Crunchbase Reports 38 New Unicorns in September, Adding $71 Billion to Board Value

Significant Growth in Unicorn Count

In September, 38 companies were added to The Crunchbase Unicorn Board, contributing an additional $71 billion in value. This brings the total number of new unicorns for the year to 311 through September, indicating that 2026 is projected to be the second-highest year for new unicorn creation, following only 2021.

Leading Sectors and Geographic Distribution

The primary sectors driving this growth were semiconductors, financial services, and space technology. Other industries contributing to the new unicorn count included biotech, AI infrastructure, AI training, security, and frontier labs. Geographically, 21 of the new unicorns are headquartered in the U.S., with China adding six and the U.K. adding three. Other countries like Canada, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Israel, Italy, Finland, Germany, and Bulgaria each contributed one new unicorn.

Notable Valuation Increases

Several existing unicorns also saw significant valuation increases. Cognition, an AI developer for software engineering, increased its valuation to $48 billion from $26 billion in four months. Data center provider Crusoe's valuation rose to $31 billion from $10 billion a year prior. Paris-based frontier lab Mistral reached a $24.4 billion valuation, up from $13.7 billion a year ago.

New Semiconductor Unicorns Highlighted

Among the new unicorns, several semiconductor companies were noted. Fab2, an Austin-based startup, secured a $500 million Series A at a $3.7 billion valuation for its compact chip factories. Celero Communications, based in Irvine, California, raised a $275 million Series C, valuing it above $3 billion for its digital signal processing chips. Micronano Core, a Hangzhou-based AI chip developer, announced a $149 million Series C at a $1 billion valuation for its IoT inference chips. Evas Intelligence, a Beijing-based AI chip company, raised $298 million at a $2.2 billion valuation for its RISC-V based AI computing chips.