Smart grids, which rely on new technologies like smart meters and distributed energy resources to optimize energy flows and utility operations, are designed to be more resilient, efficient, and secure than traditional electrical grids. They allow utilities to better monitor and manage electricity flows, detect outages, and respond to restore power.

They are also a key part of transitioning toward a low-carbon economy, helping move away from fossil fuels while still providing reliable electricity services to households and businesses around the world.

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The list of billion-dollar startups swelled in 2021 and early 2022 — alongside valuations across investment stages — until macro trends like inflation and rising interest rates brought the unicorn parade to a halt.

The number of new unicorn births has tumbled for 5 straight quarters, with just 13 startups reaching the $1B+ mark in Q1’23 — the lowest quarterly figure since 2017.

Collectively, the world’s unicorns are worth $3.83T. As unicorns leave the list — through an exit or following a down round or bankruptcy — we might even see the total number of unicorns shrink in the coming quarters.

Using the CB Insights database, we mapped all 1,206 global unicorn companies according to the primary markets in which they operate.

Global unicorn club market map

Our market map sorts unicorns into 15 categories, from auto & transportation to supply chain & logistics. Our “Other” category includes renewable energy, space tech, ad tech, and more.

Categories are not mutually exclusive and companies are sorted by primary use case. Data is as of 4/3/2023.

Please click to enlarge.

Key takeaways

Most valuable private companies

The world’s most valuable private company is China-based ByteDance, which is in the artificial intelligence category. The TikTok owner is worth $225B as of March 2023, following an investment from investors including AI firm G42.

Rounding out the top 5 most valuable private companies are aerospace manufacturer SpaceX (valued at $137B), fast fashion company Shein ($100B), payments processor Stripe ($50B), and collaborative online design tool Canva ($40B).

Unicorn company trends by category

Fintech is the most highly represented category on our map, accounting for roughly 1 in 5 unicorns (21.2%). It is followed by internet software & services (18.9%), e-commerce & direct-to-consumer (9.0%), and health (8.0%). The most valuable unicorn in each of these categories is:

• Fintech: Stripe (valued at $50B in March 2023).
• Internet software & services: Canva ($40B, September 2021).
• E-commerce & direct-to-consumer: Shein ($100B, April 2022).
• Health: Devoted Health ($12.6B, October 2021).

Valuation distribution

Just 3 private companies are considered “hectocorns,” meaning they have a valuation of $100B or more: ByteDance, SpaceX, and Shein.

Fifty private companies (4.1% of total unicorns) fall within the next bracket — the “decacorns,” worth between $10B and $100B. Meanwhile, more than one-fifth (22.8%) of companies included in the global unicorn club are valued at exactly $1B.

Geographic trends

Globally, a total of 51 countries and regions are represented in the unicorn club.

The US is home to just over half of all unicorns.

The 5 regions with the largest shares of unicorns are:

1. The US (54.1%)
2. China (14.0%)
3. India (5.8%)
4. The UK (4.1%)
5. Germany (2.5%)

Unicorn club growth

788 companies on our market map — nearly 2 out of 3 — have joined the unicorn club since the start of 2021.

However, the birth rate has slowed to a relatively glacial pace in recent quarters. The world’s billion-dollar startups could be in for even more pain as valuations continue to slip and layoffs intensify.

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One of the earliest applications of AI in healthcare was in diagnostic imaging, where big tech companies and startups alike developed computer vision algorithms to detect anomalies from MRIs, CT scans, X-rays, and ultrasounds. 

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At the same time, financial innovation, rapid advances in AI modeling, and new digital customer data streams are making the nature of regulatory and compliance management significantly more complicated.

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Asia-based insurtechs raised $7.4B in funding between 2018 and 2022, fueling a group of startups across the insurance landscape — especially in personal lines coverage and distribution channels.

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While resale stands as a new revenue opportunity for brands, they are running into a number of challenges when it comes to launching their own resale operations. For one, the market is becoming much more fragmented and specialized. Additionally, logistics, shipping, and critical capabilities like quality control and fraud management are also expensive to scale and implement.

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Many of this year’s winners focus on boosting the efficiency of retail operations across channels. To this end, AI is being deployed by winners across categories, to automate everything from inventory forecasting and management to counterfeit tracking. Additionally, platforms that integrate tech stacks — whether in stores or for digital selling — are gaining traction in developed as well as emerging markets. 

Other companies in this year’s winning cohort help retailers create more engaging shopping experiences, via tools like chat commerce, shoppable video, and NFTs. Sustainable shopping solutions for both consumers and retailers make a notable appearance as well.

Using the CB Insights platform, our research team picked these 100 private market vendors from a pool of over 7K companies, including applicants and nominees. 

The list includes early- and mid-stage startups driving innovation across store tech, e-commerce, loyalty & rewards, supply chain & logistics, and digital engagement. They were chosen based on factors including funding, proprietary Mosaic scores, market potential, business relationships, investor profile, news sentiment analysis, competitive landscape, team strength, and tech novelty. The research team also reviewed hundreds of Analyst Briefings submitted by applicants.

Clients can access the entire Retail Tech 100 list and interactive Collection here. (If you don’t have a CB Insights login, create one here.)

Companies are categorized by their primary focus area and client base. Categories in the market map are not mutually exclusive. Please click to enlarge.

Want to be considered for future rankings? Fill out this initial application form (it’ll take no more than a few minutes). If selected, you’ll be asked to complete our Analyst Briefing Survey so that our analysts can better understand your products, customers, and market traction.

RETAIL TECH 100 COHORT HIGHLIGHTS

Overall funding & valuation trends: The cohort has raised nearly $5B across more than 250 equity deals since 2019 (as of 3/2/23). In 2022 alone, companies on the list raised more than $3.1B across 106 deals. This year’s list features 3 unicorns: self-checkout company Mashgin, delivery management platform Veho, and omnichannel operations and loyalty tool Swiftly. 

Funding leaders: Cart.com, which makes end-to-end e-commerce technology, is the most well-funded company on the list, with $323M in total equity funding. Delivery management unicorn Veho comes in second with $299M in funding. New unicorn Swiftly rounds out the top 3 with $216M in total equity funding.

Global reach: This year’s winners come from 20 different countries. Fifty-six of the selected companies (56%) are headquartered in the US. The United Kingdom comes in second with 6 (6%) and China and Australia are tied for third with 5 companies (5%) each. 

Notably, 12 companies on the list (12%) represent emerging market economies. Local companies in these markets are increasingly looking to deploy tech to make fragmented and informal retail processes more efficient and trackable.

Some of the companies in these geographies — like Majoo (Indonesia) and Dot (India) — offer omnichannel retail operations platforms that help retailers digitize operations across in-store and online channels. Other solutions — such as Khazenly (Egypt) — are focused on delivery management.

Top investors: Insight Partners is the top investor in this year’s list. It has invested in 8 of this year’s winners since 2019, including 3D digital content producer and manager nfinite, food traceability solution iFoodDS, and delivery management platform Shipium. Tiger Global is close behind with 7 companies, followed by Accel with 5.

Digital content and engagement rules: The biggest category for this year’s list is digital shopper engagement, which has 16 companies (16%). The companies in this category allow retailers to connect with shoppers across platforms and channels, with a focus on personalization and loyalty. 

For instance, Charles and Postscript both make chat commerce platforms that enable marketing and checkout via text. Meanwhile, Arianee, METAV.RS, and Novel help brands develop NFTs and use Web3 tools to boost loyalty and authenticate their products. 

Automation is driving efficiency: Automation solutions reach across categories on this year’s list as retailers and brands look for tools to make their operations faster and smarter. 

Alloy, for instance, makes a platform to connect e-commerce teams’ apps and automate tasks. Several other companies build supply chain integration platforms that aggregate tools and use AI to optimize decision-making. Meanwhile, Vue.ai, Lily AI, and Pixyle use AI to automate product tagging and broader catalog management online, which can ultimately boost the accuracy of shoppers’ searches and drive more buying. 

Early-stage innovation: More than half of the winners in this year’s cohort are early-stage companies (seed/angel or Series A). These companies are developing innovative solutions to promote more specialized and personalized shopping experiences.

For example, EQL’s e-commerce platform is specialized for “hype commerce,” or limited-time drops for hot products. EON creates digital IDs (or digital twins) to make apparel traceable. And Nibble Technology uses AI and chat commerce to inject negotiation into e-commerce shopping.

What we didn’t find: Despite retailers’ acute challenges in a few areas — namely loss prevention and employee empowerment — our research turned up fewer-than-expected earlier-stage companies solving these problems in new ways. 

However, a few tools still stood out in these areas. For example, Spot’s AI-powered video intelligence system helps retailers track everything from shoplifting to employee issues. Meanwhile, SparkPlug’s platform helps retailers reward employees in a tough labor market through the gamification of tasks.

THE RETAIL TECH 100 CLASS OF 2022: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

The 2022 Retail Tech 100 winners have accomplished a great deal since March 2022. Together, they have seen:

• Over $2.5B in equity funding across 25+ deals (as of 3/2/23)
• 10 mega-rounds (deals worth $100M+), including a $300M round to cross-border payments company Xendit
• 2 exits: 1 merger and 1 acquisition
• 1 new entrant to the $1B+ unicorn club

If you want to learn more about the Retail Tech 100 Class of 2022, check out the full list of previous winners.

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Thanks to the 21st Century Cures Act, which added specific requirements for data sharing and costly penalties for non-compliance and data blocking, these healthcare data silos are finally collapsing. 

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Brands, retailers, and individual sellers around the globe are increasingly using technology to enable full shopping experiences on social media platforms. The approach is projected to drive $1T+ in sales by 2025, according to Accenture — up 2x from 2021. 

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This is pushing players across the food value chain — like grocery retailers, restaurants, and CPG brands — to increasingly rely on tech solutions to automate processes, improve traceability, and reduce food waste. In doing so, they can mitigate the risk of shortages and recalls, which negatively impact profitability.

In particular, AI is delivering impact across every stage of the value chain. AI-powered solutions are helping accelerate product development, reduce manufacturing downtime, better predict demand for products, monitor food freshness, and more.

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Due to varying regulatory environments, insurance is a largely localized business — providing an opportunity for homegrown insurtech startups to compete in the MENA markets.

Investors have taken note. In 2022, the region saw $417M in funding across 21 deals. This was lower than 2021 — which saw a record $545M invested across 30 deals — but the decline was much less stark than funding to the overall insurtech category, which saw a drop of nearly 50% YoY. 

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New technology is not only helping companies navigate the aftermath of these shifts, it’s changing the way they hire, manage, and provide for their employees. Investors are taking notice — funding to the HR tech space more than tripled from $5.1B in 2020 to $18.7B in 2021.

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Despite a slowdown in the rate of growth, e-commerce’s share of total retail sales remains higher than it was pre-pandemic — and associated revenues in the US are projected to keep rising. Funding to e-commerce enablement companies topped $11B last year as an increasing number of vendors entered the market.

Reflecting this growth, e-commerce tech stacks are becoming much more complex.

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The old power grid was centered around large, centralized, fossil fuel-based power plants located away from population centers as well as the use of transmission and distribution lines to connect power generators with power consumers.

Renewable energy sources like solar and wind are now challenging the fossil fuel-based nature of conventional power generation, while new distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar panels are shifting power stations to a more decentralized model. While these changes make the power grid more sustainable, new digitization and automation tech is required to bring these devices onto the grid in a way that is cost-competitive with conventional fossil fuel power generation.

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Nearly three-quarters of deaths worldwide result from chronic diseases, such as heart disease and cancer, according to the WHO. In the US alone, the CDC estimates care for people with chronic conditions accounts for 90% of the nation’s $4.1T annual healthcare spending. As the world’s population ages, these costs are expected to increase.

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The 2022 Digital Health 150 cohort has raised approximately $5.6B in aggregate funding across 378 deals since 2017 and includes startups at different investment stages of development, from early-stage companies to well-funded unicorns.

Winners are focusing on everything from reimagining clinical care, to making healthcare more accessible for underserved populations, to leveraging tech like AR/VR to improve surgical training.

These 150 winners were selected from a pool of over 13,000 companies, including applicants and nominees.

They were chosen based on several factors, including data submitted by the companies, proprietary Mosaic scores, company business models and momentum in the market, funding, business relationships, investor profiles, competitive positioning, tech novelty, and more. CB Insights’ research team also reviewed over 3,000 Analyst Briefings submitted by applicants.

Clients can access the entire Digital Health 150 list and interactive Collection here. (If you don’t have a CB Insights login, create one here.)

Companies are categorized by their primary focus area and client base. Categories in the market map are not mutually exclusive. Please click to enlarge.

Want to be considered for future rankings? Fill out this initial application form (it’ll take no more than a few minutes). If selected, you’ll be asked to complete our Analyst Briefing Survey so that our analysts can better understand your products, customers, and market traction.

DIGITAL HEALTH 150 COHORT HIGHLIGHTS

• Few repeat winners: Around 90% of this year’s winning cohort did not appear on last year’s list. This high proportion of new winners partially stems from a flood of M&A and IPO activity in 2021, which saw record exits in the digital health space. Multi-year winners like Xealth, Redox, and Maven Clinic have contended with economic pressures to earn their place once again.
• Global representation grows: Winners in this year’s Digital Health 150 span 18 countries across 5 continents. A quarter (25%) are headquartered outside of the US — the most in the history of our list. While the US still leads, the UK comes in second with 9 winners, followed by Canada with 5 and Brazil with 3.
• Focus on diagnostics: The screening, monitoring, & diagnostics category leads with 29 companies, accounting for nearly one-fifth of the Digital Health 150. Notable winners here include mobile skin lesion analytics provider Skin Analytics, vocal biomarkers companies Ellipsis Health and Kintsugi, and concussion monitoring solution Prevent Biometrics. This category is followed by interoperability, data, & analytics (12% of the winners), virtual care (11%), and digital front door & patient engagement (11%).
• Funding leaders: Since 2017, this year’s Digital Health 150 winners have raised around $5.6B in equity funding across 378 deals (as of 11/16/22). This includes $1.6B raised across 85 deals in 2022 YTD alone. The top 3 companies by all-time total equity funding raised are SWORD Health, Maven Clinic, and Viz.ai.
• Unicorn slowdown: This year’s list includes only 5 unicorns with a $1B+ valuation, around 3% of the total list. For comparison, last year’s list contained 17. This tracks with a broader drop in new unicorns across sectors in 2022.
• Top investors: General Catalyst is the most active investor in this year’s Digital Health 150 companies, having backed 13 of this year’s winners since 2017, including Homeward, Equip, Casana, and SWORD Health. Insight Partners is next with 10, followed by 7wire Ventures and Plug and Play Ventures with 6 each.
• Early-stage innovation: Nearly half of our winners are companies in earlier stages of development (incubator, angel/seed, or Series A). Players here include Vori Health, which provides hybrid (virtual and in-person) musculoskeletal care, and Janus Health, which provides process analysis, process improvement, and intelligent automation tools for revenue cycle management.

THE DIGITAL HEALTH 150 CLASS OF 2021: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Since January 2022, the 2021 Digital Health 150 winners have posted a number of accomplishments, including:

• More than $2.5B in new equity funding (as of 11/16/22).
• 9 new mega-rounds ($100M+), including a $325M round to home kidney care provider Somatus.
• 2 exits: 1 IPO and 1 acquisition.
• 4 new entrants to the $1B+ unicorn club, including Clarify Health and Transcarent.

If you want to learn more about the Digital Health 150 Class of 2021, check out the full list of previous winners.

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Our 139-page coffee table book features 120+ market maps created by CB Insights analysts to help you identify which technology markets and companies should be on your radar, including AI lifecycle management, omnichannel enablement, B2B payments tech, and more.

If you’re a tech nerd like us, we think you’ll enjoy this one.

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However, health data has been notoriously siloed and incompatible among health systems — and sometimes even among providers in the same system. Thanks to the 21st Century Cures Act rules taking effect, these data silos are finally collapsing.The result is a whole new ecosystem for health data, driven by vendors that help make the data more transactable, useful, and valuable. 

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The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in labor shortages and supply chain disruptions around the world, spurring many companies in industries like construction, manufacturing, and energy to turn to tech-enabled solutions to keep projects safe, on schedule, and within budget.

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Generative AI comprises artificial intelligence technologies and applications that generate entirely new content: code from natural language, 3D assets from 2D images, and even human-like voices from scripts. For enterprises, generative AI can augment and accelerate creative tasks such as design prototyping, as well as reduce costs by, for example, allowing fashion brands to generate models without hiring external talent.   

A number of advances in the field of AI in the last decade — particularly research from big tech companies and OpenAI — have contributed to rapid progress in this space.

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The continent’s antiquated banking system (serving mainly the affluent) and largely underbanked population have created the perfect breeding ground for fintech growth, speeding up both development and adoption of new technologies.

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For brands and retailers, this represents an expanding opportunity to reach consumers on a variety of platforms. Nearly 3 out of 4 Gen Z consumers surveyed by HubSpot say they primarily discover new products on social media, for example. 

But creating digital content that engages and converts across platforms requiring different formats — square pictures, short videos, etc. — remains a major challenge for brands. Further, consumers increasingly expect hyper-relevant content that is personalized to their needs and preferences.

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