The board also reached a new milestone last month: It now includes more than 1,600 unicorn startups, or private companies currently valued at $1 billion or more, according to 附近上门 data.

Among the 13 new companies, six are U.S.-based, two are from Sweden, and one each hail from France, China, Singapore, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Leading sectors for new unicorns in July were AI apps and infrastructure, e-commerce and healthcare.

Five exits

Last month also posted five unicorn exits, signaling that more liquidity could be on the horizon from the board, which still holds a collective valuation just under $6 trillion.

Three unicorns went public in July: San Francisco-based design collaboration platform , Beijing-based autonomous robotics company , and Atlanta-based insurtech .

Two companies were also acquired: California-based 鈥斕�was bought by AI code generation startup for an undisclosed price after an earlier planned $3 billion acquisition by fell apart 鈥斕齛nd Texas-based , which aims to improve payment outcomes for hospitals was acquired by for $1.25 billion.

July鈥檚 newly minted unicorns

New unicorn industries in July ran the gamut from media and entertainment to transportation, to AI. Here are last month鈥檚 13 newly minted unicorns, by sector.

AI

• Vibe coding startup raised a $200 million Series A led by . The 1-year-old Stockholm, Sweden-based company was valued at $1.8 billion. The startup said it reached $75 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, in seven months since turning on revenue. After its funding announcement, growth sped up to . Lovable says it has 2.3 million users and 180,000 subscribers.
• Media infrastructure AI provider raised a $125 million Series C led by . The 4-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.
• Multimodal AI solutions lab raised a $110 million Series B from investors and among others. The 3-year-old Sunnyvale, California-based company was valued at $1 billion.

E-commerce

• , a tech platform for booking flights, raised a private equity funding led by . The 24-year-old Uppsala, Sweden-based company owns multiple travel brands, and powers flights for . Etraveli, previously acquired by , was valued at $3.1 billion.
• Quick commerce service raised a $254 million funding led by Saudi Arabia-based . The company delivers groceries and essentials across Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. The 3-year-old Saudi Arabia-based company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Data and analytics

• , which simplifies management of python and R for data science projects, raised a $150 million Series C led by . The 13-year-old Austin, Texas-based company was valued at $1.5 billion. Anaconda has $150 million in ARR as of July 2025 and says it鈥檚 profitable.

Energy

• , a subsidiary of battery provider , is using AI to reimagine its battery business from materials, oversight and recycling. It raised an undisclosed Series A funding. The Fujian, China-based subsidiary was valued at $1.4 billion.

VR/AR

• , developer of a smart contact lens, raised a $250 million Series A led by Hong Kong-based . Prototypes include smart lenses with biosensors for health monitoring, XR/AR content for gaming, and night vision capabilities. The 4-year-old Dubai-based company was valued at $1.4 billion.

Healthcare

• , a note taking scribe that integrates into clinical workflows, raised a $243 million Series C led by and. The 5-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.3 billion.

Professional services

• Employee experience platform merged with Swiss-based mobile-first deskless employee management software . The deal is backed by London-based , a major shareholder in LumApps. The 12-year-old France-based company was valued at $1.1 billion.

Media and entertainment

• Newsletter publishing platform raised a $100 million Series C led by and . The 8-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.1 billion.

Networking

• , a digital eSIM听 provider for devices for travelers, raised a $220 million Series C led by . The 6-year-old company operating from Singapore was valued at $1 billion.

Transportation

• spinoff , builder of yet-to-be-launched products in the micromobility and e-bikes sector, raised a $200 million funding led by , after raising from four months earlier.听 The less than 1-year-old Palo Alto, California-based company was valued at $1 billion.

Related 附近上门 unicorn lists:

• (1,602)
• (87)
• (112)
• (102)
• (802)
• (497)
• (211)
• (37)
• (455)

Related reading:

• Startup Funding Stays Flat, But Figma IPO Lights A Spark In The Market
• July鈥檚 Most-Active US Investors: Andreessen, Insight And Y Combinator Top Busy Month
• June Hits 3-Year High In Unicorn Births Across AI, Robotics And More

Methodology

The 附近上门 附近上门 is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on 附近上门 data. New companies are as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations 鈥� such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options 鈥� 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 .

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. 附近上门 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 附近上门 long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

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The scraping, according to Cloudflare, has surged 18% in the past year. Some publishers, like , are cutting licensing deals with while also trying to choke off what it calls 鈥渂ad actors.鈥� But here鈥檚 the hard truth: All of this defensive maneuvering is like boarding up the windows after the storm has already blown through. AI isn鈥檛 breaking in. It鈥檚 building something new entirely 鈥� and the smart move is to get invited inside.

Don’t get left behind

From where I sit, paywalls, as a concept, are seriously living on borrowed time. They鈥檝e always relied more on friction than loyalty. People subscribed to read one article, forgot to cancel, or clicked out of guilt when their free views ran out. That model was always fragile 鈥� and generative AI is exposing the cracks.

Today, most people don鈥檛 need to visit 10 different sites to get the news. They want fast, portable summaries. They want context in the same breath as content. LLMs don鈥檛 need to copy your article to kill your traffic 鈥� they just need to remove the need for it. If ChatGPT can give a clear, concise, accurate answer to 鈥淲hat happened in Gaza this morning?鈥� 鈥� most users won鈥檛 click through to five full-length op-eds. And if your outlet has banned crawlers, congratulations 鈥� you鈥檝e made yourself invisible in the only newsroom that matters now: the one inside the machine.

The fight to protect so-called proprietary content profoundly misunderstands the nature of content (and fully lacks nuance) in 2025. Text is already a remix culture. News sites summarize other news sites. Bloggers paraphrase headlines. Analysts repackage coverage with 鈥渋nsights.鈥� Even the most original scoop gets sliced, quoted and tweeted into a dozen versions within hours.

AI doesn鈥檛 change that 鈥� it automates it. Fighting that is like fighting email because it made fax machines obsolete. What鈥檚 more, AI-generated summaries often increase the visibility of high-quality reporting. If a chatbot cites your outlet regularly, that鈥檚 reach. If it gets the gist of your piece exactly right, that鈥檚 influence. Banning AI from seeing your work doesn鈥檛 stop your ideas from spreading 鈥� it just cuts you out of the credit cycle. It鈥檚 like a professor trying to stop their research from being cited in academic papers because they didn鈥檛 approve the footnotes.

A better path

Publishers should be working to collaborate with AI platforms, not wall them off. Embed metadata that tells LLMs who wrote the piece. Build deals that prioritize your bylines, link back to your coverage, and let your headlines flow through these models with attribution. Become the signal in a sea of synthetic noise.

That鈥檚 what . That鈥檚 what smart publishers will do with 鈥檚 AI Overviews. If a model starts defaulting to , or because those sources made themselves indexable, consistent and AI-friendly, that鈥檚 not a loss of control. That鈥檚 a win in brand equity, reach and reader trust. You want the machines quoting you, not ghosting you.

Here鈥檚 the omnipresent reality: The entire next generation of news consumers will meet the world through AI.听

When a teenager in Kansas asks their AI assistant why the Supreme Court overturned a precedent, or a voter in Arizona asks about a candidate鈥檚 housing record, they won鈥檛 be thumbing through newspaper archives. They鈥檒l get a verbal summary in eight seconds.

If your journalism doesn鈥檛 appear in that summary, you don鈥檛 exist in that conversation. It鈥檚 not that AI is replacing the value of journalism 鈥� it鈥檚 replacing the pathway to it. And the publishers who treat AI as an enemy will learn, too late, that they trained their successor not to remember them.

The future of media isn鈥檛 behind a wall. It鈥檚 in the bloodstream. It鈥檚 in training sets, in embedded links, in smart attribution, in being so good that even the robots want to get the story right. There鈥檚 no dignity in hiding. And no sustainability in suing your way back to a broken business model. If you want to survive, stop worrying about how to keep the bots out 鈥� and start thinking about how to make sure they cite you when it counts.

is the chief strategy officer for. He holds a law degree and has taught entrepreneurship at and the, and was elected to Fastcase 50, recognizing the top 50 legal innovators in the world. His writing has been featured in,,,,,,, and many other publications. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize .

Related reading:

• AI Isn鈥檛 Just Delivering The News 鈥� It鈥檚 About To Deliver Your Lawyer, Too
• AI Hijack: The Court Just Legalized The Automation Of Lawyer Identity Theft听
• AI Isn鈥檛 the Answer To Our Education Crisis 鈥� It鈥檚 a Distraction
• Can We Please Still Have Nice Things That AI Hasn鈥檛 Touched?
• Stealing Ghibli: How AI Has Crossed The Line Into Creative Theft
• Who Owns Your Face? The Legal Fight for Identity In The Age of AI

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The new round 鈥� led by 鈥� values the AI video startup at more than $3 billion, per . In June 2023, the company raised a $141 million extension to its December 2022 $50 million Series C from , , 1听and others at a reported $1.5 billion valuation.

Other investors in the new round include Nvidia, , and .

Runway makes software that lets users create videos using text prompts or images. Earlier in the week, Runway unveiled its new AI model, Gen-4, that allows users to create videos with consistent characters and backgrounds.

Last fall, the company signed a deal with production company to create a customized video-generation model.

The startup plans to use the fresh cash to develop AI focusing on its film and animation studio. Founded in 2018, it has raised more than $540 million, .

AI dollars

Big money continues to pour into AI.

Per 附近上门鈥檚 global funding report, AI was the leading sector for venture funding in the first quarter, with $59.6 billion invested. The first quarter marked the strongest quarter for AI funding ever, with an astonishing 53% of global funding going to the AI sector alone.

Of course, that was significantly helped by , which raised the largest private round ever, a $40 billion funding that values the company at $300 billion.

Related 附近上门 Pro query:

Related reading:

• Q1 Global Startup Funding Posts Strongest Quarter Since Q2 2022 With A Third Going To Massive OpenAI Deal听听
• Eye On AI: Massive OpenAI Deal Masks AI鈥檚 Slow Quarter
• AI Funding Explosion: Inflection AI Nabs $1.3B, Runway and Typeface Also Raise Big

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was founded in 2017 and relatively resembled Cameo with its focus on personalized content from celebrities. In TraceMe鈥檚 case, the content would exclusively be from star athletes to engage with superfans. It raised in funding from investors like 鈥檚 , CEO and co-founder , and more. Wilson is the executive chairman, .

Then, the company , which offers an online engagement platform for sports fans to make live predictions in real time sports. Users can vote on questions like 鈥淗ow many runs are scored in this full inning鈥� or 鈥渨hich goalie is the first to get three saves?鈥� . There are also real-time prediction feeds where users can broadcast their own thoughts to a fan base.

While Nike did not immediately respond for comment, , based on sources, that Nike 鈥渨as interested in original TraceMe technology.鈥� It鈥檚 unclear what and if Nike will use TraceMe鈥檚 technology.

Implications For Nike

Regardless of the technology, the acquisition broadly signals that we could see Nike more aggressively tackling the intersections of editorial content, fan engagement, and technology.

This acquisition, , is part of Nike鈥檚 broader M&A efforts.

, Nike has acquired nine companies to date. TraceMe is its second of 2019. The first was , a Boston-based startup that helps retailers optimize their inventory across various stages of the supply chain.

Other acquisitions in the past might be, for some, present-day household names: in 2003, in 2002, and in 1988, per 附近上门.

Despite how this translates on the street level for Nike, from the balcony we see the current appetite of the mega sports company looking a bit more tech than it did in the early 2000s, in a world where fans are able to stay engaged through feeds, leagues, and apps.

For Nike, this growing trend looks less like brand acquisitions and more like tech, fan-friendly organizations that it can position atop of its core Nike business.