Can you imagine something as rewarding and fulfilling, as the success story of bringing an innovation that shapes the course of history?
The joy of being part of a system that works, the handshake after a successful fundraising round - standing on an extremely high platform where there is only a 0.00006% chance of a company making it to the billion-dollar list. (First Round Review)
Just like the mythological animal characterized by strength, speed, and rarity, unicornhood is something every fintech startup aspires to, but it always seems elusive.
According to CB Insights, there are over 1,200 unicorns around the world as of May 2024, with fintech accounting for 355 (29.28%).
In this article, we’ll examine the top ten fintech companies that emerged as unicorns in 2024 and what made them different from the crowd.
This article combines open-access resources and proprietary data to present accurate, up-to-date statistics and relevant developments in the startup economy.
Our methodology involves:
While we strive for accuracy, trends in the startup space are shifting rapidly.
These statistics reflect current patterns and should not be considered permanent facts.
The fintech industry is gaining ground in the global unicorn list.
Based on the Global Startup Ecosystem Index, the Software & Data industry has the 39.37% of all unicorns, followed by Fintech that has 20.58% and Ecommerce & Retail with 12.13%. (Startup Blink)
Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur, launched xAI in July 2023 as an alternative to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
xAI stands for Explainable Artificial Intelligence, and it's a collection of methods and techniques that help people understand the reasoning behind machine learning algorithms.
In March 2024, the one-year-plus startup said it would open-source its ChatGPT challenger "Grok", giving the public free access to experiment with the code behind the technology, aligning xAI with firms such as Meta. (U.S. News & World Report)
By May, xAI raised $6 billion in series B funding, to reach a post-money valuation of $24 billion, backed by investors that included Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, and Fidelity. (Reuters)
According to a report by the Wall Street Journal in October, xAI CEO is currently in talks with investors for a funding round that would value it around $40 billion.
Quantinuum is a quantum computing cloud service startup founded in 2021 through a merger of Honeywell’s quantum unit and Cambridge Quantum Computing, with headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Broomfield, Colorado.
In January 2024, the company raised $300 million in its first equity round led by JP Morgan Chase to attain a valuation of $5.3 billion. (Pitchbook)
According to the company’s CEO, Rajeeb (Raj) Hazra, the funds will be used to accelerate the path towards achieving the world’s first universal fault-tolerant quantum computers, while also extending Quantinuum’s software offering to enhance commercial applicability. (Quantinuum)
Quantum computers have the potential to perform calculations much faster than classical computers which could facilitate tremendous breakthroughs in anything that requires complex calculations in fields including biotech, chemistry, and logistics.
For now, the most significant investors in quantum computers are governments, sovereign wealth funds, and corporations rather than VCs, according to Nielsen. (Pitch Book)
Monad, the New York City-based startup was founded in 2022 by Keone Hon alongside two other colleagues: James Hunsaker and Eunice Giarta.
In an exclusive interview, Monad founder Keone Hon said Monad's innovation comes from rebuilding Ethereum's blockchain from the ground up—maintaining the ability to execute smart contracts while completing faster speeds, higher volumes, and lower costs. (Fortune)
The EVM is the universal standard of web3, with over 96% of all capital in decentralized finance (DeFi) being managed through the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). (Wellfound)
In spite of this, EVM-compatible blockchains have extremely low throughput; with Ethereum supporting roughly 13 -15 transactions per second (TPS). (Coin Tracker)
While other new blockchains have a similar value proposition, Monad is compatible with the program powering Ethereum, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), meaning developers can port over applications built for Ethereum.
The Layer 1 blockchain company raised $225 million in April, in a Series A funding round led by Paradigm bringing its valuation to $3 billion. (The Block)
The fundraising attracted other VC investors like Electric Capital, Coinbase Ventures, Castle Island Ventures, GSR Ventures, and Greenoaks as well as a host of angel investors. (Monad)
Groq is a semi-conductor startup founded in 2016 by a former Alphabet engineer Jonathan Ross, that uses tensor streaming processor computing architecture to accelerate workloads in AI, ML, and HPC through their product portfolio GroqCard.
This AI chip startup based in Mountain View, California raised $640 million in a Series D funding round led by Blackrock in August, to attain $2.8 billion post-money valuation. (Groq)
The company plans to use the funding to scale the capacity of its tokens-as-a-service (TaaS) offering and add new models to the GroqCloud, deploy 108,000 Language Processing Units, and open new tabs by the end of the first quarter of 2025. (Reuters)
Xaira Therapeutics, an AI drug discovery startup, founded in 2023, is using a combination of machine learning and data generation to speed up the drug discovery and development process.
The San Francisco-based biotech firm is led by founding CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who previously served as president of Stanford University is the latest startup — except Altos Lab’s $3 billion in 2021 — to try to use AI models to find new drugs.
The company was co-founded by David Baker, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington School of Medicine.
The researchers who developed models for protein and antibody design called RF-diffusion and RF-antibody in Baker’s lab are part of the team.
The biotech will use these models to uncover protein and antibody designs and methods for discovering biological targets to treat diseases and develop new ways to connect biological targets and engineered molecules to human diseases.
The company raised $1 billion in a Series A funding round in April, giving it a valuation of $2.7 billion from lead investors Arch Venture Partners and Foresite Capital — both of which jointly incubated the company — as well as several other big-name investors like Sequoia Capital. (The Pharma Letter)\
Story Protocol is a Layer 1 blockchain that allows Intellectual Property (IP) owners to store them on the platform, embedding terms (such as licensing fees) into smart contracts to ensure owners are compensated when their IP is used.
This Washington-based blockchain startup, founded in 2022, raised $80 million this August in a Series B funding round led by a16z to reach a $2.25 billion valuation. (Crunchbase News) Caption: In August 2024, Story Protocol raised $80M in Series B, reaching a $2.25B valuation.
The fundraising also attracted participation from venture capitalists like Hashed, Foresight Ventures, Samsung Next, Mirana Ventures, and SparkLabs Global alongside notable angel investors like Stability AI’s VP & Board Member Scott Trowbridge, K11 Founder Adrian Cheng, and digital art collector Cozomo de’ Medici. (Cointelegraph)
Story Protocol markets itself as “the world’s IP blockchain” seeking to tokenize the $7.48 billion intellectual property asset class. (Globe Newswire)
Cognition was founded in November 2023 but went viral upon unveiling its AI-powered software development platform in March.
The San Francisco-based AI startup behind the viral software development platform Devin, raised $175 million in Series B funding in April, with its valuation soaring to $2 billion just six months after it launched. (AI Business)
Founders Fund, the Peter Thiel-founded venture capital firm, was the sole investor in the round.
Cognition AI's claim to fame is Devin, an AI-powered coding assistant that the company touts as the "first AI software engineer."
Devin's capabilities include handling entire development projects independently, from learning new technologies to building and deploying apps, and even fixing bugs.
It can also train AI models and contribute to mature production repositories.
On the SWE-Bench benchmark, which evaluates AI models on software engineering tasks, Devin achieved a notable 13.86% accuracy in resolving issues without assistance, outperforming the previous best model. (Kaggle)
Lambda offers cloud computing services and hardware for training artificial intelligence software.
The startup is a provider of Nvidia’s latest GPUs, which are highly sought after by AI developers.
In February 2024, the less than 10-year-old startup raised $320 million in a Series C funding round - making it the highest funded AI startup in Q1, 2024.
This brings Lambda to a post money valuation of $1.5 billion. (CrunchBase News)
The round was led by Thomas Tull’s US Innovative Technology Fund with participation from new investors B Capital, SK Telecom, and existing investors Crescent Cove, Mercato Partners, 1517 Fund, Bloomberg Beta, and Gradient Ventures, among others.
The San Jose, California-based startup’s customer list includes Microsoft and Amazon with an employee list of 455 staff. (LATKA SaaS Database)
Blink Health is a digital and prescription medicine platform designed to offer medications online at economical prices.
The company's platform allows users to purchase prescription drugs online and pick them up at their local pharmacy or have them delivered to their doorstep, enabling customers to save money and time while buying medicines.
With approximately 500 employees, the 8-year-old startup raised $90 million in a Series B funding round in February to reach a $1.2 billion valuation at $42.50 share price. (TechCrunch)
The company, which has now received a mixture of private equity and venture capital funding, has raised more than $250 million in funding to date.
8VC led this round of fundraising and the previous year's Series A round of $75 million, according to MedCity News.
Bugcrowd is a cybersecurity firm that seeks to make the digital world safer, with headquarters in San Francisco, California, with other offices in Sydney and London.
Its services include bug bounty programs, penetration testing services, attack surface management, and vulnerability disclosure.
The startup taps into a database of 500, 000 hackers to help organizations like OpenAI and the U.S. government set up and run bug bounty programs, cash rewards to freelancers who can identify bugs and vulnerabilities in their code. (TechCrunch)
On February 12, 2024 – Bugcrowd secured $102 million in strategic Series E funding to scale its AI-powered crowdsourced security platform offerings globally. (Bugcrowd)
Led by General Catalyst, with participation from longtime existing investors Rally Ventures and Costanoa Ventures, this funding round brings the company to a $1 billion valuation. (Bugcrowd)
Looking through the success stories of fintech startups that were minted as unicorns in 2024, a few things come to mind:
