Home topics news News News AI now makes up over 20% of global unicorns Yajush Gupta March 28, 2024 Last year, less than 100 companies joined the global unicorn club, the lowest number since 2017 and a steep drop compared to 2022 and 2023, which saw hundreds of private startups valued at $1 billion or more. Still, in a year that showed becoming a unicorn is much harder than before, AI companies turned out to be the absolute winners. According to data presented by AltIndex.com , one in five new billion-dollar startups in 2023 were artificial intelligence companies. 20 AI cos joined the club A decade after the term “unicorn” was made to mark private startups valued at $1 billion or more, the number of these companies hit more than 1,500 globally, with a collective value of more than a whopping $5 trillion. But joining the global unicorn club has become much harder than before despite huge investor interest in some markets. However, that didn`t seem to affect the artificial intelligence sector, which delivered more unicorns than any other market. According to Crunchbase data, only 95 companies joined the global unicorn list last year, one-third of the figure seen in 2022 and six times less than the number of new unicorns in 2021, still the record year by the number of new $1 billion worth startups. Of the 95 companies that hit a valuation of $1 billion or more, one-fifth, or 20, were from the AI sector, mainly from the