Highest Count Of New Unicorns Join Crunchbase Board In Over 3 Years As Exits Also Gain Steam

A total of 26 companies joined the The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in September, the largest new monthly cohort in three years, Crunchbase data shows. The surge in new unicorns follows on the heels of a very slow August, when only four companies joined the board.

Collectively, the new September unicorns added $38 billion in value to the board.

Of the 26 companies, 18 new unicorns came from the U.S. Two are U.K.-based, and Finland, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea, Australia and Mexico each minted one new unicorn last month.

The highest valued among the new entrants were London-based data center provider Nscale, valued at $3.2 billion, and Utah-based legal tech startup Filevine at $3 billion.

Exits

Unicorn exits also picked up last month, with 11 companies leaving the board. Six of those companies went public, including Sweden-based Klarna, Santa Clara, California-based Netskope, and San Francisco-based Figure. Five companies were acquired, including Statsig by OpenAI and Thirty Madison by Remedy Meds.

New unicorns

While healthcare represented the largest cohort among the new unicorns, with five companies from that sector joining the board, new additions last month also hailed from sectors including aerospace, semiconductors and fintech. AI was woven through as a theme in many of the companies.

Here’s a closer look at September’s 26 new unicorns.

Healthcare

• Strive Health, a kidney care startup that partners with healthcare providers to provide early detection and preventative care for patients, raised a $300 million Series D led by New Enterprise Associates. The 7-year-old Denver-based company was valued at $1.8 billion.
• Ultragreen.ai, a provider of fluorescent imaging for surgery, raised a $188 million private equity round led by Vitruvian Partners and  Temasek’s 65 Equity Partners. The 1-year-old Singapore-based company was valued at $1.3 billion.
• Lila Sciences, a developer of AI tools for scientific research, raised a $235 million Series A led by Braidwell and Collective Global Management. The company seeks to experiment with AI for  diagnostics, material science, compute and energy. The 3-year-old Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company was valued at $1.2 billion.
• Enveda Biosciences uses AI to analyze the molecules in nature for medicines. It raised a $150 million Series D led by Premji Invest that valued the 6-year-old Boulder, Colorado-based company at $1 billion.
• Cancer care provider Thyme Care, raised a $97 million Series D from strategic and venture investors at a $1 billion valuation. The 5-year-old Nashville, Tennessee-based company partners with health plans and providers to support patients with cancer.

AI

• AI infrastructure provider Baseten raised a $150 million Series D led by Bond. The 6-year-old San Francisco-based company, which aims to make AI inference reliable for applications, was valued at $2.2 billion.
• AI data company Invisible Technologies, a competitor to Scale AI, raised a $100 million funding led by Vanara Capital. The 10-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $2 billion.
• AI consulting firm Distyl AI, which aims to help Fortune 500 companies become AI-native, raised a $175 million Series B led by Khosla Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners. The 3-year-old San Francisco-based company, founded by Palantir Technologies alumni, was valued at $1.8 billion.
• You.com, a company that supports enterprises looking to adopt AI, raised a $100 million Series C led by Cox Enterprises. The 5-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Fintech

• Tide, a company that supports SMEs with banking, invoicing, loans and payments, among other services, raised $120 million in private equity led by TPG’s The Rise Fund. Tide entered the India market in 2022 and supports 800,000 small businesses in that region and just under that number in the U.K. The 10-year-old London-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• Banking-as-a-service provider Lead raised a $70 million Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz and Khosla Ventures at a $1.47 billion valuation for the 4-year-old company. Lead is a chartered bank based in Kansas City, Missouri, and was acquired by Luna in 2022 to provide banking services to fintech companies.
• Kapital, a technology-first bank with customers in Mexico, Colombia and the U.S., raised a $100 million Series C led by Pelion Venture Partners and Tribe Capital. The 5-year-old Mexico City-based bank serves small and medium-sized businesses. It was valued at $1.4 billion.

AI data center

• AI data center provider Nscale raised a $1.1 billion Series B led by Norway-based industrial investment company Aker with participation from Nvidia and Nokia. The 2-year-old London-based company was valued at $3.1 billion. Its customers include Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI. Since the Series B announcement, Nscale has raised a further $433 million SAFE toward a Series C.
• AI data center Firmus Technologies raised $220 million in private equity led by Ellerston Capital with participation from Nvidia. An operator of data centers in Singapore and Tasmania, the 6-year-old Tasmania-headquartered company was valued at $1.2 billion.

AI cloud

• Modular, a startup building an AI software computer layer agnostic to the chips they run on, raised a $250 million Series C led by US Innovative Technology Fund. The 3-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $1.6 billion.
• Modal Labs, a company that allows developers to run AI without managing infrastructure, raised an $87 million Series B led by Lux Capital. The 4-year-old New York-based company was valued at $1.1 billion.

Legal tech

• Legal tech startup Filevine, a company that unifies case management, communication and billing with AI, raised a $260 million Series E extension led by Accel, Insight Partners and Utah-based Halo Experience Co. The 11-year-old Salt Lake City-based company says it has 6,000 customers using its platform. It was valued at $3 billion.
• Eve, a legal tech startup to support plaintiff law firms, raised a $103 million Series B led by Spark Capital. The 5-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Web3

• Zerohash, a crypto and stablecoin infrastructure provider, raised a $104 million Series D led by Interactive Brokers Group. The 8-year-old Chicago-based company was valued at $1 billion.
• RedotPay, a stablecoin payments solution provider, raised a $47 million funding led by Coinbase Ventures. The 1-year-old Hong Kong-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Semiconductor

Developer platform

• Developer tooling company PostHog, a service that helps engineers with feature releases and tracking impact, raised a $75 million Series E led by Peak XV Partners. The 5-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.4 billion.

Hardware

• Independent smartphone device-maker Nothing raised a $200 million Series C led by Tiger Global Management. The 5-year-old London-based company aims to reinvent the smartphone with AI intelligence and was valued at $1.3 billion.

Quantum computing

Material science

• Periodic Labs, a startup that plans to build material science applications using AI, launched from stealth to announce a $300 million seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The less than 1-year-old Menlo Park, California-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Aerospace

• Satellite manufacturer Apex raised a $200 million Series D led by Interlagos Capital. The 3-year-old Los Angeles-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Related Crunchbase unicorn lists:

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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.

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

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