Meet The New AI Unicorns Of 2023

One in five of the new billion-dollar startups to join The Crunchbase Unicorn Board this year were artificial intelligence companies, an analysis of the board shows.

The 15 AI companies that joined as of Q3 2023 collectively added $21 billion in value to the board and were dominated by generative AI companies in text, translation, video, coding and human computer interaction.

These 15 companies are a small proportion of the 200 private companies tagged with AI on the unicorn board, as funding to this sector has grown over the past decade.

The board’s top three most valuable private companies in the AI sector are: AI cloud data company Databricks, valued at $43 billion in its 2023 funding, an increase of $5 billion from its value in 2021; autonomous driving startup Cruise, last valued at $30 billion; and generative AI firm OpenAI, with a $29 billion valuation.

Despite fervent investor interest in AI, the number of new unicorns in 2023 has dropped precipitously year over year.

Let’s look at companies in the AI sector that became unicorns in 2023.

Large language models

Cohere

Description: Large language model developer for enterprises
Headquarters: Toronto
Year founded: 2019
Last valuation: $2.2B
Total funding raised: $435M
Funding stage: Series C
Lead investors: Index Ventures, Tiger Global Management, Inovia Capital

Zhipu AI

Description: Large language model developer
Headquarters: Beijing, China
Year founded: 2019
Last valuation: $1.6B
Total funding raised: $342M
Funding stage: Late
Lead investors: Qiming Venture Partners, Meituan, Alibaba Cloud, Guangxi Tencent Venture Capital, Ant Group

AI21 Labs

Description: Large language model company
Headquarters: Tel Aviv, Israel
Year founded: 2017
Last valuation: $1.4B
Total funding raised: $274M
Funding stage: Series C
Lead investors: Pitango VC, Walden Catalyst, Ahren Innovation Capital, Samsung Next, B2venture, SCB 10X

Light Years Beyond

Description: Generative AI tool
Headquarters: Beijing
Year founded: 2023
Last valuation: $1.2B
Total funding raised: $280M
Funding stage: Acquired
Lead investors: Wang Huiwen, Source Code Capital

Imbue

Description: AI research lab
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year founded: 2021
Last valuation: $1B
Total funding raised: $232M
Funding stage: Series B
Lead investor: Astera Institute

Video

Runway

Description: AI generative video
Headquarters: New York City
Year founded: 2018
Last valuation: $1.5B
Total funding raised: $237M
Funding stage: Series C
Lead investors: Lux Capital, Amplify Partners, Coatue, Felicis 1, Google

Synthesia

Description: AI generative video company
Headquarters: London
Year founded: 2017
Last valuation: $1B
Total funding raised: $157M
Funding stage: Series C
Lead investors: LDV Capital, FirstMark, Kleiner Perkins, Accel

ML Ops

CoreWeave

Description: Cloud infrastructure company that pivoted from Ethereum mining
Headquarters: Roseland, New Jersey
Year founded: 2017
Last valuation: $2.4B
Total funding raised: $427M
Funding stage: Series B
Lead investors: Magnetar Capital, Blackstone Group

Analytics

Quantexa

Description: AI data analytics
Headquarters: London
Year founded: 2016
Last valuation: $1.8B
Total funding raised: $370M
Funding stage: Series E
Lead investors: AlbionVC, HSBC, Dawn Capital, Evolution Equity Partners, Warburg Pincus, GIC

AI platforms

Replit

Description: A developer platform that uses AI to complete code
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year founded: 2016
Last valuation: $1.2B
Total funding raised: $202M
Funding stage: Series B
Lead investors: Y Combinator, A.Capital Ventures, Coatue, Andreessen Horowitz

DeepL

Description: AI language translation
Headquarters: Cologne, Germany
Year founded: 2009
Last valuation: $1.1B
Total funding raised: $100M
Funding stage: Series B
Lead investors: B2venture, Benchmark, IVP

Adept AI

Description: AI for human and computer interaction
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year founded: 2022
Last valuation: $1B
Total funding raised: $415M
Funding stage: Series B
Lead investors: Addition, Greylock, General Catalyst, Spark Capital

Character.ai

Description: Large language models for conversation
Headquarters: Menlo Park, California
Year founded: 2021
Last valuation: $1B
Total funding raised: $150M
Funding stage: Series A
Lead investors: Andreessen Horowitz

Typeface

Description: AI content creation platform for enterprises
Headquarters: San Francisco
Year founded: 2022
Last valuation: $1B
Total funding raised: $165M
Funding stage: Series B
Lead investors: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Salesforce Ventures<2/li>

Defense

Helsing

Description: AI software defense tech company
Year founded: 2021
Headquarters: Berlin
Last valuation: $1.8B
Total funding raised: $341M
Funding stage: Series B
Lead investors: Prima Materia, General Catalyst

Illustration: Dom Guzman