In the crop of 11 new companies to join The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in March 2024, a surprise sector took the lead: Three companies in the cryptocurrency and Web3 space became newly minted unicorns last month.

The board, which counts private companies with valuations of $1 billion or more, now has more than 100 current unicorns in this sector.

Last month also saw the first company from Uzbekistan join the board with Uzum, an e-commerce and payments platform.

Four of the new March unicorns are U.S. based, including IntraBio, which moved to the U.S. alongside its most recent funding. Other new unicorns in March hail from Czechoslovakia, the Cayman Islands, Singapore, China, India and Australia.

Many of the companies that became new unicorns in March raised funding well short of $100 million, which indicates smaller ownership stakes in these billion-dollar-valued companies than in such deals in previous times.

Let’s look at March’s new unicorn startups by sector.

Web3

• Berachain, an Ethereum-compatible blockchain for financial applications, raised $69 million by selling digital tokens led by BH Digital and Framework Ventures. The bear-themed blockchain company based in the Cayman Islands was valued at $1.5 billion in the deal.

• Io.net, a New York-based blockchain service to sell excess GPUs, raised $30 million in a Series A funding led by Hack VC. The 1-year-old company’s token value as of this funding was $1 billion.
• Singapore-based Web3 infrastructure Polyhedra Network raised a $20 million Series B led by crypto investor Polychain. The 1-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Financial services

• Bangalore-based Perfios Software Solutions, a 15-year-old company providing credit, onboarding and monitoring service for financial institutions, raised an $80 million Series D extension led by Toronto-based Teachers’ Venture Growth that valued the company at $1 billion.
• Uzbekistan-based Uzum, an online shopping and payments platform, raised a $52 million Series A valuing the company at $1 billion. The 1-year-old company’s funding was led by Palo Alto, California-based FinSight Ventures.

Energy

• Sungrow New Energy, a wind and solar energy subsidiary of China-based Sungrow, has raised $117 million in external funding. The company was valued at $2.8 billion.

Food and beverage

• Beverage company Liquid Death raised $67 million in funding that values the company at $1.4 billion. The 6-year-old Los Angeles-based company sells flavored sparkling water and ice teas.

AI

• Open-source generative AI company Together AI provides infrastructure to train models. The 1-year-old Menlo Park, California-based company raised a $106 million funding led by Salesforce Ventures 1 valued at $1.3 billion. It announced its Series A funding less than four months ago in November.

Real estate

• Prague-based Mews, a cloud-based hotel property management system, raised a $110 million Series D funding led by Stockholm-based Kinnevik. The 11-year-old company was valued at $1.2 billion.

Human Resources

• Sydney-based Deputy, a software platform for managing hourly workers, raised $37 million led by strategic investor Express Employment Professionals. The 15-year-old company was valued at $1.1 billion.

Healthcare and Biotech

• IntraBio, a biopharmaceutical company developing treatments for neurodegenerative diseases raised a further $40 million in funding at a value of $1 billion. Previously based in Oxford, the company has set up new headquarters in Austin, Texas.

Related Crunchbase unicorn queries

• The Crunchbase Private Unicorn Company List (1,528)

• Unicorns in the U.S. (741)
• Unicorns in Asia (491)
• European unicorns (209)
• Unicorns from LatAm (34)
• Emerging unicorn leaderboard (384)
• Exited unicorns (450)

Methodology

The Crunchbase Unicorn Board 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 as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — 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.

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.

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

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.

Illustration: Dom Guzman