New Unicorns Dip To The Lowest Count In 2 Years

Gené Teare @geneteare

After nearly two years of massive growth, the number of new unicorns and the value added to the board abruptly fell in July, based on a Crunchbase News analysis.

Fourteen companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in July 2022, the lowest count since August 2020 when nine companies joined the board.

These 14 new unicorns added $26 billion in value to the board this past month. This contrasts with June, when 32 companies joined, adding $49 billion in value.

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The new unicorns hail from six countries. Of those, seven are headquartered in the U.S. India and the U.K. each have two, and one new unicorn hails each from Mexico, Korea and China, per Crunchbase data.

Exits slow

Since the public tech rout this year, the value of billion-dollar private companies has been called into question. There were zero unicorn companies to IPO in July 2022. E-commerce tech startup Klarna dropped its value from $45.5 billion in June 2021 to $6.7 billion in its most recent funding in July 2022.

London-based crypto borrowing platform Celsius Network, a unicorn since its oversubscribed Series B round in November 2021, which valued the company at $3.5 billion, has filed for bankruptcy.

July saw a single acquisition of a unicorn company and one merger. FTX US signaled it would acquire BlockFi for up to $240 million. FTX had already provided a $400 million revolving line of credit to BlockFi, which was last valued at $4.5 billion in August 2021.

France-based satellite provider Eutelsat is merging with London-based satellite provider OneWeb, valuing the combined companies at $2.8 billion. OneWeb had declared bankruptcy in 2020 and was bought by a consortium that included Bharti Global and the U.K. government. In 2021, OneWeb raised $1.75 billion in capital.

Most highly valued

The most highly valued new unicorn is India-based EV Co., valued at $9 billion, through a $500 million investment from British International Investment and Mahindra and Mahindra to establish an electric vehicle company arm.

The second-most highly valued and new to the board unicorn is South Korea-based online gaming company Lionheart Studio, valued at $3 billion in a secondary financing.

The Unicorn Board currently hosts 1,377 private companies with a combined valuation of $4.6 trillion.

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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 Aug. 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