60 million Series B round led by crypto investor Paradigm at a $1 billion valuation.

Unicorn funding dwindles

July also marked the lowest month for funding to current unicorn companies, with $2.2 billion raised compared to $6.6 billion for July 2022.

That’s yet another indication of how much investors have slowed their pace in investing in private high-growth companies.

Related Crunchbase unicorn queries

• The Crunchbase Private Unicorn Company List (1,463)
• Emerging Unicorn Companies  (385)
• Exited Unicorns (432)

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.

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