New AI, Robotics, Spacetech And Fintech Unicorns Trot Onto Leaderboard In February

Ten new unicorns globally added more than $18 billion in value to The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in February, but in a sign that the long-term status of many companies on the board are in flux, one startup fell off completely after its valuation was slashed to less than a third of a unicorn valuation.

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Two companies from China joined the board after raising around a billion dollars in funding each: a year-old foundation model company and a 6-year-old satellite network company.

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The next-largest funding for a new February unicorn was raised by a 2-year-old U.S.-based robotics company.  

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The artificial intelligence theme was evident again on the board last month: Two of the new companies on the board are in the AI sector, and many of the other newcomers have the technology woven into their products.

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Four of the new unicorns hail from the U.S., three from China and one each from France, The Netherlands and Italy.

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Now let’s take a closer look at the new unicorns of February 2024 and the sectors from which they hail.

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AI

• One-year-old foundation model LLM company Moonshot AI raised a Series B of $1 billion led by e-commerce giant Alibaba Group and Sequoia Capital China. The Beijing-based company was valued at $2.5 billion in the deal.
• San Francisco-based Lambda, a cloud-based GPU company, raised its $320 million Series C. Pittsburgh-based US Innovative Technology Fund led the funding to the 12-year-old company, at a value of $1.5 billion.

Security

• Texas-based endpoint management company NinjaOne has grown in recent years with the shift to hybrid work and the need for oversight of remote devices by IT teams. According to the company, it has around 17,000 customers. The 10-year-old company raised a $232 million Series C led by ICONIQ Growth. It was valued at $1.9 billion.
• San Francisco-based crowdsourced security platform Bugcrowd raised a $102 million Series E funding. The 11-year-old company was valued at $1 billion in the funding led by General Catalyst.

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Fintech

• Paris-based Pennylane, a bookkeeping platform for small and medium sized businesses, raised a Series C of $43 million at a value of $1.1 billion. The 3-year-old company’s funding was led by DST Global and Sequoia Capital.
• Amsterdam-based DataSnipper, a financial audit company, raised a Series B of $100 million. The 6-year-old company was valued at $1 billion by Index Ventures. The company plans to automate tedious tasks using AI, freeing auditors to focus on higher level tasks.

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Space

• Low-orbit broadband satellite network company Yuanxin Satellite raised a Series A of $943 million and joined the unicorn ranks. The 6-year-old Shanghai-based company’s funding was led by China Development Bank.

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Transport

• Two-year-old electric hydrogen truck company Zhizi Automobile, based in China, raised a  $53 million funding at a $3.3 billion value.

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Robotics

• Sunnyvale, California-based humanoid robot developer Figure raised a $675 million Series B funding. The 2-year-old company raised a party round including Microsoft, OpenAI’s Startup Fund, Nvidia and Bezos Expeditions, among others, that valued it at $2.7 billion.

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Sales and marketing

• Milan-based Bending Spoons — a digital app developer known for image and video editing as well as the acquirer of Evernote, Meetup and Mosaic — raised $156 million in funding led by Durable Capital Partners. The 10-year-old company was valued at $2.6 billion.

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Downgraded

While 10 new companies joined the board, one fell off.

Online checkout company Bolt was removed from the unicorn board as the company initiated a share buyback plan at a mere $300 million valuation, as reported by The Information. In that move, the company shaved 97% off its value from its last known valuation of $11 billion in January 2022.

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Reference: https://news.crunchbase.com/ai/new-unicorn-board-companies-february-2024-moonshot-ai/