Startup Trends: 5 of the latest newly minted Unicorns in Q2 2024
In the second quarter of 2024, at least five private companies—Huntress, BillionToOne, xAl, Altruist, and Farcaster—achieved “unicorn status” by surpassing a billion dollars in value. According to CB Insights, as of May 2024, there are more than 1,200 unicorn companies worldwide.
Huntress, a Cybersecurity Firm
Huntress, a cybersecurity provider for small businesses, announced in June that it raised $150 million in a Series D funding round, for a valuation of $1.55 billion. According to the Columbia, Maryland-based company, the funding round was led by Kleiner Perkins, Meritech Capital, and Sapphire Ventures.
Huntress, founded in 2015, describes its mission as “to protect the most vulnerable companies, which make up 99% of all businesses,” from cyberattacks.
Huntress’s Forge Price™ is $10.44 as of August 14, 2014, implying a valuation of $1.63 billion.
BillionToOne, a Molecular Diagnostics Company
BillionToOne announced in June that an oversubscribed Series D funding raised $130 million, which the company said gave it a valuation of more than $1 billion. Premji Invest led the financing, with participation from Neuberger Berman, Adam Street Partners, Baillie Gifford, Hummingbird Ventures, Civilization Ventures, Libertus Capital, and Fifty Years.
The funds will help Menlo Park, California-based BillionToOne, expand and scale its prenatal and oncology business. BillionToOne’s UNITY Fetal Risk™ Screen helps test unborn children for inherited conditions, including sickle cell disease, spinal muscular atrophy, and cystic fibrosis, without requiring a blood sample from the male partner or amniocentesis. The company was founded in 2016 and has since tested over 500,000 patients.
BillionToOne’s Forge Price™ is $28.02 as of August 14, 2024, implying a valuation of $1.25 billion.
xAl, an Artificial Intelligence Company
xAI, an artificial intelligence company, announced in May a Series B funding round of $6 billion, with investors including Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, and Kingdom Holding.
Elon Musk founded San Francisco-based xAI in 2023. The company develops advanced AI systems “to accelerate human scientific discovery.” xAI’s Grok is an AI chatbot designed to answer questions based on real-time knowledge of the world via the X social media platform.
xAI’s Forge Price™ as of August 14, 2024, is $11.97, which implies a valuation of $24.0 billion, the same as its last funding round.
Farcaster, a Decentralized Social Network
Farcaster announced that it raised $150 million in Series A financing from lead investor Paradigm in May, along with a16z crypto, Haun, USV, Variant, Standard Crypto, and others. Farcaster co-founder Dan Romero said the Los Angeles-based company is currently focused on growing daily active users and adding developer primitives to the protocol, such as channels and direct messaging.
Farcaster is a decentralized protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain platform. According to Fortune, developers can build new social media applications using Farcaster’s smart contracts.
Farcaster’s Forge Price™ is $54.70 as of August 8, 2024, which implies a valuation of $1 billion.
Altruist, a Fintech Firm
Fintech Altruist announced in April that it raised $169 million in Series E funding. According to Reuters, the latest funding round gives the Culver City, California-based firm a valuation of more than $1.5 billion.
Altruist was founded in 2018 and provides custodial solutions for independent financial advisors, including software support for activities including opening client accounts, stock trading, and billing.
Altruist’s Forge Price™ is $9.25 as of August 14, 2024, which implies a valuation of $1.53 billion, the same price as its last funding round.
About the Author
Jeannine DeFoe is a former Bloomberg News reporter and an experienced financial writer who focuses on a variety of topics such investing, wealth management and fintech. Read more from Jeannine.