Tiger Global Management has the highest number of unicorn portfolio companies, while SV Angel has made the most early-stage investments in $1B+ companies.
There are 344 private unicorn companies globally valued at $1B+ as of 5/5/2019 — all featured on CB Insights’ real-time global unicorn tracker.
Over the years, a total of 2,018 disclosed investors have backed those unicorns. While 72% of unicorn investors have only invested in one unicorn company, there are some investors who have pulled away from the group, backing 10, 20, even 40+ unicorn companies.
Using CB Insights data, we looked into which investors have backed the most unicorns — and which are in the best position to see big returns, should these companies manage to exit at the valuations they’re getting in the private markets.
In this post, we’ll cover:
Note: We’ve done our unicorn hunters analysis 3 times before: July 2015, October 2016, and February 2017. Those results are included in the appendix at the bottom of this post.
- Top investors overall
- Top early-stage investors
- Most efficient investors
- Geographic trends
- Appendix: Past unicorn hunters analysis
Top investors overall
Key takeaways
By portfolio Companies In terms of total unique unicorns backed, New York-based Tiger Global Management takes the top spot, with 42 unicorn portfolio companies.
- Tiger Global Management has the most unicorn companies in its portfolio (42).
- SoftBank’s unicorn portfolio has the highest cumulative valuation at $389B — that’s 45% more than Tiger Global Management, and more than double Tencent Holdings’ cumulative unicorn valuation.
- Sequoia Capital has backed the most deals to unicorns (99).
- There are now 143 institutional investors with at least 5 unicorns in their portfolio, up from 76 such investors in February 2017.
It is closely followed by China-based Tencent Holdings, with 40 unicorns, and Japan-based SoftBank Group, with 38.
Rounding out the top 10 are Sequoia Capital China (35), Sequoia Capital (33), Kleiner Perkins (30), DST Global (29), Fidelity Investments (28), Andreessen Horowitz (28), and Wellington Management (26).
A number of highly valued unicorns have received funding from multiple top 10 investors.
Online hospitality marketplace Airbnb ($29B valuation) has been backed by 8 of the top 10 unicorn investors, ride-hailing company Uber ($72B) has been backed by 6, and online payments startup Stripe ($22.5B) has been backed by 5.
by Valuation
SoftBank’s unicorn portfolio companies have the highest cumulative valuation, with 38 unicorns worth a collective $389B.
Tiger Global Management comes in second ($269B), while Fidelity Investments comes in third ($231B).
Of the top 10 unicorn investors, Andreessen Horowitz’s unicorns have the lowest cumulative investment total, at $134B — roughly one-third of SoftBank’s figures.
Top early-stage investors......MUCH MORE
