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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.
“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. (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.)
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 than ten countries are represented among these 372 unicorns, including France’s Mistral and Germany’s Helsing. “Most infrastructure companies really are being built in the U.S. and internationally we are seeing a lot more application layer companies,” Maliwal wrote via email.
You may sit there and say ‘Well, is Stripe—a financial infrastructure company—an AI unicorn?’ If so, your point is well-taken. The broad definition PitchBook has used for AI companies here does shed some light, though: “Companies developing technologies that enable computers to autonomously learn, deduce and act, through utilization of large data sets.” Those technologies can include voice AI, computer vision, robotics, and anything that involves processes that involve massive data sets.
It doesn’t feel crazy at all to take a super far-reaching definition here, says Yan-David Erlich, general partner at B Capital.
“In the fullness of time, AI should permeate all of these markets, and it’ll either happen because the market leader will become an AI company or get crushed by an AI company,” said Erlich. “There are also plenty of really interesting companies that aren’t on this list yet. And looking at the bottom of the list, you start to ask: Is the husk of, say, Character AI still a billion-dollar business? We’ll see.”
The bottom of the list is a varied bunch, a combination of names old and new (in AI time). You have chatbot platform Character—the company’s cofounders exited last year to return to Google and the startup has since faced startling legal issues. You also have Stability AI, one of the earlier text-to-image model successes that’s been making a comeback, and OpenEvidence, a medical information platform that just hit unicorn status in 2025.
“Everything in this game is just fuel for the next step,” said Erlich, who directed me to a sobering reality—in the last two years alone, almost 140 companies have been delisted from U.S. exchanges. Translation: Even if you go all the way, you still need to keep running or get caught.
“If you rest on your laurels, you’re gonna die,” he added. “It’s like sharks, right? As long as you keep swimming, you’ve got a chance. If you stop swimming, you’re probably screwed.”
The reality is, these 372 AI unicorns are one fleeting frame in a far longer, unpredictable film.
“This is just taking a snapshot of the dance, and saying ‘let me analyze this picture,’” said Erlich. “But that picture’s just a frame in a movie that’s moving.”
Prediction time…We usually save Crystal Balls for the end of the year, but we’re making an exception: I want to hear your predictions on how the top AI startups will fare in the next one to five years. Who will get acquired? Who will become a market leader? And who’s just doomed? Send me your thoughts via email. I’m especially curious about: OpenAI, Databricks, Anthropic, xAI, Waymo, Canva, CoreWeave, Anduril, Scale AI, Perplexity, and Mistral.
Going public today…CoreWeave is expected to go public today, debuting on the Nasdaq under the ticker “CRWV.” There are some red flags, and the company has reportedly downsized its offering. Nevertheless, this could be a landmark moment for the AI boom.
See you Monday,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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https://fortune.com/2025/03/28/there-are-372-ai-unicorns-right-now-according-to-pitchbook-heres-what-that-means/
Allie Garfinkle
