In Asia, 46 startups raised $100M+ rounds and 11 achieved $1B+ valuation in the first half of 2015, compared to North America's 48 startups and 19 unicorns
Context & Ripple Effects
The New York Times' mid-2015 snapshot caught Asia at near-parity with North America in mega-round financing — 46 startups raising $100M+ versus 48 — though Asia still trailed on outcomes, minting 11 unicorns against North America's 19. That half-year sat at the crest of the global cycle: Pitchbook would later count 2015 as the peak for new $1B+ companies, with just 57 startups reaching $1B valuations in 2017, down from 81.
Since then the geography has rotated rather than converged. By 2019, US unicorn creation dominated while China's contribution shrank to 22 of 142 new unicorns globally, and Bay Area concentration showed up even inside the US, where the region raised $22.4B across 87 $100M+ rounds in 2018. Asia's own cycle has been violent — funding fell through 2024 before surging 93% YoY to $27.4B in Q1 2026 — making this 2015 data point the baseline from which both the boom and the bust are measured.
First-order effects
- Asian startups gained routine access to $100M+ rounds at home, ending the assumption that late-stage scale-ups had to be North American to attract nine-figure checks.
Second-order effects
- North American investors faced competing deal flow for the first time at scale, which helps explain why the unicorn gap (19 vs 11) persisted even as round sizes equalized — capital arrived in Asia faster than valuations repriced upward there.
Third-order effects
- If mega-round counts lead unicorn formation by one to two years, as the 2015 peak followed by the 2017 decline to 57 new $1B+ startups suggests, then regional mega-round tallies function as an early-cycle indicator — and Asia's 2024 trough followed by its Q1 2026 surge points toward the next wave forming there.
The trend: Venture capital rotates between regions in multi-year boom-and-bust cycles, with $100M+ round counts acting as the leading indicator of where each wave crests.