The MVPs Of The Startup World Are Still Getting More Valuable

At $500 billion, OpenAI’s latest valuation is higher than the individual GDPs of more than three-fourths of all nations on Earth.

We won’t opine on whether the business’s fundamentals merit that pricetag. However, we will note that it’s the most dramatic example of a broader trend: Hot private companies posting huge and often sharply rising valuations.

For now, OpenAI has clinched first place as the most valuable private company. But, per Crunchbase data, there are also at least five more private, venture-backed U.S. companies with valuations exceeding $100 billion.

Below, we’ve ranked the top five other companies, including a look at how their valuations have risen in recent quarters

• SpaceX: Founded in 2002, Hawthorne, California-based SpaceX is no longer a startup. However, it is the second most highly valued U.S. private, venture-backed company. The company was reportedly poised to hit around a $400 billion valuation this summer in a secondary transaction. It hit a reported $350 billion valuation in a secondary share sale late last year.
• Anthropic: Generative AI startup Anthropic has certainly been moving up the ranks.The San Francisco company secured a $183 billion valuation for its $13 billion Series F round a month ago. The new round nearly tripled its valuation from March, when it raised $3.5 billion at a $61.5 billion valuation.
• Stripe: Payments infrastructure provider Stripe reportedly garnered an all-time high $106.7 billion valuation last month. That’s up from the $91.5 billion valuation announced for a February tender offer aimed at providing liquidity to current and former employees.
• xAI: GenAI startup xAI is one of the more complicated companies for ascertaining valuation, particularly in the wake of founder Elon Musk’s decision to merge it with the X social media platform earlier this year. In that combination, Musk set an $80 billion valuation for xAI and a $33 billion valuation for X. Last month, the combined company was reported to be securing a $200 billion valuation for a $10 billion financing, but Musk later posted that this was “fake news.”
• Databricks: San Francisco-based data intelligence platform Databricks’ latest financing, a Series K, sets a $100 billion valuation for the 12-year-old company. That’s up sharply from January, when Databricks completed a previously announced $10 billion in Series J equity financing at a $62 billion valuation.

Private valuations taking cues from public markets

Given that many large cap public tech companies have seen large share-price hikes in recent months, particularly for those perceived as leaders in AI, it’s not entirely a shocker to see the most high-profile private companies getting valuation boosts as well.

Still, it’s worth noting that these are unusually large gains in the space of a few months, particularly for GenAI leaders. At current levels, they’re certainly priced with high expectations for future performance.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman