Venture Capital
Ranked: Who Made the Most U.S. Unicorn Acquisitions Since 1997?
Article/Editing:
Who Made the Most U.S. Unicorn Acquisitions Since 1997?
The elusive unicorn is no longer a myth in the U.S. startup world, with over a thousand private startups reaching a $1 billion valuation in the last 25 years.
While some of these startups eventually go public and go on to become household names, it’s also common for founders to exit through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), by selling their startup to another organization. In fact, over half of the 1,110 unicorns in the U.S. have made some sort of an exit—either through an IPO, a direct listing, a SPAC or an acquisition—since 1997.
Ilya Strebulaev, professor of finance and private equity at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, brings us this visualization featuring the companies that acquired the most unicorns over the last 25 years.
Strebulaev’s database lists 137 private and public companies along with PE firms who’ve acquired at least one unicorn since 1997, totaling 177 acquisitions.
The Biggest U.S. Unicorn Acquirers
In total, 27 companies have acquired two or more unicorns, accounting for nearly 38% of all acquisitions. 110 companies have acquired just one unicorn.
| Company/ PE Group | Acquired |
|---|---|
| Meta | 5 |
| Cisco | 4 |
| Alphabet | 4 |
| Amazon | 3 |
| Nortel Networks | 3 |
| Bristol-Myers Squibb | 3 |
| Johnson & Johnson | 3 |
| Merck & Co. | 3 |
| AT&T | 3 |
| Recruit Holdings | 2 |
| IBM | 2 |
| Microsoft | 2 |
| Thoma Bravo | 2 |
| Headspace Health | 2 |
| Allergan | 2 |
| Qualcomm | 2 |
| Rakuten | 2 |
| Adobe Systems | 2 |
| Eli Lilly | 2 |
| Vista Equity | 2 |
| Dell | 2 |
| Uber | 2 |
| Oracle | 2 |
| Nestle | 2 |
| Lucent Technologies | 2 |
| Broadcom Corporation | 2 |
| GlaxoSmithKline | 2 |
| BlackBerry | 2 |
| Searchlight Capital Partners | 1 |
| Singtel | 1 |
| Vmware | 1 |
| Internet Capital Group | 1 |
| Hellman & Friedman | 1 |
| AppLovin | 1 |
| Ciena Corporation | 1 |
| Redback Networks | 1 |
| Aether Systems | 1 |
| Fresenius Medical Care | 1 |
| Electronic Arts | 1 |
| Genentech | 1 |
| Inktomi | 1 |
| VistaJet | 1 |
| Ariba | 1 |
| Keurig Dr Pepper | 1 |
| Fullscreen | 1 |
| Sycamore Networks | 1 |
| Novartis | 1 |
| TP ICAP | 1 |
| eBay | 1 |
| DoveBid | 1 |
| McKesson | 1 |
| IG Group | 1 |
| Empower Retirement | 1 |
| Dentsply Sirona | 1 |
| Novo Nordisk | 1 |
| Centocor | 1 |
| Bausch Health | 1 |
| Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma | 1 |
| Medtronic | 1 |
| Mubadala Investment Company | 1 |
| Cint Group | 1 |
| Qualtrics | 1 |
| Rocket Companies | 1 |
| Saudi Arabia's PIF | 1 |
| Prosus | 1 |
| Cigna | 1 |
| One Medical | 1 |
| Exact Sciences | 1 |
| Teladoc Health | 1 |
| Ericsson | 1 |
| SoFi | 1 |
| PayPal Holdings | 1 |
| Bayer | 1 |
| Monsanto | 1 |
| AMD | 1 |
| Aurora | 1 |
| Marvell International | 1 |
| Bill.com | 1 |
| ADC | 1 |
| Dealertrack | 1 |
| Cox Enterprises | 1 |
| L'Oreal | 1 |
| AstraZeneca | 1 |
| Workday | 1 |
| Iron Mountain | 1 |
| Splunk | 1 |
| Stonepeak | 1 |
| American Express | 1 |
| OfferUp | 1 |
| VMware | 1 |
| Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan | 1 |
| Groupon | 1 |
| Allstate Corporation | 1 |
| 1 | |
| SAP | 1 |
| Mindbody | 1 |
| Mallinckrodt | 1 |
| Walmart | 1 |
| GMT Communications | 1 |
| Brightstar Capital | 1 |
| Enterprise Holdings | 1 |
| Healtheon Corporation | 1 |
| Apple | 1 |
| PetSmart | 1 |
| Epiphany | 1 |
| Rice Energy | 1 |
| Unilever | 1 |
| SBA Communications | 1 |
| Bridgepoint Advisers | 1 |
| Aurea | 1 |
| Vector Capital | 1 |
| FireEye | 1 |
| Littlejohn & Co | 1 |
| Alexion | 1 |
| SoftBank Investment Advisers | 1 |
| Francisco Partners | 1 |
| Betfair Group | 1 |
| Shift Technologies | 1 |
| Hudson's Bay | 1 |
| Illumina | 1 |
| Hewlett Packard Enterprise | 1 |
| AbbVie | 1 |
| Salesforce | 1 |
| Hanergy | 1 |
| Teleflex | 1 |
| Twilio | 1 |
| Okta | 1 |
| Celgene | 1 |
| NantCell | 1 |
| VMware & EMC Corp | 1 |
| Intuit | 1 |
| Yahoo! | 1 |
| Netmarble Games | 1 |
| F5 Networks | 1 |
| Roche | 1 |
| Centerbridge Partners | 1 |
| Total | 177 |
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, leads the pack with the most unicorn acquisitions in the U.S., purchasing five unicorns since its founding in 2008, including: Kustomer, WhatsApp, Instagram, CTRL-Labs, and Oculus VR.
Notably, WhatsApp—which closed at a purchase price of $19 billion—was Meta’s most expensive acquisition yet, over nine times their next most expensive purchase, Oculus VR.
Meanwhile, Alphabet (now the parent company of Google) and Cisco are tied in second place with four U.S. unicorn acquisitions each.
- Alphabet: YouTube, Actifio, Nest Labs, Looker Data Sciences
- Cisco: Cerent, Duo Security, AppDynamics, Jasper
Unlike its Big Tech peers, Apple has only made the one U.S. unicorn acquisition: navigation company HopStop that helped bring public transit features to Apple Maps.
Meanwhile, 56% of acquirers received venture capital funding of their own when they were private companies. This includes pack leaders like Meta, Cisco, Alphabet, and Amazon.
Are Unicorn Acquisitions Slowing Down?
Unicorn acquisitions are driven by two factors: the rate at which new unicorns are minted, and the climate for M&A transactions more broadly.
To begin with, the minting of new unicorns is largely influenced by the venture funding environment. Funding opportunities increase when interest rates go down, which makes riskier, venture-scale ideas more enticing. During the last decade of persistently low interest rates up until 2022, unicorns flourished more than ever.
Meanwhile, as tech companies like Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Meta began seeing outsized profits in the 2010s, venture investors and their LPs looked to get in on the ground floor of tech startups that could emulate their success, often paying premium valuations for the chance. Simultaneously, big tech looked to acquire unicorns themselves, both to augment their business lines and to squash potential competitors.
However, the era of “easy money” may have come to an end, and privately-held startups have seen valuations drop in recent years. This means that for the next little while—at least until monetary policy stops tightening—unicorns could become a rarer sight.
Unicorn acquisitions may also see a similar fate. Persistent inflation and the government anti-trust push are just some of the other factors that have led to VC-backed startup acquisitions falling to their lowest quarterly levels in a decade. The more expensive the valuation, the harder to find a buyer, which means that some unicorns may even lose their $1 billion tag even when they do get acquired.
This article was published as a part of Visual Capitalist's Creator Program, which features data-driven visuals from some of our favorite Creators around the world.
AI
Where Venture Capital Money Is Going: AI vs. Everything Else
Dive into this bar chart, which shows global venture capital investment into artificial intelligence versus all other sectors.
Where Venture Capital Money Is Going: AI vs. Everything Else
See visuals like this from many other data creators on our Voronoi app. Download it for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
Key Takeaways
- AI and machine learning have helped prop up venture capital as funding for other sectors cooled.
- AI accounted for 52% of global VC deal value in Q4 2025.
- Investment accelerated sharply in 2024 as large funding rounds flowed into AI infrastructure and model developers.
Venture capital activity has slowed since its pandemic-era peak, but artificial intelligence remains a major exception.
Investment flowing into AI and machine learning (ML) has surged over the past two years, helping sustain overall venture funding even as deal activity in other sectors weakened.
This graphic visualizes data compiled by BestBrokers, using information from PitchBook, CB Insights, and LIQUiDITY, showing how venture capital has increasingly concentrated around AI.
AI Takes a Larger Slice of the Pie
The quarterly data from 2022 to 2025 shows how the balance between AI and non-AI venture investment has shifted.
| Quarter | AI and ML deals ($B) | Rest of Deals ($B) | % Share (AI) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 2022 | 38.9 | 139.5 | 21.8% |
| Q2 2022 | 40.9 | 105.2 | 28.0% |
| Q3 2022 | 21.2 | 87.8 | 19.4% |
| Q4 2022 | 20.1 | 73.6 | 21.5% |
| Q1 2023 | 34.4 | 72.7 | 32.1% |
| Q2 2023 | 21.3 | 66.8 | 24.2% |
| Q3 2023 | 20.7 | 68.0 | 23.3% |
| Q4 2023 | 24.8 | 59.4 | 29.5% |
| Q1 2024 | 20.8 | 61.0 | 25.4% |
| Q2 2024 | 34.2 | 60.8 | 36.0% |
| Q3 2024 | 35.2 | 51.0 | 40.8% |
| Q4 2024 | 66.7 | 61.7 | 51.9% |
| Q1 2025 | 75.5 | 59.7 | 55.8% |
| Q2 2025 | 56.9 | 56.3 | 50.3% |
| Q3 2025 | 65.4 | 60.2 | 52.1% |
| Q4 2025 | 72.4 | 66.2 | 52.2% |
Venture capital boomed in 2021, but sentiment shifted in 2022 amid geopolitical uncertainty, rising interest rates, and a slowing exit market. Deal value dropped 47% between the first and fourth quarters of 2022, and AI represented only a small share of overall funding at the time.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT launched in November 2022, sparking a wave of interest in generative AI. Funding for AI and ML rose in early 2023 even as other venture deals stagnated.
The real step-change arrived in 2024. AI dealmaking accelerated throughout the year and surged in the fourth quarter, when the sector attracted $66.7 billion in funding—surpassing the $61.7 billion invested across all other sectors combined.
This growth reflects both rising investor optimism and the capital-intensive nature of AI infrastructure, including chips, data centers, and large-scale model development.
By Q4 2025, venture deals totaled $138.6 billion globally, with AI and ML accounting for 52% of the total—the first time the sector made up more than half of deal value in the dataset.
Fears of a Bubble
The surge in AI investment has split investors across public and private markets, with some warning the industry may be in a bubble while others remain highly optimistic about its long-term potential.
Concerns have also been raised about opaque private funding and circular dealmaking among major AI players. Strong earnings from companies such as Nvidia, however, have helped sustain investor enthusiasm.
How disruptive AI ultimately proves to be remains uncertain, and venture capital flows will likely continue shifting as investors respond to technological breakthroughs and broader global events.
Learn More on the Voronoi App 
To learn more about how the AI industry is creating a large cap boom, check out this graphic.
AI
Ranked: The Most Valuable Startups of 2025
Explore the most valuable startups of 2025, featuring a number of companies at the forefront of the AI revolution.
Ranked: The Most Valuable Startups of 2025
See visuals like this from many other data creators on our Voronoi app. Download it for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
Key Takeaways
- All of these companies reached unicorn status in 2025, meaning they have a valuation of over $1 billion.
- Thinking Machines Lab is a San Francisco-based AI startup founded in February 2025 by Mira Murati (former CTO of OpenAI) that aims to build more understandable, customizable AI systems.
- Lovable, one of Sweden’s biggest startups, is a “vibe-coding” platform allowing users to build full-stack apps from simple natural-language prompts.
The artificial intelligence boom has helped dozens of tech startups reach billion-dollar valuations in 2025.
These companies, also known as unicorns, are becoming increasingly common as founders use AI to redefine what’s possible in software and automation. In this graphic, we rank the most valuable startups to reach unicorn status in 2025, the vast majority of which are based in the U.S.
Data & Discussion
The data for this visualization comes from CB Insights, accessed via BestBrokers.com. It compiles the most valuable private companies in 2025, reflecting the massive hype for AI-driven innovation across industries.
| Company | Industry | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Thinking Machines Lab | AI | $12,000,000,000 |
| Abridge | AI | $5,300,000,000 |
| OpenEvidence | AI | $3,500,000,000 |
| Decart | AI | $3,200,000,000 |
| Baseten | AI | $2,000,000,000 |
| FieldAI | AI | $2,000,000,000 |
| Distyl AI | AI | $1,800,000,000 |
| Neko Health | AI | $1,800,000,000 |
| Lovable | AI | $1,800,000,000 |
| Modular AI | AI | $1,600,000,000 |
| OLIPOP | Beverages | $1,900,000,000 |
| Pathos | Biotech | $1,600,000,000 |
| CHAOS Industries | Defence Tech | $2,000,000,000 |
| Filevine | Enterprise Tech | $3,000,000,000 |
| Peregrine | AI | $2,500,000,000 |
| Supabase | Enterprise Tech | $2,000,000,000 |
| Framer | Enterprise Tech | $2,000,000,000 |
| Kalshi | Fintech | $2,000,000,000 |
| Quince | Retail | $4,500,000,000 |
| The Bot Company | Robotics | $2,000,000,000 |
AI Startups Command High Valuations
The top 10 companies in this ranking are all linked to artificial intelligence in some shape or form.
Thinking Machines Lab is a San Francisco-based AI startup founded by Mira Murati (former CTO of OpenAI) that aims to build more understandable, customizable AI systems. Its first product is called Tinker, a Python-based API for fine-tuning large language models (LLMs).
Tinker brings frontier tools to researchers, offering clean abstractions for writing experiments and training pipelines while handling distributed training complexity. It enables novel research, custom models, and solid baselines. Mira Murati, CEO of Thinking Machines Lab
Further down the list is Decart, which is developing real-time generative AI capabilities which can be used for gaming, media, and streaming. The company also offers an infrastructure platform that reduces compute costs for training AI models.
Rounding out the top 10 list is Lovable, a Swedish AI startup worth nearly $2 billion. The firm is one of Sweden’s fastest growing startups, offering a “vibe-coding” platform that allows users to build full-stack apps from simple, natural-language prompts.
Learn More on the Voronoi App
If you enjoyed today’s post, check out How 21 Countries View Artificial Intelligence on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.
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