"Unicorns" appear in the world at a rate of 1.5 companies per day

Author

Valery Moiseev

From April to June, 136 "unicorns" appeared in the world, that is, startups with an estimate of more than $1 billion. This is a new record and more than in the entire last year. This rapid growth is explained by the fact that venture capitalists increased their investments in new companies after several successful listings in the United States, the Financial Times (FT) reports, citing data from analytical service CB Insights.

Most of the new "unicorns" were established in the United States. In Asia, 33 companies appeared with an estimate above $1 billion, compared to 29 for the whole of 2020.

Investors are used to paying high prices for the shares of the new companies, FT writes. This year, startups can break an annual fundraising record that was set last year when the COVID-19 pandemic boosted investment in tech companies.

Investments have been boosted by massive funding rounds from some of the biggest "unicorns". Investment rounds of more than $100 million accounted for almost 60% of the total capital raised in the first half of 2021. At the same time, such rounds accounted for only 5% of the total number of transactions to raise capital.

"When a company looks promising, a lot of money is invested in it," Anand Sanwal, CEO of CB Insights, said. Now there is just a lot of money on the market and few promising investment opportunities, he noted.

According to CB Insights, the American investment company Tiger Global Management made the most investments in startups in the last quarter. It made 81 deals. This is eight times more compared to the same period last year.

Startups were overvalued because of the influence of companies such as Tiger Global Management and the success of tech company debuts.

Startups can raise twice as much funds this year as they did last year, the FT reports.

As of June 2021, there are at least 700 "unicorns" in the world, according to CB Insights. The most expensive of them is the Chinese company ByteDance that develops technological solutions based on artificial intelligence. Its estimate is about $140 billion. It owns services such as TikTok, Vigo, Toutiao, TopBuzz and others.

Stripe payment system with an estimate of $95 billion ranks second in the rating of "unicorns", and the space company SpaceX worth $74 billion ranks third. The cost of an application developer for social events IRL, according to CB Insights, is now $1.17 billion, and fintech Pipe—$2 billion.

Additionally. In 2020, Ukraine lost five points in the list of the best countries to establish one's own startup and dropped from 29th to 34th place in the annual Global Startup Ecosystem 2021 ranking by StartupBlink.

Having your own startup is a time-consuming and labour-intensive process. One of the main goals in the course of its implementation is to find a source of funding. has already written about how to find the right investor willing to put their money in a startup, and where to seek investment.