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The race to back the next generation of billion-dollar startups accelerated last year as the stable of unicorn startups filled up again. A total of joined The ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ in 2025 — up 61% from the previous year — driven largely by the AI boom.

For venture firms, landing early investments in these companies is one of the clearest signals of long-term performance. An analysis of ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ data shows and once again dominated the latest unicorn cohort, backing the most deals in companies that reached billion-dollar valuations in 2025.

But ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ data also highlights a set of rising investors — including , 1, , 2Ìý²¹²Ô»å — that appear to be gaining ground in the race to fund the next wave of category leaders.

Unicorns advance

Last year was a strong one for new unicorns — well above the post-pandemic lull and slightly ahead of pre-pandemic norms. The pace of new unicorn creation also picked up each quarter in 2025 and has shown no signs of slowing in 2026, per ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ data.

Trending investors

AI-native companies accounted for 47 of last year’s new unicorns, or 25% of the total, and that percentage seems likely to grow in 2026 as companies in that sector continue to draw significant investment.

Notably, nearly half of the new unicorns are also very young: 94 of them are less than 5 years old.

The most-active investors in terms of deal count in last year’s new unicorn class were two VC heavyweights: Sequoia and a16z, which made 51 investments across 21 and 20 companies, respectively.

Notable investments for Sequoia — where the firm led early at seed or Series A rounds and continued to back later rounds — include , a clinician-focused medical AI platform, prediction markets platform , and frontier intelligence lab .

For Andreessen, three of its most-notable investments were for automated coding platform , health customer support service , and , which provides AI for customer support.

Following those two firms, was a close third with 49 investments across 23 companies, which was the highest count of companies for an investor in the unicorn class. Its  investments include trucking insurance startup , , an expert training data platform for AI, and , a frontier lab for visual content.

, and rounded out the leading six unicorn investors of 2025, with 37, 36 and 34 deals, respectively. Portfolio companies where these firms led early and kept investing include:

• Accel: (VPN network provider), (AI-powered presentations) and (visual website design platform).
• Y Combinator: (app development platform), (legal AI research service) and  (industrial inspections).
• Lightspeed: (commercial trucking insurance), (AI for large enterprises) and for (agentic AI).

Rounding out the top 10 were with 28 investments, seed investor 3Ìý²¹²Ô»å growth investor , each with 23 and 22 deals, respectively.

Ribbit Capital and Felicis shared the top 10 spot, each with 20 deals.

Newer entrants

What’s compelling is not just the investors with a track record of backing formidable companies, but those that have climbed the ranks by identifying the next wave early.

The investors in the 2025 class of billion-dollar startups include quite a few firms who were not in the overall top 20 investors for current private unicorn companies.

¸½½üÉÏÃÅ data shows Redpoint, and moved up from the top 30 while Ribbit Capital, Felicis and 8VC made their move from the top 50.

, the single corporate investor on this list, and both moved up from the top 60.

vaulted up to the top 20 from the 175th-ranked investor slot in current unicorns. Its thesis is to invest in technical founders in applications, models, tools and infrastructure, and includes video and image generator , customer data platform , and workflow documentation platform .

Higher values, faster cycles

In 2025, The ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ expanded in both company count and total value as cloud and AI continued to unlock new opportunities. The leading companies have decisively separated from the pack, with billions in revenue and a strong runway.

The race to back the next generation of companies defining new opportunities has accelerated, but markets are moving faster than ever. Cutting-edge companies in today’s market risk being taken over by AI developments which erode their advantage and wipe away their lead.

Investors who want to back the next market winners need to keep investing.

Related ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ unicorn lists:

• (1,712)
• (604)
• (68)
• (187)
• (117)
• (102)
• (884)
• (501)
• (230)
• (38)
• (470)

Related reading:

• ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ Data: The AI Boom Has Drastically Changed Who’s Funding The Hottest Companies In 2025 Vs. 2021
• Hottest Deals In Tech Push ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ Toward $7T In Value
• What We Learned From 6 Active AI Investors Backing Startups Across The Stack
• Global Venture Funding In 2025 Surged As Startup Deals And Valuations Set All-Time Records

Methodology

The ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ 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 — 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 .

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

Deal counts reported here reflect deals disclosed in ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ. ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ, like all databases of private-market transactions, has a documented pattern of reporting delays. It can sometimes take between weeks and months for some rounds to be announced publicly and subsequently get added to ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ. As data is added to ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ over time, some of the numbers in this report may shift.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ 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 ¸½½üÉÏÃÅ long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

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