The United States of America is presently home to 50 percent of the world’s tech Unicorns, privately held startup companies worth over $1 billion, according to a report by GlobalData.
The report showed as of August 31, 2021, there were 751 tech unicorns in the world, out of which 379 with a combined valuation of $1.3 trillion are headquartered in the United States.
Most of these unicorns are those operating within the cloud, fintech, healthtech, big data and cybersecurity fields, the report noted. “In fact, 70% of cloud unicorns are based in the country, as well as 46% of fintech unicorns and 68% of healthtech unicorns”, stated Priya Toppo, Analyst for the Thematic Team at GlobalData.
US tech unicorns emerged even stronger following the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the slowdown experienced in the first half of 2020 when just 22 new unicorn startups were created. The number rose about 600 percent to 136 in the first half of 2021.
Toppo further explained that “Stripe is the most valuable tech unicorn in the US, with a valuation of $95bn, followed by SpaceX ($74bn) and Instacart ($39bn).
“California has emerged as the ‘land of tech unicorns’ in the US. It hosts 205 of the 379 tech unicorns in the Americas, followed by New York (64) and Massachusetts (17).”
“While GlobalData expects the tech unicorn club in the US to grow further, it also expects at least 35 unicorns from the US to exit the unicorn club (going public, either through IPO or M&A) in the next two years. The biggest companies that are anticipated to list on the public market are Instacart, Stripe, Chime, Ripple and Databricks.”
