It's the year of the unicorn.
More private companies with valuations of $1 billion or more have been freshly minted in 2026 than in any year since 2021, according to Crunchbase. This year through August, 276 companies have joined this elite group.
August itself was a strong month, with 29 companies attaining the vaunted unicorn status. Yet it was just 2026’s fifth-most-active month for creating unicorns.
“More than a third of the companies to join last month were under three years old, underscoring how quickly some of today’s best-funded start-ups are reaching multibillion-dollar valuations,” Crunchbase pointed out.
Of the 29 companies, hedge funds previously invested in three of them. Seligman Ventures, launched earlier this year, was involved with two.
The new member with the highest valuation last month was China-based humanoid robotics business XPeng Robotics, valued at more than $6.3 billion. It was followed by photonics company Lumilens, valued at $5.5 billion, then AI model platform River AI and semiconductor manufacturing start-up Source Foundry, each valued at $5 billion.
Seligman Ventures is an investor in Lumilens, which calls itself the connectivity platform for AI infrastructure. Seligman was one of six firms that co-led the company’s recent $700 million financing.
“In just two years after its founding, the company is commercially shipping its first product into production AI data centers under a multibillion-dollar customer agreement,” Lumilens said in a press release announcing the latest financing.
Source Foundry counted hedge fund Situational Awareness among its investors. This is the firm launched in 2024 by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner that blew up in July amid the AI stock market volatility. That didn’t stop it from investing $400 million in Source Foundry in August, bringing Situational Awareness’s total investment in the company to $500 million, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Hedge funds were also investors in Velaura AI, which develops low-power silicon and software for AI data centers and physical AI. In August, it raised $110 million in a Series A round, which valued the company at more than $1 billion. The fundraise was led by Seligman Ventures. Maverick Silicon, a venture capital arm of Maverick Capital, also participated.
In April 2025, Maverick Silicon invested in Velaura AI’s $153 million Series C financing round, which consisted of $138 million in equity and $15 million in venture debt. Maverick Capital itself participated in the company’s $80 million Series B financing in 2024.
