A total 195 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in the first half of 2026 — far surpassing counts seen since the second half of 2022. Already, H1 is above the new unicorn totals for all of 2025, when 193 companies were minted with that status.
In this bifurcated funding environment, we also see a wide range in valuations, as well as select companies that raised multiple rounds at a significant valuation increase in the space of months.
Among this cohort, robotics and AI neolabs were the leading sectors for new unicorns. Other industries that stand out were in financial services, healthcare and biotech as well as AI infrastructure, AI deployment and devtools, defense, semiconductor and aerospace.
H1 new unicorns have added roughly $440 billion in value to the board — 5% of the board’s current value. These companies have raised $80 billion over time, representing 5% of funding raised by still-private, unicorn-valued companies.
The most valuable new unicorn this year is China-based open-source model developer DeepSeek, which was valued at $50 billion in its first external financing. Seychelles-based crypto exchange OKX, valued at $25 billion, is the second most valuable company to join in the first half of this year.
San Francisco-based OpenAI Deployment Co., majority owned by OpenAI and valued at $14 billion when it raised $4 billion from private equity, is in the third spot.
From this cohort, four companies were valued as decacorns in H1, and a further five were valued above $5 billion, as of early August 2026.
Based on trends for 2025 companies, we expect valuations for this cohort to climb significantly in the next year. For the 193 new unicorns that joined in 2025, 12 were decacorns and another 18 were valued above $5 billion. Nine of those decacorns for this cohort became $10 billion-plus-valued companies in 2026.
US leads, China picks up
The U.S. leads with 110 companies — 56% of new unicorns in H1. China was in second place with 38 companies, a significant surge from 10 new unicorns in 2025. The U.K. was the third-largest market with 13 companies joining.
By continent, North America accounts for 115 new unicorns, Asia with 50 and Europe with 27. Latin America, Oceania and Africa each count for one.
Fast raises
In the current frenzied funding environment, 19 of H1’s new unicorns raised fast follow-on rounds, often in six months or less, and doubled on an earlier valuation to reach at least $2 billion or more.
Notable among the fast fundraisers are semiconductor startup Etched, which doubled its prior valuation to $10 billion from $5 billion just six months earlier; defense tech unicorn Hadrian, whose valuation vaulted to $7.9 billion, up from its prior $1.6 billion valuation seven months earlier; and Valar Atomics, building nuclear energy reactors for AI, was valued at $6 billion, up from $2 billion four months earlier.
AI momentum
Trillions in value were added to The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in the first half of the year, including from some of the largest-ever venture funding deals. The first six months of 2026 also notched the largest venture-backed exit of all time: SpaceX’s IPO.
Taken together with the rapid follow-on raises at ever-larger valuations some of those companies have achieved, it’s clear that the momentum around the fastest-growing companies has picked up significantly in this AI cycle.
Related Crunchbase unicorn lists:
Related reading:
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
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