Unicorns and Unicorn Hunters

Last post we talked about how Tiger Global was disrupting the venture capital industry with a new speedier investment model. Well, in venture land the big prize is still backing "unicorns"--a private company with a valuation over $1 billion. CBINSIGHTS has a list of all the current unicorns worldwide as of May 2021. The 650+ unicorns have a cumulative valuation of $2.2 trillion. Below are some charts highlighting who these companies are and who's backing them.

First, a break down of unicorns by size. Yes, some unicorns are more special than others, a decacorn is a private company with a valuation over $10 billion and a hectocorn is one worth over $100 billion. There aren't that many of them: 

And where are unicorns usually found? Mainly in the USA and China. More broadly, North America is home to 344 unicorns, Asia 214, and Europe (surprisingly?) only 79. The RoW has about 20.

Most unicorns are in fintech these days it seems (Stripe, Klarna, Nubank, Chime, Robinhood, SoFi, etc.). CB's classification is sometimes a little to hard understand, though; for example, Bytedance (Tik Tok, really) is categorized as an artificial intelligence company (?!), sure, I guess...in the same way Facebook or Twitter could be considered an AI company, but they are generally known as social media companies. 

 

And who's finding and backing these unicorns? Is Tiger "capturing" all the unicorns with its aggressive style or is still the more traditional VCs? Tiger Global and Softbank (another disruptor) are up there, but the champion unicorn hunter is still blue-chip VC-firm Sequoia Capital. Sequoia is backing 74 unicorns more than Tiger and Softbank combined. 

So, who are the biggest unicorns or decacorns or hectocorns? They would be (drum roll):

The top 10 unicorns have a collective valuation of $550 billion, roughly 25% of the cumulative value of all 650+ unicorns. Bytedance is social media! Stripe, Klarna and Nubank are fintechs, SpaceX is Star Trek, Didi is transportation and Instacart is logistics/delivery. Their backers are shown below (click to enlarge). Most will go public in the next 24-36 months. They'll no longer be "unicorns" at that point but then we'll finally be able to ride them!