There Are 372 Artificial Intelligence Unicorns Right Now, According To PitchBook. Here’s What That Means

Right now, in the tech industry paddock, there are 372 AI unicorns, according to PitchBook. How did you react to that number? Did you double-take? Did you recoil slightly, finding it shockingly high? Far too low? Or did you shrug as if to say that tracks? I don’t think there’s a right or wrong response here—my point, rather, is that it’s likely you’ll have some kind of reaction to that number. And that’s representative of the extent to which the AI boom has created so many undercurrents of optimism and skepticism. A unicorn, by the way, is a privately-held company valued at $1 billion or more. The term was coined by VC Aileen Lee in 2013.The AI investing landscape is very competitive at the moment, said Kyle Stanford, PitchBook director of research for U.S. venture, via email. We are seeing around 1/3rd of completed deals go to companies in the AI space across all industries, so that encompasses much more of the market than just the handful of unicorns that dominate the headlines.It’s worth breaking down the list. Though I expect it will look different in a year, it’s surprising for its breadth. In order, the top 10 by valuation as of their last (fully confirmed) funding round: ByteDance ($220 billion), OpenAI ($157 billion), Stripe ($70 billion), Databricks ($62 billion), Anthropic ($61.5 billion), xAI ($50 billion), Waymo ($45 billion), Epic Games ($31.5 billion), Canva ($26 billion), and CoreWeave ($23 billion).And the next five names rounding out the top 15: China’s JD Digits, Anduril, Scale AI, Grammarly, and Ramp. Across these names alone, various industries are represented, including infrastructure, data analytics, language technology, social media, fintech, e-commerce, autonomous vehicles, defense tech, and design. This is a theme that runs all the way down the list, Aditi Maliwal, partner at Upfront Ventures, pointed out to me via email: 60-70% of the AI unicorns being funded are application layer companies specifically around real-world applications of AI—in healthcare, defense, robotics and autonomous systems.More on Pitchbook’s 371 AI Unicorns on FortuneAgentic AI for the Enterprise | Inbound and Outbound AI Voice AgentsI’ve partnered with DBC Technologies and I am now consulting with companies who are interested in automating inbound and outbound messaging with AI Voice Agents.Web AI Chatbots, Inbound / Outbound AI Voice Agents, AI Marketing & ConsultingIf you are interested in AI Voice Agents for your business or organization message me.Thats all for today, but AI is moving fast - subscribe and follow for more Neural News. Get full access to Neural News Network at remunerationlabs.substack.com/subscribe