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Overall, 90 New Unicorns Have Been Minted This Year  Here They Are

90 new unicorns have been minted this year

VC hasn’t felt this frantic since the pandemic days. Overall, 90 new unicorns have been minted this year, and if you’ve been half-paying attention to the funding news, that number probably doesn’t even surprise you at this point  there’s a new billion-dollar valuation every few days, it feels like. Pulling together Crunchbase and PitchBook data, here’s who’s actually made the list in 2026, and a few thoughts on why things have gotten so out of hand. Also Read How to speed up a slow Android phone in 2026

Let’s Just Look at the Number First

Overall, 90 new unicorns have been minted this year, and that’s counting from January through the end of June. For comparison, this time last year the count was around 40. So we’re talking more than double. And that’s happening in an environment where public markets are still jumpy and rates haven’t really come down   the exact conditions that usually make VCs more cautious, not less.

Most of the names are AI companies, which, fine, everyone saw that coming. But there’s more variety than you’d think. Healthcare startups, a few crypto plays, even some defense and space companies snuck onto the list. So while AI is obviously the main driver, overall 90 new unicorns have been minted this year across a genuinely mixed bag of industries, not just chatbots and coding tools.

Prometheus Is the One Everyone’s Talking About

If you want a single company that explains the scale of money moving right now, it’s Prometheus. Jeff Bezos co-founded it last year, and it’s building AI tools aimed at automating general engineering work. The company just closed a $12 billion Series B   led by JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock, which is not a combination you see every day — and now sits at an $18.2 billion total raise and a $41 billion valuation. Nothing else on this year’s list comes close.

Honestly, Prometheus alone is why people keep bringing up the fact that overall 90 new unicorns have been minted this year. A round that size changes the conversation.

A Handful of Others Worth Knowing

There are a lot of names on this list, but here’s a sampling:

  • Genspark — $2.6 billion. Makes an AI workspace app, founded in 2023. Last round was $485 million, Series B, led by LG Technology Ventures, SBI Investment, and Emergence Capital Partners. AWS is in there too as a backer.
  • Farther — $1.25 billion. Wealth management platform, been around since 2019. Closed a $150 million Series D led by General Atlantic.
  • Core Automation — $1 billion. Brand-new company, started this year. Helps enterprises automate clunky workflows. Raised $100 million seed from Threshold Ventures and Scribble Ventures.
  • Omni Analytics — $1.51 billion. Business intelligence platform, founded 2022. $120 million Series C, ICONIQ Growth leading, with Databricks and GV also chipping in.
  • Render — $1.5 billion. Cloud hosting built with AI and agentic apps in mind. Founded 2018 — and this is actually the same Render that won TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield way back in 2019. Raised $100 million in a Series C1.
  • ZaiNar — $1 billion. Wireless location tracking for physical stuff like vehicles and drones. Founded 2017, last raise was $100 million Series A.
  • Code Metal — $1.3 billion. AI coding assistant, backed by Salesforce and J2 Ventures, off a $125 million Series B.

And that’s really just scratching the surface. Overall, 90 new unicorns have been minted this year, touching AI infrastructure, fintech, health tech, crypto  basically everywhere money can go right now. Also Read Overall, 90 New Unicorns Have Been Minted This Year  Here They Are

So Why Is This Happening So Fast?

90 new unicorns have been minted this year

A few things are probably feeding into each other here. AI keeps finding new places to be useful, so companies in every industry are racing to bolt it onto whatever they’re doing. And the ones that can actually show real revenue, not just a demo and a dream, are getting rewarded with valuations that used to take years to earn. Some of these companies are hitting unicorn status in under 18 months now, which would’ve sounded absurd a few years back.

There’s also just plain FOMO in the mix. When a lot of capital is chasing a relatively small pool of standout companies, prices climb fast and deals close even faster. That’s a big part of why overall 90 new unicorns have been minted this year at a pace people keep comparing to 2021. The people writing the checks will tell you this time is different because there’s more real revenue behind it. Maybe. We’ll find out in a year or two, like we always do.

Not Just an American Thing

Worth noting this isn’t purely a Silicon Valley story. The UK just posted its best funding half since 2022   $17 billion raised in H1 2026, and AI ate up 74% of every dollar. That tracks with the global number: overall 90 new unicorns have been minted this year worldwide, even if the biggest checks are still mostly being written in the U.S. Also Read How Modular Data Centers Solve AI’s Infrastructure Problem

What’s Next

The tracker’s going to keep updating as the year goes on, and there’s no real sign this is slowing down. Whether it’s sustainable growth or the early stages of another bubble is the question everyone’s dancing around right now, and nobody has a clean answer.

But as it stands, overall 90 new unicorns have been minted this year  and if the first half is any guide, that number’s not done growing before the year wraps up.