What you need to know:

• While the micromobility market has been tumultuous, continued demand from consumers is incentivizing players working to figure out a profitable solution. 
• The maintenance and charging of electric batteries have been a common pain point for various business models, but new solutions are emerging. 
• B2B players are entering the market to serve last-mile logistics and sustainability goals.
  

  ---

Micromobility is not an easy business — just look at the plight of electric scooter pioneer Bird, a former VC darling. Demand is not the issue, making money is.

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post Micromobility is poised for a comeback — thank last-mile logistics and EV automakers appeared first on CB Insights Research.

The question is certainly top of mind for corporations getting to grips with emerging technology like generative AI — the answer could help identify future competitors, partners, new markets, or acquisition targets.  

Using CB Insights’ proprietary data and metrics — including Exit Probability, Commercial Maturity, Mosaic, headcount, patents, and funding — we identified the 52 emerging players our data says are most likely to have an outsized influence in the next 5–10 years and have a strong exit. 

Download the report to see:

• The full list of Future Tech Hotshots
• Key themes and industry analysis
• Methodology

MORE TOP COMPANY LISTS FROM CB INSIGHTS:

• Insurtech 50: The most promising insurtech startups of 2024
• AI 100: The most promising artificial intelligence startups of 2024
• The Digital Health 50: The most promising digital health companies of 2023
• Fintech 100: The most promising fintech startups of 2023

The post Future Tech Hotshots: 52 emerging tech startups that will have big, successful exits appeared first on CB Insights Research.

What you need to know:

• • Execs and investors are showing renewed interest in virtual fit tech, which saw a surge in interest a few years ago but hasn’t been adopted widely yet.
  • Other AI-powered styling tools, from automated stylist chatbots to generative AI outfit suggestions, have the potential to further deepen personalization and drive conversion with shoppers.

Virtual try-on tech was once touted as a silver bullet for fashion and beauty shopping.

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post AI is revitalizing the “virtual try-on” space — this is what’s coming next, including interactive Google ads appeared first on CB Insights Research.

After nearly a decade of big tech companies venturing into launching their own financial products, the major players have now pulled back. Most have shifted to roles as tech providers, broadly supporting advances in financial infrastructure.

Amazon and Google stand out in this area:

• Amazon is embedding itself in more financial transactions via partnerships, investments, and acquisitions. It’s using these relationships to reach customers across more geographies and a wider range of services. 
• Google has shifted away from providing financial services and instead is connecting its existing platforms to others’ financial offerings. The company is also investing and partnering to enable digital-first financial tools.

We mined CB Insights data on Amazon’s and Google’s investments, acquisitions, and partnerships, as well as patents and earnings transcripts, from January 2021 to July 2024 to explore how the companies are reengineering their fintech strategies.

Download the full report to see where they are making moves.

This report uses CB Insights datasets like investments, acquisitions, business relationships, earnings call insights, patents, and more. Learn more about our data here.

The post Big Tech in Fintech: How Amazon and Google are battling to own transactions appeared first on CB Insights Research.

The logistics giant is ceding its USPS contract — worth ~$2B per year — to its competitor UPS in September 2024. But despite the upcoming loss in revenue, FedEx’s recent earnings have exceeded expectations and it has actually seen its share price reach an all-time high since USPS announced it wouldn’t renew. 

As FedEx cut costs and reconfigures its shipping network to focus less on expensive-to-maintain air cargo (which USPS relied upon heavily), it now has more wiggle room to ramp up its investments in areas that promise a long-term pay-off.

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post FedEx lost a deal worth $2B in ARR to archrival UPS — here are 3 strategic moves it’s doubling down on in response appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Massive rounds to AI companies were a key driver of the funding growth, with 3 of the 5 largest CVC-backed deals this quarter going to AI infrastructure players Scale ($1B), Mistral AI ($502M), and Cohere ($450M).

Based on our 124-page report, here is the TL;DR on the state of CVC:

• ​​Global CVC-backed funding climbs to $15.6B in Q2’24. Over half ($8.4B) of this funding came from $100M+ mega-rounds. Meanwhile, global deal volume declined by 12% QoQ to 782. This drop was particularly pronounced in Asia, which saw a 24% drop in deals QoQ.
• This year, the average CVC-backed deal size is $26.6M, up 27% from $20.9M in full-year 2023. The increase is due in part to billion-dollar deals to startups like Scale ($1B Series F, backed by the CVC arms of Intel, AMD, Cisco, and ServiceNow) and Wiz ($1B Series E, backed by Salesforce Ventures).
• CVC-backed funding to digital health startups falls 57% QoQ to 0.6B, its lowest point since Q4’17. Retail tech and fintech saw similar decreases, with funding down 52% and 8% QoQ, respectively. Companies not explicitly focused on AI face challenges raising funds in the weakened venture market.

• Quarterly CVC-backed funding in China slips to $0.2B, a 60% QoQ decrease. Deal volume also fell 24% QoQ to 59, its lowest level since 2015. China’s tech market has faced significant challenges, including rising macroeconomic concerns, escalating geopolitical tensions, and a strict regulatory environment.

The post State of CVC Q2’24 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Meanwhile, overall AI deal volume broke its extended freefall in Q2’24, rising by 16% QoQ to reach 948. This bucked the trend in venture deals more broadly (-7% QoQ).

Based on our deep dive in the full report, here is the TL;DR on the state of AI:

• Global AI funding increases 59% QoQ to $23.2B in Q2’24 — the highest quarterly level on record, exceeding even the level seen during 2021’s venture boom. The jump was driven by a handful of $1B+ rounds and outpaced the growth in broader venture funding (+8%). Meanwhile, AI deal count climbed by 16% QoQ to reach 948, bucking the trend in venture deals more broadly (-7% QoQ).

• Average AI deal size is $28.9M in 2024 so far — up 55% vs. $18.6M in full-year 2023. A relatively small number of players have had an outsized impact on this upward trend, raising massive $1B+ deals in Q2’24: 
  • xAI — $6B Series B at a $24B valuation
  • G42 — $1.5B investment from Microsoft 
  • CoreWeave — $1.1B Series C at a $19B valuation
  • Wayve — $1.05B Series C from Softbank, Microsoft, and Nvidia
  • Scale — $1B Series F at a $13.8B valuation

Meanwhile, the median AI deal size is up 25% in 2024 so far.

• AI unicorn births remain steady at 6 QoQ in Q2’24. Generative AI was a key theme for new unicorns (private companies reaching $1B+ valuations). Some of these companies, like xAI, are focused on generative AI infrastructure. Others are primarily working on generative AI applications, like Perplexity (search) and Cognition (coding).

Among new AI unicorns in Q2’24, xAI landed the most sizable valuation. The company was valued at $24B after raising $6B in Series B funding, which it plans to use to bring its first products to market.

• AI companies raise 32 mega-rounds (deals worth $100M+) in Q2’24, marking a 28% increase QoQ. Meanwhile, funding from AI mega-round deals climbed 74% QoQ in Q2’24. This was largely driven by US mega-round deals, which collectively amounted to $10.8B — 67% of AI mega-round funding in Q2.
• Among major global regions, the US continues to lead in AI funding and deals. AI startups based in the US drew $15.2B across 476 deals in Q2’24. This equates to 66% of the global AI funding total and 50% of the global deal total in Q2.

The post State of AI Q2’24 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

The impact on the pharma industry has been substantial, with Ozempic’s producer, Novo Nordisk, seeing a 36% rise in sales in 2023 driven by the accelerated adoption of its GLP-1 products. D2C pharmacies like Hims are also entering the space, offering their own GLP-1 drugs at a fraction of the cost to patients. 

The rapid growth in prescriptions for these appetite-curbing drugs has drawn wide-spread attention from corporates across industries.  

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post Counterfeits of drugs like Ozempic cost pharma companies billions of dollars annually. We look at the tech solutions that can help tackle the problem appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Based on our deep dive below, here is the TL;DR on the state of venture:

1. Venture funding climbs for a second straight quarter, reaching $65.7B, up 8% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ). However, while funding gained momentum, deals slid for the ninth quarter in a row to 6,230. Global deal volume is now less than half of what it was at its peak in Q1’22.
2. At $14.4M, the average deal size is up 17% this year so far vs. 2023. Even in a more cautious investing environment, the deals that do happen have ballooned in size as investors put more behind select startups. 
3. AI startups are dominating global funding, capturing 35% in Q2’24. This is the highest quarterly share on record. AI startups drew $23.2B in Q2’24 — up 59% QoQ — driven by mammoth $1B+ deals to Elon Musk’s xAI as well as Scale, CoreWeave, and others. 
4. The US is attracting a greater portion of exit activity, with exit share rising 4 percentage points QoQ to 39%. This represents its highest share in 2 years. Top US-based exits in Q2’24 included IPOs from Tempus and Rubrik — both valued at over $5B — as well as Hyundai’s acquisition of Motional priced at $4.1B.
5. SOSV is the most active venture investor, backing 35 companies in Q2’24. It’s followed by Andreessen Horowitz (33 companies), General Catalyst (31 companies), and Lightspeed Venture Partners (28).
6. Fintech funding rebounds 19% QoQ to hit $8.9B — a 5-quarter high — led by $600M+ rounds to Stripe and AlphaSense. But it was a different story for the retail tech and digital health sectors: retail tech funding was stagnant from Q1 to Q2, while digital health funding slipped by 26%.
7. Quarterly funding to startups in Asia falls below $10B for the first time since 2014. The drop was especially severe in China, where some international investors have pulled back or retreated altogether amid rising geopolitical tensions. Meanwhile, the US and Europe — the two largest regions for venture investment — each saw funding grow by double-digit percentages in Q2’24.

Venture funding ticked up for a second consecutive quarter, reaching $65.7B in Q2’24. Nearly half of this funding (47%) came from mega-rounds (deals worth $100M+). xAI’s $6B round alone represented nearly one-tenth of the global total and helped prevent funding from declining QoQ.

Despite the strong showing, deal volume slipped for a ninth straight quarter — sinking 7% to 6,230 — as investors remain cautious in the less exuberant market. The US, Europe, and Asia all saw deal count decrease QoQ, while it grew slightly across Canada, LatAm, Africa, and Oceania.

With deals down and funding up, the average deal size has climbed this year, pacing at $14.4M — up 17% compared to full-year 2023. Notably, it’s not just a few massive deals that are pulling that figure up: the median deal size has also grown from $2.5M to $3M over the same period. 

Among investment stages, the median deal size has increased across early- and mid-stage rounds, while it has fallen slightly at the late stage.

One factor more than any other is driving gains in the venture market right now, and that’s AI. Startups developing AI solutions raised $23.2B in Q2’24 — accounting for 35% of the global total, the highest share ever recorded. This share has been trending up for several years now, especially since the arrival of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.

Leading the pack among AI startups, Elon Musk’s xAI outfit raised a whopping $6B round in Q2’24. The 1-year-old company, now valued at $24B, had no trouble finding investors, who believe xAI will gain a competitive edge through integration with Musk’s network of companies (and their data). For instance, Tesla could use xAI’s latest multimodal AI model, which includes vision capabilities, to bring more advanced perception to its Optimus humanoid.

The Funding Insights from xAI’s CB Insights profile point to synergies between xAI and Musk’s other companies, like Tesla.

Other top AI rounds in Q2’24 went to:

• G42 — $1.5B investment from Microsoft
• CoreWeave — $1.1B Series C at a $19B valuation
• Wayve — $1.05B Series C from SoftBank, Nvidia, and Microsoft
• Scale — $1B Series F led by Accel, with backing from corporates including AMD, Amazon, Intel, and Nvidia

Customers can explore thousands of AI startups across industries and technologies in the CB Insights AI Expert Collection.

In Q2’24, the US saw 39% of all exits, which included both IPOs and M&A transactions. The figure represents an increase of 4 percentage points QoQ and puts the US in the No. 1 spot globally, tied with Europe.

Notably, US IPOs are gaining some strength, with Q2 seeing blockbuster debuts from Tempus (valued at $6.1B) and Rubrik ($5.6B). We predicted both companies would go public in our Tech IPO Pipeline report, published in late 2023. 

Go deeper with CB Insights buyer interviews for Tempus and Rubrik to see what their customers are saying.

Meanwhile, the US venture market’s top M&A deal went to Motional, an autonomous driving startup founded as a joint venture between Hyundai and Aptiv. Hyundai took a majority stake in the company at a $4.1B valuation. Per the Funding Insights on Motional’s CB Insights profile, Hyundai and Motional are co-developing a robotaxi service with a target release of 2024.

The Acquisition Insights from Hyundai’s CB Insights profile break down the structure and goals of the Motional deal.

Around the world, the most active venture investor right now is SOSV. The firm, which primarily backs early-stage startups, invested in 35 unique companies in Q2’24, placing it ahead of a16z (33 companies), General Catalyst (31), and Lightspeed (28). 

Customers can use this CB Insights platform search to see SOSV’s top portfolio companies ranked by Mosaic score — which measures a private company’s health — alongside data cuts like commercial maturity, headcount growth, and more.

Among industry sectors, fintech saw funding grow the most, watching it rise 19% QoQ to reach $8.9B. This marks a rebound for the sector vs. Q1’24. Top fintech deals in the quarter went to payments leader Stripe and market intelligence firm AlphaSense. 

The retail tech and digital health sectors were worse off than fintech. Retail tech funding was roughly stagnant QoQ, while digital health funding plummeted to below $3B — its second-lowest quarterly level since 2016.

Among major global regions, the US and Europe outpaced the market as a whole for funding growth in Q2’24. 

Asia, on the other hand, saw its funding fall 13% QoQ to $9.7B. The decline was most pronounced in China, where dollars tumbled more than 50% to $2.2B, whereas India, Singapore, and Japan all experienced funding growth QoQ. 

The top two equity deals in the region went to United Arab Emirates’ G42 and India-based Zepto.

The post State of Venture Q2’24 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Hundreds of startups — and billions in funding — have flooded the market since then, with equity deals to generative AI startups increasing by over 60% in 2023 compared to the previous year.

Startups are using the tech to create new proteins and drugs, power the next generation of search engines, ship code faster, build next-gen gaming experiences, and much more.

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post The generative AI market map appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Massive rounds to players like generative AI startup Anthropic were key drivers behind the jump, as overall AI deal volume dipped for the fourth straight quarter in Q1’24. 

Here is the TL;DR on the state of AI:

• Global AI funding reaches $13.1B. AI funding increased 24% QoQ to reach $13.1B — its highest quarterly level since Q1’23. This outpaced the growth in broader venture funding (+11%). Meanwhile, AI deals slipped for the fourth consecutive quarter, hitting their lowest quarterly count since 2018 (739 deals). This drop was particularly pronounced in Asia, which saw a 30% drop in deals QoQ.
  

• Average deal size YTD in AI is $23.1M, up 21% vs. $19.1M in full-year 2023. A couple of genAI infrastructure players have had an outsized impact on this upward trend, raising massive $1B+ deals: Anthropic ($2.8B Series D) and Moonshot AI ($1B Series B). Notably, Anthropic raised an additional deal worth $750M in Q1’24, bringing its total funding for the quarter to $3.5B.
• AI unicorn births remain steady at 6 QoQ in Q1’24. Three of these new unicorns are generative AI model developers: Moonshot AI, Together AI, and Krutrim all reached $1B+ valuations in Q1’24.
• AI M&A exits drop 36% in Q1’24. There were 69 M&A deals for AI companies in Q1’24, marking a 36% decrease from Q4’23. Amid the downturn, Europe saw its share of broader global exits rise by 12 percentage points QoQ, while Asia experienced a 15-point drop. Meanwhile, the US’ share remained steady at 41%.
• US AI funding rises 52% QoQ to reach $9.3B. Asia was the only other major global region to see a funding increase (+6%) in Q1’24. Funding totals for both regions were heavily buoyed by the $1B+ rounds to genAI infrastructure startups Anthropic (US) and Moonshot AI (China).

The post State of AI Q1’24 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Equity deal volume declined for an eighth straight quarter, but a handful of billion-dollar rounds — particularly in generative AI — helped drive funding up 11% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ).

Based on our deep dive below, here is the TL;DR on the state of venture:

• Venture funding climbs 11% QoQ to $58.4B. Q1 funding was buoyed by several massive deals, including Amazon’s $2.75B investment in generative AI company Anthropic. Despite the quarterly gain, funding remains down 21% vs. Q1’23 and 62% vs. Q1’22.
• Deals slide for an eighth straight quarter, down 7% to 6,238. Asia and Europe saw 8% and 9% declines, respectively, in VC deal activity. The US, on the other hand, bucked the global trend, seeing deals tick up 1% QoQ.
• Mega-rounds (deals worth $100M+) are a bright spot, growing 30% QoQ to 105. These large deals represented 45% of total funding in the quarter, up 11 percentage points from the previous quarter. Corporate investors like Amazon, Disney, and Alibaba were behind some of the largest deals. 
• The quarter sees 19 new unicorns spread across the US, Asia, and Europe, down slightly from 23 the previous quarter. Europe’s 5 new unicorns represented a 5-quarter high for the continent. The highest-valued unicorn birth in Q1’24 went to Figure, a humanoid robotics developer valued at $2.7B.
• The fintech sector takes a hit, with funding falling 16% QoQ, while digital health and retail tech see gains. Digital health funding surged by nearly 50% in Q1’24, driven by multiple biotech mega-rounds.
• Silicon Valley sees $4 out of every $10 in US funding. Silicon Valley startups drew $14.4B in Q1’24 — more than 3x the next US metro (New York with $4.4B) — to capture 42% of the country’s funding. While that figure was driven up in Q1’24 by Anthropic’s $3.5B in cumulative funding, it’s not an anomaly: Silicon Valley has seen over a third of all US funding since 2020.

Below, we’ll explore these themes across 8 charts.

Global venture funding grew 11% QoQ in Q1’24, bouncing back from a recent low to reach $58.4B. 

Despite the rebound, this figure marks a 21% decrease year-over-year and puts quarterly venture funding roughly where it was in 2017.

Meanwhile, dealmaking continued to slide in Q1’24. Equity deal volume slipped for an eighth straight quarter to 6,238, putting it in line with levels not seen since 2016/2017.

Globally, the US accounted for 39% of deals in the quarter — up 3 percentage points from Q4’23 — while Asia (31%) and Europe (24%) each lost 1 percentage point.

One of the bright spots in venture right now: mega-rounds (deals worth $100M+). These deals surged 30% QoQ (and 14% YoY) to hit 105 in Q1’24.

At $26.2B, funding from mega-rounds represented 45% of the quarter’s total funding — a rebound from 34% in Q4’23. 

The uptick in mega-rounds points to investors’ sustained interest in blockbuster deals, especially in capital-intensive areas like large language model development. 

Q1’24 saw 4 deals reach $1B or more in value, with 2 of these deals going to generative AI companies (Anthropic and Moonshot AI). Amazon and Alibaba led these respective deals, pointing to global tech giants’ rabid interest in genAI.

The other 2 deals worth $1B+ went to Epic Games and Generate Capital. Disney’s $1.5B stake in Epic is its biggest move into gaming yet, while Generate Capital’s $1.5B round will go toward developing sustainable infrastructure projects.

After falling precipitously throughout 2022, the number of new unicorns (private companies valued at $1B+) has mostly stabilized quarter-over-quarter. Q1’24 saw 19 new unicorns, down slightly from 23 the prior quarter.

The new billion-dollar companies in Q1 were distributed across the US (8 new unicorns), Asia (6), and Europe (5). 

Europe’s total, which represented a 5-quarter high in unicorn births for the continent, included new unicorns like Italy’s Bending Spoons ($2.6B valuation) and Netherlands-based Mews ($1.2B).

Some industries are seeing stronger funding momentum than others.

Digital health startups, for instance, saw funding soar 48% in Q1’24 to $3.7B. Top deals went to biotech firms Freenome ($254M Series F) and BioAge Labs ($170M Series D).

Fintech startups, on the other hand, drew 16% less funding in Q1’24 than the prior quarter. The fintech sector also saw its new unicorn count slip from 8 to 6 over the same period. Despite fintech’s funding losses, the sector was the only one to see an uptick in quarterly deal volume.

Silicon Valley remains the undisputed leader among US metros for VC activity. 

In Q1’24, Silicon Valley-based startups drew $14.4B in funding — 42% of the US total. This represented a 14-point surge QoQ in Silicon Valley’s share of funding, driven in large part by the excitement around AI. San Francisco-based Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor, was responsible for 10% of total US funding in the quarter.

Here are the funding totals for the top 5 US metros in Q1’24:

1. Silicon Valley: $14.4B
2. New York: $4.4B
3. Los Angeles: $2.5B
4. Boston: $2B
5. Raleigh: $1.6B (driven by Epic Games’ $1.5B round)

On a global scale, funding climbed 33% QoQ in the US — more than Europe’s 8% increase over the same period. Asia, meanwhile, watched its funding total fall 20% to $10.2B, putting it in the #3 spot behind second-ranked Europe.

The US accounted for 59% of total funding this past quarter — an increase of 10 percentage points from Q4’23. The top 3 largest deals in Q1’24 all went to US-based firms.

The post State of Venture Q1’24 Report appeared first on CB Insights Research.

Highlights from the 2024 cohort include:

• 16 countries represented, from the US to France to South Africa
• 30+ categories of solutions, from foundation models to humanoids
• 68% early-stage startups building virtual worlds, autonomous factories, language models for under-represented languages, and more
• 600+ business relationships since 2016 with industry leaders like Toyota, Netflix, and the World Bank

Our research team picked winning companies based on CB Insights datasets including deal activity, industry partnerships, team strength, investor strength, patent activity, and proprietary Mosaic Scores. We also analyzed CB Insights’ exclusive interviews with software buyers and dug into Analyst Briefings submitted directly to us by startups.

Please click to enlarge.

CB Insights customers can interact with the entire AI 100 list here and view a detailed category breakdown using the Expert Collection.

2024 AI 100 COHORT HIGHLIGHTS

Funding distribution

The cohort has raised over $28B across 240+ equity deals since 2020 (as of 3/22/24). OpenAI has raised over 40% of that total, with $12B. Meanwhile, 25% of the winning companies have raised less than $10M, with some not having raised any venture funding.   

Just over two-thirds (68%) of winning companies are in the early stages of fundraising (seed/angel and Series A) or have yet to raise outside equity.

Valuation trends

This year’s list includes 19 unicorns with a $1B+ valuation.

Meanwhile, Sakana AI — founded by one of the authors of the seminal Google research paper on Transformers — has the highest valuation per employee, at $67M. (It had just 3 employees when it earned its $200M valuation in early 2024.) Sakana is working on new “nature-inspired” AI architectures and recently released 3 Japanese-language models.

Revenue generation

The AI 100 includes a mix of companies at different stages of maturity, product development, and revenue. 

Hugging Face, an AI infrastructure platform focused on open-source development, has one of the highest revenue multiples at 150x ($30M in 2023 revenue at a $4.5B valuation). It’s followed by Perplexity, which is developing an alternative to traditional search engines, at 65x (based on a 2023 valuation of $520M and $8M in 2024 ARR).

Midjourney, an image generation platform that has not raised any outside equity, is one of the leading AI 100 winners by revenue with $200M in ARR.

Global reach 

A total of 31 winning companies in this year’s cohort are headquartered outside the United States, across 15 other countries. This includes South Africa-based Lelapa AI — which is developing language processing tools for sub-Saharan African languages like Afrikaans, isiZulu, and Sesotho — and Canada-based Ideogram, which is tackling the problem of generating images with legible text. 

Europe-based startups account for 19% of the list, including companies headquartered in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Categories & applications 

Over one-third of this year’s winners are focused on building core AI infrastructure, from foundation models to AI chips to AI development platforms. 

A total of 30 vendors are focused on horizontal (i.e., cross-industry) solutions like coding automation, creator tools, and search, while 34 companies are specializing in verticals like gaming, healthcare, education, and manufacturing.

A handful of winners are building niche applications where the use of AI is not yet commonplace. These include:

• Atomic Industries, which is developing AI for tool and die making in manufacturing and is backed by the venture arms of Porsche, Yamaha, and Toyota
• Rosebud AI, a text-to-game generation startup backed by OpenAI co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Andrej Karpathy, as well as Khosla Ventures
• Flawless AI, a startup developing lip-synced video dubbing for the film industry

CB Insights customers can get real-time updates on the AI 100 winners using this home feed.

The post AI 100: The most promising artificial intelligence startups of 2024 appeared first on CB Insights Research.

For instance, diseases that predominantly affect women, such as autoimmune diseases, have been slower to receive funding and research attention.

In recent years, a growing number of femtech startups have emerged to address the issues facing women’s health, and these startups are gaining substantial investment as a result.

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post The femtech market map appeared first on CB Insights Research.

A handful of developers are targeting 2024 to release their humanoid robots, which are designed to perform tasks similar to humans. Technologies like generative AI and reinforcement learning are helping drive this progress. However, the impact will be limited at first, and it will likely take 3-5 years to see more widespread commercial rollout and usefulness.

Below, we dive into 6 industries that humanoids will impact the most in both the near- and long-term, as well as the technology firms making this possible:

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post 6 applications of humanoid robots across industries appeared first on CB Insights Research.

The days of fairy-tale valuations are long gone. Last year saw just 71 new unicorns minted — one-eighth as many as in 2021. 

But investors and startups have some reason for optimism. New unicorn births rebounded in Q4’23, jumping quarter-over-quarter from 14 to 23. And generative AI companies are showing they can attain unicorn status at a breakneck pace, as we explore below.

Read on to see every unicorn globally, as well as our breakdown of key industry and geography trends.

CB Insights customers can dive deeper into unicorn data using the Unicorns Expert Collection, as well as hear directly from unicorns’ customers here. 

Market map

Collectively, the world’s unicorns are worth $3.8T — roughly comparable to the GDP of Germany.

The market map below shows all 1,229 unicorns, grouped by industry. 

Categories are not mutually exclusive and companies are sorted by primary use case.

Unicorns by industry

Enterprise tech is the most highly represented industry, with 31% of all unicorns. The enterprise tech category includes tech companies that target general B2B use cases or sell into a wide range of industries.

Given the breadth of this group, we’ve broken it down further into segments like HR tech and cybersecurity, which each account for 5% of all unicorns.

The financial services industry takes the second spot with an 18% share, followed by consumer & retail with 17%.

The enterprise tech group has seen especially strong growth recently. Roughly half of the unicorns born in the last 6 months are in this category, propelled by generative AI newcomers like China’s 01.AI ($1B valuation), India’s Krutrim ($1B), and ElevenLabs ($1.1B) out of the US. All 3 were founded in the last 2 years.

Meanwhile, the unicorn count in most other industries has been stagnant or even declined. Healthcare & life sciences, for instance, has seen its total unicorn count shrink from 122 to 117 since our last update in October 2023, driven by a mix of startup exits, down rounds, and shutdowns in digital health.

Meanwhile, recent newcomers to the unicorn club include:

• Liquid Death ($1.4B valuation). The non-alcoholic beverage company, known for its heavy-metal branding, has nearly 8M followers on social platforms and doubled its retail sales YoY in 2023.  
• Mews ($1.2B). Mews, which develops SaaS tools for the hospitality industry, is seeing demand grow as the tourism industry makes a post-Covid comeback.
• Figure ($2.7B). The venture arms of Amazon, Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Samsung all backed Figure’s Series B round last month, as the tech incumbents have been racing to get involved in the humanoid robotics space.

Global distribution of unicorns

Globally, a total of 53 countries and regions are represented in the unicorn club.

The US is home to more than half (53%) of all unicorns. Within the US, two industries have a higher share relative to global averages: enterprise tech (39% of US unicorns) and healthcare & life sciences (13% of US unicorns).

The US is followed by China (14% of global unicorns). China’s unicorns are especially concentrated in the industrials and consumer & retail spaces, which represent 31% and 30% of the country’s unicorns, respectively.

Time to reach unicorn status

On average, it took just over 7 years for today’s unicorns to reach the billion-dollar mark from when they were founded. This is relatively stable across industries — ranging from 6.6 years for financial services to 7.7 years for healthcare — until you zoom in on generative AI startups.

There are 34 generative AI unicorns, and they’ve collectively averaged just 3.9 years to hit unicorn status — 45% less than all other unicorns. 

In some cases, genAI startups are reaching that mark in under a year. For instance, Mistral AI, a Paris-based LLM developer, was founded in April 2023. Just 8 months later, in December 2023, it grabbed a $2B valuation as part of its Series A round.

CB Insights customers can explore all 34 generative AI unicorns with this CB Insights platform advanced search.

The post $1B+ Market Map: The world’s 1,229 unicorn companies in one infographic appeared first on CB Insights Research.

2024 is set to see the commercial release of several new humanoid robots, which resemble the human body and can perform tasks traditionally carried out by humans in areas like manufacturing, logistics, and retail.

The surge is propelled by advancements in AI, pilot programs demonstrating commercial viability, and significant investment from big tech. In particular, robotics developers are targeting more realistic human-robot interactions using large language models (LLMs) and natural language processing.

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post Humanoid robotics in 5 charts: AI drives funding to record levels appeared first on CB Insights Research.

These robots resemble the human form and are designed to be multi-talented, making it possible to swap them in for complex tasks normally handled by flesh-and-bone employees. Popular robot forms like automated guided vehicles (AGVs) & autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and collaborative robotic arms are much less flexible.

However, humanoid robots are complicated to build and deploy. They require substantial sensor processing, advanced control, and complex skill execution. They also need multimodal artificial intelligence (AI) to understand the environment around them.

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post AI-powered humanoid robots are coming and big tech wants in appeared first on CB Insights Research.

However, there’s one reason to be optimistic: early-stage activity. 

Among e-commerce enablement tech, early-stage funding has grown as a share of total funding, increasing from 17% in 2022 to 22% in 2023. Contrary to overall trends in venture, the average size of early-stage deals also increased slightly in 2023, to $6.7M, from $6.4M in 2022. 

Want to see more research? Join a demo of the CB Insights platform.

If you’re already a customer, log in here.

The post 5 digital commerce markets gaining momentum in 2024 appeared first on CB Insights Research.