The Unicorn Report: A New $100 Billion Valuation Boosts The Board to $4.5 Trillion

Last month, 34 new unicorn companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board, collectively adding $56 billion in value to the board and $10 billion in equity funding raised.

But a single company already on the board added almost twice that much—another $100 billion—in value to the board, all by itself. That was Chinese fast fashion company Shein, which raised between $1 billion and $2 billion in funding at a $100 billion dollar valuation last month, according to the Wall Street Journal, making the company the third most valuable company on the board.

Shein’s valuation is now tied with Elon Musk’s space exploration company SpaceX, which is also around $100 billion, and means the fashion brand is valued more than fintech unicorn Stripe’s $95 billion.

The Unicorn Board now hosts just shy of 1,300 unicorn companies that are collectively valued at $4.5 trillion and have raised more than $750 billion in total equity.

A slight slowdown

The 34 new unicorns that were minted in April match the figure in March. While both months are down compared to 2021, they still exceed new unicorn formation in prior years. By comparison, 52 new unicorns were minted a year earlier, in April 2021.

Global New Unicorn Count By Month Through April 2022

Of the 34 new unicorns, 20 are U.S.-based companies.

Germany added four new unicorns last month and Switzerland two. A further four hail from Europe, in the UK, Sweden, Lithuania and Finland. Across Asia, one new unicorn was added from China, South Korea, Singapore and the Philippines each.

Leading sectors for these new unicorns are healthcare, fintech and crypto companies.

The most heavily capitalized of April’s new unicorns include:

  • Austin-based underground transportation company The Boring Company ($908 million in total funding);
  • Zürich-based carbon dioxide removal company Climeworks ($784 million);
  • Philippines-based Voyager Innovations, which owns wallet PayMaya and digital bank Maya Bank ($712 million);
  • Berkeley-based Upside Foods, which makes meat from animal cells ($606 million);
  • Denver-based emissions reduction company Crusoe Energy Systems ($513 million).

The companies on this list with the highest investor counts, including angel investors, are:

  • Southern California-based avatar tech company Genies (66 investors);
  • Finland-based wellness ring company ŌURA (43);
  • UPSIDE Foods (39);
  • and San Francisco-based doctor patient booking platform NexHealth (30).

Exiting the board

Three unicorns exited the board in April.

These include the much-anticipated Indonesian startup GoTo, which was formed in May 2021 from the merger of Gojek and Tokopedia. GoTo raised $1.1 billion on its IPO last month and was valued at $31.6 billion. Its last private funding valued the combined company at $28 billion, per Crunchbase data.

London-based Drug discovery BenevolentAI went public via a SPAC on the Amsterdam Euronext exchange valuing the company at $1.6 billion. Per Crunchbase data the company was last valued at $1 billion in 2019.

Bay Area-based voice AI company Soundhound went public via a SPAC merger on Nasdaq. Soundhound was last valued at $1 billion in 2018, Crunchbase data shows . As of May 5, the company has a valuation of $3.6 billion.

Runway

Just over 600 companies joined the Unicorn Board in 2021. Of those, 48 companies raised fundings—sometimes multiple—at decacorn valuations of $10 billion or more.

As the IPO markets have softened, many of these companies will need to focus on their runway, as late stage funding has slowed according to a recent Crunchbase News analysis of 2022 funding.

Funding to unicorn companies is at its lowest in the last 12 months. Will these valuations hold? Or can we expect down rounds in 2022? The coming months will tell.

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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 May 5, 2022.

The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated board 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.

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