Robotics and Chips Led 27 New February Unicorns
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- The Crunchbase Unicorn Board added 27 companies in February, with 6 robotics firms and 4 semiconductor startups leading the count — healthcare contributed 3 new unicorns, while foundation AI, cloud services, aerospace, and financial services each added 2.
- OpenAI raised $110 billion at an $840 billion post-money valuation, making it the most highly valued private company of all time, while Anthropic closed a $30 billion round at $380 billion, the fourth-largest valuation on the board.
- The U.S. accounted for 19 of February's 27 new unicorns, followed by China with 4, the U.K. with 2, and India and Germany with one apiece.
- Waymo was valued at $126 billion, placing the autonomous-driving company among the top 10 most highly valued private companies tracked by Crunchbase.
- MatX, a Mountain View-based AI training chip developer, posted the largest single round of any February newcomer at a $500 million Series B, while Mumbai-based cloud GPU provider Neysa raised $600 million from Blackstone at a $1.4 billion valuation.
- Bedrock Robotics topped the robotics cohort at a $1.8 billion valuation after a $270 million Series B, and Beijing-based Spirit AI raised $290 million at $1.5 billion; four of the six new robotics unicorns were China-based.
Why it matters: Hardware startups matched AI software's unicorn-creation pace in February — 10 of 27 new billion-dollar companies were robotics or chip firms, led by Bedrock Robotics at $1.8 billion. AI software still wins on sheer scale: OpenAI's $110 billion raise at an $840 billion valuation makes it the most valuable private company on record, dwarfing the valuations of every February newcomer individually.
