The value of the unicorn board also picked up significantly in the final month of the year, with the highest-ever value accorded to a private company. That was SpaceX<\/a>, which vaulted to the top of the list when it was valued at $800 billion in a secondary market transaction, double its valuation from just three months earlier.<\/p>\n And Databricks<\/a>, the seventh-most highly valued private company at $134 billion, was also valued up from its $100 billion valuation months earlier.<\/p>\n New unicorns in December<\/p>\n Of the new unicorns last month, 15 were U.S.-based, two hail from China, and six are based in Europe, including two from the U.K. and one each from Germany, France, Finland and Belgium.<\/p>\n Financial services, aerospace and AI led with the highest count of new companies to join.<\/p>\n It is worth noting that a third of these companies were more than 10 years old, with some seeing a reacceleration in their business driven by AI.<\/p>\n On the other end of the spectrum, the fastest to reach unicorn status in December was Unconventional AI<\/a>, which raised its seed round at a $4.5 billion value.<\/p>\n Here are December\u2019s 23 newly minted unicorns.<\/p>\n Fintech<\/p>\n Aerospace<\/p>\n AI<\/p>\n Energy<\/p>\n E-commerce<\/p>\n Marketing<\/p>\n DevOps<\/p>\n Social media<\/p>\n Security<\/p>\n Defense<\/p>\n IoT<\/p>\n Healthcare<\/p>\n Related Crunchbase unicorn lists:<\/p>\n Related reading:<\/p>\n Methodology<\/p>\n The Crunchbase Unicorn Board<\/a> is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are added to the Unicorn Board<\/a> as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.<\/p>\n The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations \u2014 such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options \u2014 as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.<\/p>\n Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to The Exited Unicorn Board<\/a>.<\/p>\n Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.<\/p>\n Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.<\/p>\n\n
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