31 Top Unicorn Startups 2024

A group of rocketships with one blasting away from the group.

Unicorn startups have become the biggest trend in investing over the past few decades, and for good reason. These are companies that have reached a billion-dollar evaluation before entering the public market. Airbnb, Google, and Uber have paved the way for private market investors to believe in the power of these companies and their ability to change industries. Some unicorn startups might even be lucky enough to reach “decacorn” or “hectocorn” status and have multibillion-dollar valuations. 

Here is a list of unicorn startups to follow, including their funding, venture partners, and founders, so you can know what’s worth your investment in the future.

Best Unicorn Startups to Watch

Every year, new startups pull to the forefront of their industry through exciting innovation and industry-disrupting business models. We’ve rounded up the top unicorn startups of 2024 that startup-lovers, investors, and aspiring entrepreneurs should follow. 

Disclaimer: With so many exciting startups launching and growing worldwide, we aren’t able to cover them all. Furthermore, the startups that are listed below are not officially ranked and are listed in no particular order.

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1. Digit Insurance

  • Location: Bengaluru, India
  • Founders: Kamesh Goyal, Philip Varghese, Sriram Shankar, Vijay Kumar
  • Founded In: 2016
  • Funding: Venture – Series Unknown, $585.6 Million
  • Investors Include: Sequoia Capital India, IIFL Finance

Digit Insurance is an Indian general insurance company driven by tech. Although it might be in one of the oldest industries, Digit has managed to remain innovative by allowing its customers to custom-make their own policies. The COVID-19 pandemic provided the startup with a significant boost when it developed policies specifically covering customers for losses due to the virus.

2. Veev

  • Location: Silicon Valley (San Mateo, California)
  • Founders: Ami Avrahami, Amit Haller, Dafna Ben Porat Akiva
  • Founded In: 2008
  • Funding: Series D, $597 Million
  • Investors Include: Fifth Wall, Zeev Ventures, Bond

Veev’s model is a hybrid real estate solution that seeks to reinvent the way that homes are built. Veev sets its sights on building homes the way customers want them rather than the way the construction and real estate industry has dictated for so many years. Veev joined the unicorn list in 2022.

3. Axelar

  • Location: Waterloo, Canada
  • Founders: Georgios Vlachos, Sergey Gorbunov
  • Founded In: 2020
  • Funding: Series B, $64 Million
  • Investors Include: Node Capital, Dragonfly Capital Partners, Coinbase ventures

Axelar is a tech unicorn focused on connecting users within the blockchain, those with digital assets, and other applications. Describing itself as an interoperable network, Axelar uses a universal set of APIs and protocols to connect its users and empower developers, among others, to build scalable, cross-platform digital solutions.

4. PharmEasy

  • Location: Mumbai, India
  • Founders: Dharmil Sheth, Dhaval Shah, Mikhil Innani
  • Founded In: 2015
  • Funding: Private Equity, $1.6 Billion
  • Investors Include: Bessemer Venture Partners, VestinWolf Capital Management, Trifecta Capital Advisors

PharmEasy is a startup in the health-tech space. Its service offering includes medicine deliveries, diagnostic test sample collection, and teleconsultation. The company has built its client base up to over 20 million users since it was founded in 2015 and recently merged with its biggest rival, Medlife, to enter the unicorn lineup.

5. Scandit

  • Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
  • Founders: Christian Floerkemeier, Christof Roduner, Samuel Mueller
  • Founded In: 2009
  • Funding: Series D, $273.1 Million
  • Investors Include: Warburg Pincus, Forestay Capital, Google Ventures

Scandit is a Swiss unicorn startup in the supply chain and logistics space. The company’s innovative solution includes augmented reality (AR) and mobile computer vision to provide scanning capabilities with any application on smart camera-equipped devices. In the retail and logistics space, the product is used for applications such as mobile shopping and inventory management, whereas in the health sector, Scandit enables easy and accurate patient, specimen, and medication tracking. 

6. Infarm

  • Location: Berlin, Germany 
  • Founders: Erez Galonska, Guy Galonska, Osnat Michaeli
  • Founded In: 2013
  • Funding: Series D, $604.5 Million
  • Investors Include: Hanaco Venture Capital, Bonnier Ventures

Infarm has embraced the global trend toward green living and sustainability by developing a vertical farming product that provides urban communities with the ability to grow their own food indoors. This unicorn startup solves both space and food availability problems with its efficient food technology solution.

7. Groww

  • Location: Bengaluru, India
  • Founders: Harsh Jain, Ishan Bansal Dean, Lalit Keshre, Neeraj Singh
  • Founded In: 2016
  • Funding: Series E, $393.3 Million
  • Investors Include: Ribbit Capital, Propel Venture Partners, Tiger Global Management

Groww is India’s second wealth management platform to become a unicorn startup. Founded five years ago by ex-Flipkart employees, Harsh Jain and Lalit Keshre, amongst others, Groww has focused its marketing on customers in smaller, more rural towns, and this segment now makes up more than 60% of its customer base. 

8. Kopi Kenangan

  • Location: Kebayoran Baru, Indonesia 
  • Founders: Edward Tirtanata, James Prananto
  • Founded In: 2017
  • Funding: Series C, $333 Million
  • Investors Include: Alpha Wave Global, Horizons Ventures, Tybourne Capital Management

Kopi Kenangan is an Indonesian coffee startup that combines one of the world’s best-loved beverages with a unique digitally-enhanced customer experience. Although the coffee-based offering of the startup could easily be compared to the likes of Starbucks in product terms, it is the digital enhancement of this chain that makes it a unicorn to watch.

9. Noname Security

  • Location: Palo Alto, California
  • Founders: Oz Golan, Shay Levi
  • Founded In: 2020
  • Funding: Series C, $220 Million
  • Investors Include: Lightspeed Venture Partners, Next47, The Syndicate Group

Noname Security has leveraged the global concern regarding hacking and online security by creating a startup that allows businesses to view and secure both unmanaged and managed APIs. Since earning unicorn status, this digital security company has touted itself as being in a race against cybercriminals to secure some of the most sensitive information available on the web, including, but not limited to, banking services. 

10. Gupshup

  • Location: San Francisco, California
  • Founders: Beerud Sheth, Dr. Milind R Agarwal, Rakesh Mathur
  • Founded In: 2004
  • Funding: Private Equity, $484.1 Million
  • Investors Include: Tiger Global Management, White Oak Global Advisors

Gupshup is a conversational messaging platform aimed at business users. The company reached unicorn valuation status in its last round of funding. More than 80% of Gupshup’s business comes from the Indian market, where the business originated, followed by the US and Latin America. The startup’s innovation in the tech space has attracted an impressive list of clients, which include Zomato, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Ola, IndusInd Bank, and Flipkart.

11. Gaussian Robotics

  • Location: Shanghai, China
  • Founders: Haotian Cheng, Qifu Cen
  • Founded In: 2013
  • Funding: Series D, $344.7 Million
  • Investors Include: Grand Flight Investment, SoftBank Vision Fund

Gaussian Robotics is a Chinese unicorn startup that provides innovative autonomous positioning and navigation solutions. Gaussian’s solutions are most frequently used in the security, bank, and restaurant spaces, but it recently made the news with a robotic cleaning product that is set to disrupt that industry. 

12. Wrapbook

  • Location: New York City, New York
  • Founders: Ali Javid, Cameron Woodward, Hesham El-Nahhas, Naysawn Naji
  • Founded In: 2018
  • Funding: Series A, $130.6 Million
  • Investors Include: Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global Management, Equal Ventures

Wrapbook earned its unicorn status by creating a single application where businesses can manage several different tasks, including onboarding, payroll, project-based insurance, and timecards. The app has most frequently been used, thus far, in the production management space, but with its recent incredible valuation achievement, this is set to change in the near future. 

13. Paddle

  • Location: London, United Kingdom
  • Founders: Christian Owens, Harrison Rose
  • Founded In: 2012
  • Funding: Series D, $293.3 Million
  • Investors Include: Notion Capital, Kindred Capital, Silicon Valley Bank

Paddle takes the complexity out of payment solutions for SaaS businesses in the B2C and B2B industries. Using the software, companies can have their payments, tax, and subscription offloaded in order to focus on growth. Known as a merchant of record, Paddle is able to build and maintain relationships with payment providers, take on liability in case of fraud, handle billing-related support queries, and reduce churn by recovering failed payments.

14. Clear Street

  • Location: New York, New York
  • Founders: Chris Pento, Sachin Kumar, Uriel Cohen
  • Founded In: 2018
  • Funding: Series B, $335 Million
  • Investors Include: NextGen Venture Partners, Belvedere Capital Partners

Clear Street builds modern infrastructure capital markets. They started with the prime brokerage industry and are now expanding their offerings to capital markets across the world. Investors, institutions, active traders, market traders, and fintech apps can all use the platform to trade, invest, and manage risk. The platform is integrated with central clearing houses and exchanges, providing a better product experience. Using Clear Street, markets are able to gain access to data in a reliable and instantaneous fashion.

15. Caribou

  • Location: Washington D.C.
  • Founders: Kevin Bennett
  • Founded In: 2016
  • Funding: Series C, $189.1 Million
  • Investors Include: Motley Fool Ventures, CMFG Ventures, Harmonic Growth Partners

Caribou is changing the car insurance industry by providing users with multiple options to choose from. The company shops and compares insurance quotes within minutes from trusted carriers so that users don’t have to. There aren’t any hidden fees associated with the quotes, and the process is completed fully online. With a team of loan officers and insurance representatives, every car insurance holder can receive clear instructions and advice on switching their insurance for lower costs.

16. Unit

  • Location: New York, New York
  • Founders: Doron Somech, Itai Damti
  • Founded In: 2019
  • Funding: $169.6 Million
  • Investors Include: Accel, Moving Capital, Flourish Ventures

By integrating financial features into an API that any startup can use, Unit has positioned itself as a company that can provide the infrastructure for fintech innovation. The Unit API makes it possible to offer financial products without having to obtain a banking license, which would otherwise be necessary. This means that Unit’s customers can focus on their core product while still offering features like payments, lending, and investments to their users. The platform provides guides on using their API and developer tools and remains flexible in the types of features companies can use.

17. Babel Finance

  • Location: Hong Kong
  • Founders: Del Wang, Flex Yang
  • Founded In: 2018
  • Funding: Series B, $120 Million
  • Investors Include: Circle Ventures, Jeneration Capital, Sequoia Capital China

Babel Finance is attempting to build the best crypto financial infrastructure in the world. The prestigious institution provides full crypto financial services, including lending and borrowing, management, prime services, private banking, mining, and venture support. Using Babel Finance, investors are able to manage their risks effectively. The company is taking it upon itself to be responsible for the development of cryptocurrency in order to let people learn and understand the blockchain better.

18. Talos

  • Location: New York, New York
  • Founders: Anton Katz, Ethan Feldman
  • Founded In: 2018
  • Funding: Series B, $145 Million
  • Investors Include: Andreessen Horowitz, Notation Capital, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital

Building the infrastructure for the future of crypto, Talos provides digital asset trading technology for lenders, brokers, and investors. The company is building buy-side institutions and service providers for the entire trade lifecycle. Clients are able to use the API or web-based GUI to efficiently and confidently interact with each other.

19. Glean

  • Location: Palo Alto, California
  • Founders: Arvind Jain, Piyush Prahladka, Tony Gentilcore, TR Vishwanath
  • Founded In: 2019
  • Funding: Series C, $155 Million
  • Investors Include: Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Finding an important piece of information in a web of company tools can be difficult, but Glean is changing the way this data is found. Using the work assistant, employees are able to find the information they need when they need it. The way the product works is employees search through all of the company’s apps at once using a keyword. Then, the product uses context, language, behavior, and relationships with others to find personalized answers. The platform is built by former Google Search engineers and should help save employees time and energy in finding the right data.

20. Monte Carlo

  • Location: San Francisco, California
  • Founders: Barr Moses, Lior Gavish
  • Founded In: 2019
  • Funding: Series D, $236 Million
  • Investors Include: Accel, ICONIQ Growth, Salesforce Ventures

As more and more data is gathered in a company, inaccuracies and mistakes are more common. Monte Carlo provides a solution by ensuring teams have end-to-end data observability. The product creates data reliability across all company channels. Whether it be broken dashboards, poorly trained ML models, or just inaccuracy analytics, Monte Carlo is able to help. The product offers alerts for missing or inaccurate data, meaning analysts are informed exactly when the mistake occurs.

21. Hugging Face

  • Location: New York, New York
  • Founders: Clement Delangue, Julien Chaumond, Thomas Wolf
  • Founded In: 2016
  • Funding: Series C, $160.2 Million
  • Investors Include: Thirty Five Ventures, Sequoia Capital

Playing off the popular emoji, Hugging Face builds, trains, and deploys state-of-the-art models that are powered by reference open source in machine learning (ML). More of a community than an actual product, Hugging Face allows developers to create, discover, and collaborate on ML in a more efficient manner. The open source platform gathers thousands of creators to solve some of the biggest issues facing audio, vision, and language — all with AI. Any developers interested in using the community will need to learn the Transformers natural language processing library. There is also support from other libraries like the Flair, Asteroid, ESPnet, and Pyannote.

22. CertiK

  • Location: New York, New York
  • Founders: Ronghui Gu, Zhong Shao
  • Founded In: 2018
  • Funding: Series B, $300.2 Million
  • Investors Include: Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital, Wing Venture Capital

CertiK is a blockchain security company. The startup reached unicorn status in 2021 after obtaining another round of capital from venture partners, including Tiger Global Management and GL Ventures. CertiK’s platform was founded by professors from Yale and Columbia, leveraging AI to improve and protect blockchain protocols.

23. Aledade

  • Location: Bethesda, Maryland
  • Founders: Edwin Miller, Farzad Mostashari, Mat Kendall
  • Founded In: 2014
  • Funding: Series F, $677.9 Million
  • Investors Include: Tiger Global Management, Arch Venture Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Transforming primary care as we know it, Aledade provides primary care physicians with tools and resources to grow and improve their practices. On a mission to generate more Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), Aledade’s services help to benefit both patients and practitioners by improving services rendered and giving patients autonomy.

24. Lime

  • Location: San Francisco, California
  • Founders: Adam Zhang, Brad Bao, Caen Contee, Charlie Gao, Toby Sun
  • Founded In: 2017
  • Funding: Debt Financing, $1.5 Billion
  • Investors Include: Bain Capital Ventures, Uber, True Capital Management

Lime is a mobility startup solving pain points for first- and last-mile transportation while prioritizing sustainability. The unicorn startup develops electric scooters and bikes to help consumers commute in urban areas easily and inexpensively while preventing unnecessary fossil fuel usage for short trips.

25. DocuSign

  • Location: San Francisco, California
  • Founders: Tom Gonser
  • Founded In: 2003
  • Funding: Secondary Market, $536.2 Million
  • Investors Include: Scale Venture Partners, Bain Capital Ventures, Manhattan Venture Partners

No longer a private company, DocuSign is a Goliath in the e-signature and business software sectors. The service allows businesses of all sizes to collect signatures for important documents, manage documents and contracts, and compile data obtained from these processes. DocuSign achieved unicorn status in 2014 and went public in 2018; however, the company continues to evolve, innovate, and scale.

26. Dialpad

  • Location: San Francisco, California
  • Founders: Alex Cornell, Brian Peterson, Craig Walker, John Rector
  • Founded In: 2011
  • Funding: Venture Capital, $450 Million
  • Investors Include: Scale Venture Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Flight Ventures

Dialpad empowers sales teams with their AI-powered app build to create a better customer experience and increase revenue. The platform includes a litany of features for teams to successfully connect with customers, collaborate with teammates, and even conduct meetings with built-in transcriptions.

27. Faire

  • Location: San Francisco, California
  • Founders: Daniele Perito, Jeffrey Kolovson, Marcelo Cortes, Max Rhodes
  • Founded In: 2017
  • Funding: Corporate Round, $1.7 Billion
  • Investors Include: Founders Fund, Norwest Venture Partners, Forerunner Ventures

Faire helps retailers source unique wholesale merchandise for their businesses, connecting brands with local businesses through their two-sided marketplace. The platform makes it easy for retailers and makers to connect, increasing sales on both sides of the aisle, and includes valuable curation, interest-free payment terms, and free returns.

28. FalconX

  • Location: San Mateo, California
  • Founders: Prabhakar Reddy, Raghu Yarlagadda
  • Founded In: 2018
  • Funding: Late Stage Venture Capital, $477 Million
  • Investors Include: Flybridge Capital Partners, Tiger Global Management, Sapphire Ventures

FalconX combines financial services with the burgeoning cryptocurrency industry. A private company valued at $8 billion, the unicorn company is a leading digital asset brokerage for the world’s leading financial institutions.

29. Papaya Global

  • Location: New York, New York
  • Founders: Eynat Guez, Ofer Herman, Ruben Drong
  • Founded In: 2016
  • Funding: Series D, $444.5 Million
  • Investors Include: Scale Venture Partners, Bessemer Venture Partners, New Era Capital Partners

Papaya Global is a financial services company providing payroll and payments support for businesses with global workforces. With the ability to fund in 12 different currencies and over 160 countries, companies are able to easily conduct workforce payments to support their staff from anywhere in the world.

30. Apollo

  • Location: San Francisco, California
  • Founders: Ray Li, Roy Chung, Tim Zheng
  • Founded In: 2015
  • Funding: Series D, $251.3 Million
  • Investors Include: Y Combinator, Bain Capital Ventures, Sequoia Capital

Powered by artificial intelligence, Apollo helps businesses such as Stripe and DocuSign find, contact, and convert customers using highly targeted methods. On the platform, users can leverage Apollo’s lead database with over 270 million contacts to improve marketing efforts and see results quickly.

31. Signifyd

  • Location: San Jose, California
  • Founders: Mike Liberty
  • Founded In: 2011
  • Funding: Series E, $409 Million
  • Investors Include: Menlo Ventures, Bain Capital Ventures, Owl Rock Capital

Signifyd is a cybersecurity startup providing ecommerce businesses with enterprise-grade fraud technology services. Used by major companies such as Walmart, Samsung, and Lacoste, Signifyd is a leader in cybersecurity for online merchants and retailers seeking valuable fraud protection to keep their businesses and customers secure. 

Final Thoughts

Unicorn companies are wildly successful startups, reaching a billion-dollar valuation before going public to reach unicorn status. For many of these startups, taking on venture partners helps them achieve the rapid scale required to be granted the title of unicorn startup.

These unicorn companies come in many shapes, from financial services startups to companies taking on the mobility sector. The common thread between each of these unicorn companies is rapid scale, an idea that solves a widespread pain point, and the venture capital to help the idea reach new heights.

FAQs

What is a unicorn startup?

Unicorn startups are startup companies that have achieved a billion-dollar valuation. Such companies are rare and highly sought after, as they often indicate a high degree of success and promise for the future. Many unicorns are in the technology sector, though there are also a number in other industries, including retail, food and beverage, and transportation.

Another trademark of unicorn companies is taking on venture partners. Venture capital goes hand-in-hand with these wildly successful startups as they provide the necessary capital to scale the business venture.

How many unicorn startups are there?

There are around 900 unicorn startups in the entire world in 2022. These startups span a variety of industries and are valued at more than $3.5 trillion combined.

What are popular unicorn companies?

Some of the most popular unicorn companies in 2022 include Airbnb, Uber, Palantir, and Pinterest. These companies have all achieved billion-dollar valuations and are considered to be some of the most successful startups in recent years.