Essential resources to understand the future of the insurance industry:

• Insurtech 50: The most promising insurtech startups of 2024 — The Insurtech 50 is CB Insights’ annual list of the 50 most promising private insurtech companies in the world. This year’s winners are working on everything from AI assistants to embedded insurance.

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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

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Highlights from the 2024 cohort include:

• The 50 winners include 23 tech vendors and 27 insurers and intermediaries.
• $5.6B in equity funding raised over time, including $1B in 2024 so far (as of 8/19/24).
• Forty percent of winners are early-stage insurtechs addressing everything from wildfire risk to genAI-powered workflow automation.
• More than a dozen countries represented, spanning Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.
• 500+ business relationships since 2020, including with industry leaders like Swiss Re and Tokio Marine.

Our research team picked winning companies based on CB Insights datasets, including deal activity, industry partnerships, team strength, investor strength, patent activity, employee headcount, and proprietary Commercial Maturity and Mosaic scores. We also dug into Analyst Briefings submitted directly to us by startups.

Please click to enlarge.

CB Insights customers can interact with the entire Insurtech 50 list here and view a detailed category breakdown using the Expert Collection.

2024 INSURTECH 50 COHORT HIGHLIGHTS

Funding and valuations

The cohort has raised $5.6B across 210+ disclosed equity deals to date (as of 8/19/24). Next Insurance and Coalition lead in disclosed equity funding among the cohort ($1.1B and $770M, respectively).

In 2024 so far, this year’s winners have raised $1B across 38 disclosed equity deals. Just 5 deals account for more than half of this funding total:

• Altana AI — $200M Series C
• ICEYE — $93M Series D
• Vitesse — $93M Series C
• Cover Genius — $80M Series E
• Hyperexponential — $73M Series B

Altana AI reached a $1B valuation following its Series C round in July 2024. This earned it a spot in the unicorn club alongside the other unicorns in this year’s Insurtech 50 cohort: Accelerant, Coalition, and Next Insurance.

Stage breakdown

Forty percent of this year’s Insurtech 50 winners are early-stage companies (i.e., primarily seed or Series A). These companies are the fastest-growing among those analyzed, with a median 12-month headcount growth rate of 45% — 23 points higher than the median for the rest of the cohort.

Comparatively, 46% of winners are mid-stage (i.e., Series B or C), and 14% are late-stage (i.e., primarily Series D+).

Top investors

MS&AD Ventures has invested in 5 of this year’s winners, leading among venture capital (VC) firms, including corporate venture capital firms. The investor has backed 4 insurance providers — Accelerant, Anzen, Next Insurance, and Wagmo — and 1 tech vendor, Artificial Labs. 

Following MS&AD Ventures are Felicis, General Catalyst, Nationwide Ventures, and Portage — each of these investors has backed 4 winners.

When it comes to investment activity in 2024, Portage leads in the number of winners backed. So far this year, it has backed 3 insurance providers: CoverTree, Faye, and Hellas Direct.

Geographic distribution

This year’s Insurtech 50 winners are collectively headquartered across more than a dozen different countries. 

The majority of these companies (30) are based in the United States. Among US metro areas, New York and Silicon Valley lead the pack, as they are both home to 10 of the winners. These metro areas are followed by Boston (4 winners) and Atlanta (2 winners).

The UK follows the US with 8 winners — 6 based in London and 2 near Birmingham.

Headcount growth

Over 7,700 people are employed by the 2024 Insurtech 50 winners, with 4 companies employing about a third of the cohort’s workers: Next Insurance, Coalition, ICEYE, and Cover Genius.

From July 2023 to July 2024, this year’s winners created more than 1,400 jobs. One winner more than tripled its headcount over the period: Sixfold (+267% YoY).

The median 2024 Insurtech 50 winner has raised $0.6M in equity funding per employee. Altana AI and Next Insurance lead among the winners, each having raised $1.6M in equity funding per employee.

Company health

Forty-one of the 50 winners have a CB Insights Mosaic score — a proprietary measure of private company health and growth potential — of at least 700 out of 1,000 (as of 8/26/24). Compared to all private companies — insurtechs or otherwise — with Mosaic scores, these 41 winners rank in the top 3% by Mosaic score.

Next Insurance and Coalition — with Mosaic scores of 898 and 881, respectively — hold the highest scores among this year’s winners.

AI threads the tech vendor landscape

Most of the winning tech vendors offer AI products, which aligns with the broader momentum toward AI (and generative AI) adoption across the insurance industry. Applications often center on prioritization use cases, like risk ranking for underwriters and claims triage for adjusters.

The winners’ business relationships often incorporate the use of AI. Recent examples with industry figures include:

• Reask and AXA Climate — March 2024
• Akur8 and Tokio Marine HCC — April 2024
• Indico Data and Convex — June 2024

Insurtech managing general agents (MGAs) gain ground

MGAs — intermediaries with delegated underwriting authority from one or more insurance carriers as well as related entities like managing general underwriters — represent a sizable portion of the 2024 Insurtech 50 list. Their presence reflects broader industry momentum toward the business model.

Notably, most insurtechs within the commercial category are MGAs that offer property & casualty insurance to businesses. Established insurers have made strategic investments in several of these companies, including:

• American Family Insurance, which led Ledgebrook’s $24M Series A round in April 2024 via its CVC (American Family Ventures)
• Arch Capital Group, which participated in Rainbow’s $12M seed round in January 2024
• Hiscox, which led Coterie Insurance’s Series B round in March 2024

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Across themes like customer experience and genAI, insurance companies must make the right innovation bets to lower claims costs and stay ahead of the competition.

To help strategy teams prioritize P&C claims markets in their planning decisions, we plotted markets using CB Insights’ TECH framework, which scores markets across 2 dimensions:

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We provide a deep dive on the state of insurtech in the full report. Here’s the TL;DR:

• Global insurtech funding increases to $1.3B in Q2’24 — the highest level since Q1’23. Insurtech funding grew 44% QoQ — led by 50% growth in funding to P&C insurtechs, from $0.6B to $0.9B. Funding to life & health (L&H) insurtechs also increased QoQ, ticking up from $0.3B to $0.4B.

• Insurtech deal count falls 27% QoQ to 82, the lowest level since 2016. The drop was nearly proportional across P&C and L&H: P&C deals fell 28% to 54 deals, while L&H deals decreased by 26% to 28 deals. On a percentage basis, the decline in insurtech deals outpaced the broader venture and fintech environments (where deal activity fell 7% and 16% QoQ, respectively).

• Median insurtech deal size increases 25% from $4M in 2023 to $5M in 2024 YTD. Only 2021 has seen a higher median deal size over the past 10 years. However, while the median early-stage insurtech deal size is at a record-high $4M this year, late-stage deal size ($31M) is the lowest it’s been since 2018. Insurtech mega-rounds (deals worth $100M+) were nearly nonexistent in Q2, with Sidecar Health, a health insurer, raising the quarter’s only such deal (a $165M Series D).

• Insurtech sees its first IPOs since Q3’22. Two insurtechs IPO’d in Q2’24 — Digit Insurance, an India-based insurance provider, and Saudi Arabia-based Rasan, which primarily focuses on auto insurance sales and vehicle services. Both IPOs occurred amid a broader lull in global IPO activity.

• Europe’s share of insurtech deals reaches 35% — a record high. Deals to Europe-based insurtechs stayed roughly steady, ticking up from 28 in Q1’24 to 29 in Q2’24. Comparatively, the US saw insurtech deal count fall from 61 to 40. Funding to Europe-based insurtechs reached a 7-quarter high ($0.5B), driven by two $93M deals for Finland-based ICEYE — a provider of data from satellite imagery — and UK-based Vitesse, a claims payments processor.

The post State of Insurtech Q2’24 Report 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.

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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 technology has been top of mind for major insurers such as Cigna, Sun Life, and Munich Re, with discussion on corporate earnings calls surging over the past year.

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However, two huge deals — for market intelligence firm AlphaSense and payments juggernaut Stripe — obscured the reality that it was another tepid quarter for the sector as a whole.

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

• Funding increases by 19% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ), buoyed by 2 blockbuster deals. Quarterly funding rose in Q2’24 to $8.9B. But if it weren’t for 2 late-stage deals for Stripe ($694M) and AlphaSense ($650M), funding would have remained flat QoQ. A 16% decline in deal volume also indicates fintech investors remain cautious.​
• Average deal size decreases to $12.8M, down 4% vs. 2023. The slight decline in average deal size YTD highlights broad stagnation in fintech deal sizes. Yet, when looking at the median, deal size has ticked up from $3.1M in 2023 to $4M this year. The 29% increase could signal strength in the long tail of smaller fintech deals.
• Mid- and late-stage deal share is at 20% YTD, up from 18% in 2023. In a more favorable operating environment, investors are showing greater confidence in later-stage companies than they did in the past 2 years — especially in areas like payments and lending. In payments, mid- and late-stage rounds make up 27% of deals YTD, vs. 21% in 2023. In digital lending, mid- and late-stage deals make up 35% of deals YTD, compared to 20% in 2023. 
• 30% of the biggest early-stage deals are for digital asset companies. Crypto and blockchain-focused fintechs are receiving renewed focus, as the crypto winter thaws. Digital asset companies accounted for nearly one-third of the top 10 seed/angel and top 10 Series A rounds. The two largest early-stage deals in the crypto space went to digital asset infrastructure platforms TradeDog ($75M seed) and Biton ($44M Series A).
• US-based funding increases by 45% QoQ to $4.8B. In addition to the funding increase, the US led the world across a few metrics in Q2’24, including share of equity deals (40%) and exits (36%). Mega-rounds led the way: Nine of the 10 biggest deals in the US were worth $100M or more, the most since Q2’22. LatAm was the only other major global region with a funding increase, up by 22% to $442M.

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To meet this demand, businesses across industries are embedding financial tools — from buy now, pay later (BNPL) to insurance distribution — into their platforms. Integrating these financial services can help not only improve customer engagement, but also drive new revenue streams and loyalty in the process. 

To help strategy teams prioritize embedded finance markets in their planning decisions, we plotted markets using CB Insights’ TECH framework, which scores markets across 2 dimensions:

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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.

For one, describing and marketing financial products to customers is often an uphill battle, both because of the complex nature of these products and because of strict regulatory oversight. These same aspects can make internal operations difficult to streamline and automate.

Generative AI has the potential to address these challenges by sifting through, summarizing, and personalizing complex information at scale to improve customer experiences and employee productivity. It can also generate synthetic data to support mission-critical machine learning (ML) applications like fraud detection.

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To do that, the company is prioritizing growth opportunities that augment its core business, with recent actions laddering up to broad themes like improving decision-making in claims and underwriting.

Notably, M&A activity is absent from Nationwide’s strategy. Instead, it grows its network of relationships through investments — at the corporate level and through its CVC arm, Nationwide Ventures — and partnerships.

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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.

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These tech moves reveal shared strategic themes across the industry.

Cyber risk — which primarily covers cyber capabilities related to insurance coverage, as well as tools for internal cybersecurity operations — is the top tech priority among leading insurers like AXA and Allianz in our analysis.

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Even so, median insurtech deal size is up in 2024 so far — signaling that investors are still willing to make notable bets where they see opportunities.

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

• Insurtech funding falls 18% QoQ to hit $0.9B in Q1’24 — the lowest quarterly level since 2018. The decline was particularly pronounced in P&C insurtech, which saw funding drop by 25% QoQ. Meanwhile, broader insurtech deal count ticked up by 3% to reach 107 in Q1’24.

• No $100M+ mega-round insurtech deals are raised for the first time since 2018. Relatedly, late-stage deal share — which often comprises larger, mega-round deals — is down to 7% in 2024 so far. Hyperexponential, a pricing platform, raised the largest insurtech deal in Q1’24 — a $73M Series B round.
• Europe sees quarterly insurtech deal count rise for the first time since Q2’22. Europe-based insurtech startups raised 28 deals in Q1’24, up from 24 in Q4’23. Funding also more than tripled QoQ, rising to $284M in Q1’24. The region saw the 2 largest insurtech deals in Q1’24: Hyperexponential’s Series B round and embedded insurer ELEMENT’s $54M Series C round.
• Median insurtech deal size is $5M in 2024 so far, up 19% vs. $4.2M in full-year 2023. This elevated median deal size is partially linked to an uptick in median early-stage deal size, which sits at $3.2M in 2024 so far. Meanwhile, the average insurtech deal size in 2024 YTD ($9.8M) is down 17% from full-year 2023.
• Insurtech sees its fewest M&A exits since 2018. Exit activity has nearly halted in insurtech, with M&A exits declining from 13 in Q4’23 to just 5 in Q1’24. Comparatively, fintech M&A exits largely remained flat QoQ — ticking down from 153 in Q4’23 to 152 in Q1’24.

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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).

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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff called AI “the single most important moment in the history of the technology industry” in the company’s most recent earnings call. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon said, in his April 2024 letter, “we are completely convinced the consequences [of AI] will be extraordinary.” 

Others are hyper-focused on AI’s potential to drive new efficiencies and product development. Big pharma companies are pushing ahead with AI-powered drug discovery collaborations, with the goal of accelerating drug development timelines. Payments giants, meanwhile, are leveraging AI to fight back against a wave of fraud.  

Much of the hype around recent advances has yet to translate to revenue. No AI-discovered drug has been approved yet for sale (though Insilico Medicine brought the first drug fully generated by AI into human trials in 2023), and Salesforce acknowledged its latest AI push would not have a material impact on its revenue this year. 

But the promise of future opportunities — and the perceived risk of inaction — is driving leaders to make moves now that could eventually reshape some of the world’s biggest industries. Our 70-slide report surveys the AI strategies of the following companies:

• Financial services & insurance: JPMorgan, Visa, Mastercard, UnitedHealth Group
• Enterprise tech: Oracle, Salesforce
• Pharma: Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, Johnson & Johnson
• Industrials: Toyota, Siemens

Using the CB Insights technology intelligence platform, we analyzed signals like investment & partnership activity, executive chatter in earnings transcripts, patents, and more to understand their efforts. Download the full report to see them all. 

Largest companies based on market cap (as of 4/15/2024). Our analysis excludes big tech, semiconductor developers, and state-owned companies.

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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.

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Its corporate venture arm, MassMutual Ventures, was among the top 25 most active CVC firms in 2023, backing 22 companies. Insurance sales are MassMutual’s foundational growth driver, so the company prioritizes investments to serve policyholders — and sell more insurance. 

But its reach extends far beyond core life insurance. The company also offers annuities, retirement plans, and other financial products to businesses and consumers.

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Presentations and panels centered on the new wave of opportunities from AI and data analytics within insurance.

We look at the key themes and use CB Insights data to dig into the underlying trends.

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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.

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