50 Future Unicorns

CB Insights put together a list of 50 future unicorns (companies that we think will eventually be valued at $1B or more), which Fast Company wrote about here. Clients can view our Expert Collection of 2020’s future unicorns here.

To identify companies, we used our Mosaic algorithm, a metric that combines a company’s financial health, the amount of traction it has, and the strength of its market. We discussed how our Mosaic algorithm works to predict startup health and success in our whitepaper here.

We used the same method for our 2015 list and our 2019 list, of which 52% and 34% of our picks have become unicorns (since publication), respectively.

Below the graphic, find key industry, stage, and geography insights from this year’s picks.

Please click to enlarge.

Key takeaways

• Enterprise/big data tools dominate: 30% of companies on this year’s list work on enterprise or big data tools. DevOps and developer tools comprise almost half of this category, with companies covering enterprise search (Algolia), distributed databases (Cockroach Labs), continuous delivery (Harness), chat features (Sendbird), and customer data protection (BigID).
• 20% of future unicorns operate in the fintech space: International markets are broadly propelling the fintech space, with 6 of the 10 featured fintech future unicorns located outside the US. Argentina (Ualá) and India (CRED) represent emerging markets where fintech is gaining momentum. The next most-featured categories after enterprise/big data tools and fintech are healthcare and hardware, with 8% representation each.

• Several international geographies represented: Of the 50 future unicorns on the list, Germany and the UK are each home to 3, while India and Australia each claim 2. Also represented are Argentina, China, France, Singapore, and Sweden, each with 1 future unicorn. The US accounts for 35 picks, or 70%. 

• The median company on our list has $125M in total funding and last raised a Series C round. This is a higher median funding amount than seen on our 2019 list, where the median was $111M. This reflects the reality of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, where there is a premium on having financial runway. 
• North America hosts the most future unicorns: More than two-thirds of the companies on our list are from North America (70%), with all of them based in the US. Other geographies with a substantial presence are Europe (16%) and Asia (8%).
• The most represented US states are California (24) and New York (9). Other states represented include Illinois and Utah — each home to 1 future unicorn on the list.