The leading sector for new unicorns was AI, making up 25% of new unicorns this year. Corporate investors like Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures 1 have been actively investing in AI. Despite the recent pullback in unicorn investing, lead investors with large portfolios of highly valued private companies, such as Tiger Global, Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Accel, are not expected to lose their position as the most active investors anytime soon.
Key takeaways:
- B2venture, a Berlin-based early-stage investment firm, was the most active investor in new unicorn startups in the first half of 2023, participating in nine funding rounds across three new unicorn startups.
- New unicorn counts fell 80% year over year in the first half of 2023, with just 44 companies earning that title, compared to 251 companies in H1 2022 and 295 in H1 2021.
- The leading sector for the new batch of unicorns was AI, making up 25% of new unicorns this year, with corporate investors like Nvidia and Salesforce Ventures actively investing in AI.
- Despite a recent pullback in unicorn investing, lead investors like Tiger Global, Andreessen Horowitz, Insight Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Accel still have large portfolios of highly valued private companies, with Tiger Global having the highest count of current unicorn portfolio companies at over 220.