PitchBook News - Visualizing the unicorn slowdown

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The Daily Pitch: VC

December 15, 2022

The Daily Pitch is powered by PitchBook’s industry-defining research and best-in-class data

In today's Daily Pitch, you'll find:

Our US PE Middle Market Report explores how dealmaking could shift to the middle markets as mega-buyouts become more difficult to finance.

A look at how unicorns have fared in 2022's choppy waters.

Chart of the day: Real assets first-time fundraising activity, from our Global Real Assets Report.

Today's Top Stories

Charting how the unicorn baby boom turned bust in 2022

(Arina P Habich/Shutterstock)

Unicorn creation has declined sharply year-over-year, with only 308 private startups crossing the billion-dollar threshold through November, compared to 596 in total in 2021.

While this is still the second-highest annual total, the latter half of this year has seen a definitive slowdown in new unicorns being minted amid uncertain economic conditions.

Investors appear to be flocking to safety by favoring IT startups as well as North American companies.

Recommended Reads

Inside the world-changing race to develop the quantum computer. [The New Yorker]

Dubai is a new hot spot for idle bankers chasing IPO deals. [Bloomberg]

Investors are growing more confident that the Fed will pull off a soft landing. [The Wall Street Journal]

Since yesterday, the PitchBook Platform added:

16

VC valuations

2211

People

547

Companies

28

Funds

See what our data software can do

Quick Takes

	The Daily Benchmark
	2018 Vintage Global PE Funds with more than $1B
	A message from PitchBook Media
	PitchBook's 2023 Media Kit released
	People
	YouTube CFO lands at Cohere
	VC Deals
	Shield AI closes $225M round
	Nerdio nets $117M
	Alpha-9 raises $75M
	Small Door Veterinary catches $40M
	Evertas pockets $14M
	Exits & IPOs
	Microsoft picks up Fungible for $190M
	Fundraising
	US Venture Partners closes $400M fund

The Daily Benchmark

2018 Vintage Global PE Funds with more than $1B

Median IRR

25.00%

Top Quartile IRR

42.21%

1.51x

Median TVPI

Select top performers

Bain Capital Asia Fund IV

Oaktree Special Situations Fund II

Audax Private Equity Fund VI

*IRR: net of fees

67 Funds in Benchmark »

Check out the latest version of PitchBook Benchmarks

A message from PitchBook Media

PitchBook's 2023 Media Kit released

Year to date, PitchBook's newsletters have over 161 million impressions and over 744,000 report downloads. Partnering with PitchBook Media is a way to feature your firm's insights in one of the most popular venues for timely and relevant PE and VC articles, news, asset class reports and custom white label reports.

The brand-new 2023 Media Kit contains all the details to help your firm position itself in front of a VC or PE audience.

Click here to download it today or to speak to someone on the media team.

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People

YouTube CFO lands at Cohere

Natural language processing software developer Cohere has hired Martin Kon as its new president and COO. Kon is leaving YouTube, where he served as CFO. In late October, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohere was in talks to raise $200 million from Alphabet's Google.

View details

View similar company »

VC Deals

Shield AI closes $225M round

Defense technology startup Shield AI has closed a $225 million Series E after raising an additional $60 million from the US Innovative Technology Fund.

View round

View 5 competitors »

Nerdio nets $117M

Virtual desktop deployment startup Nerdio has raised a $117 million Series B led by Updata Partners. The company spun off from IT company Adar in 2020.

View round

View 23 competitors »

Alpha-9 raises $75M

Cancer treatment startup Alpha-9 Theranostics has closed a $75 million Series B. Nextech Invest led the round.

View round

View similar company »

Small Door Veterinary catches $40M

Membership-based vet clinic startup Small Door Veterinary has raised a $40 million Series B, Axios reported. Investors including C&S Family Capital, FS Investors, Toba Capital and TriplePoint Capital joined the round.

View round

View 3 competitors »

Evertas pockets $14M

Evertas, a crypto insurance startup, has closed a $14 million Series A led by Polychain Capital.

View round

View 1 competitors »

Insights on over 100K clinical trials now available in PitchBook

In response to market volatility and slowing innovation in the computer hardware and software space, investors are turning to healthcare—specifically, non-cyclical industries like biotech and pharma—as the next wave of high-impact, high-return opportunities. However, biotech and pharma investing contain a different set of risk profiles compared to tech startups. Progress through clinical trial stages is the best indication of the ultimate commercial viability of a new drug or medical device—and therefore, the likelihood of achieving a solid investment return.

To help investors isolate biotech and pharma companies with the highest chance of success, we've launched a new clinical trial integration, providing insights on over 100,000 clinical trials alongside our industry-leading funding data. With this new tool, investors can reduce time spent on opportunity discovery and due diligence by viewing a company's funding status alongside its drug development pipeline.

Explore our new clinical trial integration.

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Exits & IPOs

Microsoft picks up Fungible for $190M

Processor startup Fungible has been sold to Microsoft for $190 million, Blocks & Files reported. The company creates data processing units and has previously raised over $300 million from investors including SoftBank and Norwest Venture Partners.

View details

View 44 competitors »

Fundraising

US Venture Partners closes $400M fund

US Venture Partners has raised $400 million for its 13th fund, dedicated to Series A and B investments. The firm has previously invested in startups such as GoPro and cloud services company Box.

View fund

View 378 investments »

Chart of the Day

Source: PitchBook's Q3 2022 Global Real Assets Report

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PitchBook News - Visualizing the unicorn slowdown

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