CB Insights data: US added 154 new unicorns since October 2020, 67%+ of the global total, while Europe added 25 unicorns, India added 11, and China added just 9
I have previously written about Unicorn Market Cap and Industry towns in 2019 and 2020. Over the last 8 months the number … Tweets: @patrickc , @hkanji , @tanayj , and @akothari Tweets: Patrick Collison / @patrickc : Very interesting analysis from @eladgil: https://blog.eladgil.com/.... According to these data, Europe has added 25 unicorns since Oct 2020, while China has added just 9. Canada, Israel seeing striking upticks. US maintains enormous overall lead. https://twitter.com/... Hussein Kanji / @hkanji : The China data may be out of date, at least according to @ruima. It's really a two horse race between US and China, even as tech has proven it can come from anywhere. https://twitter.com/... Tanay Jaipuria / @tanayj : Silicon Valley and New York added 99 unicorns over the last 8 months. Just wild. Good analysis of unicorns across the globe by @eladgil here: https://blog.eladgil.com/... Akshay Kothari / @akothari : US is absolutely crushing the 🦄 game. Delhi, Bangalore 🇮🇳 now have 12+ unicorns each. 77 cities around the world now have atleast 1 unicorn 🌍 —> Lots of other insights in this great post by @eladgil: https://blog.eladgil.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2019 tally put the US and China at 78 and 22 newly minted unicorns, respectively; the new CB Insights snapshot shows the US pulling much further ahead while China’s additions slow sharply. That shift arrives amid a 2021 pace that had already exceeded all of 2020’s new-unicorn total, making geographic distribution—not just the total count—the salient change.
Within the US, Silicon Valley and New York supplied 99 of the 154 additions. India’s 11 additions sit alongside established 12-plus-unicorn concentrations in Delhi and Bangalore, while Canada and Israel are also accelerating.
First-order effects
- The US adds more than two-thirds of the newly counted global unicorns, with Silicon Valley and New York capturing nearly two-thirds of the US additions.
- Europe, India and China remain materially behind the US in this eight-month cohort, at 25, 11 and nine new unicorns, respectively.
Second-order effects
- The concentration of new $1 billion valuations in Silicon Valley and New York raises the visibility of those hubs as the main sources of the 2021 unicorn surge, following the more balanced US-China new-unicorn split recorded in 2019.
- Delhi and Bangalore gain a stronger position in the next tier of startup hubs as India adds 11 unicorns, while Canada and Israel’s upticks broaden the set of markets attracting attention beyond the US and China.
Third-order effects
- If successive cohorts retain this distribution, the unicorn landscape becomes more concentrated in US capital and company-building centers even as a wider group of secondary national ecosystems expands.
- The story is part of a shift from a US-China comparison toward a more fragmented global map: US dominance at the top, with India, Canada, Israel and European markets competing for the next layer of high-value startups.
The trend: Rapid unicorn creation is increasingly paired with geographic concentration, led by US hubs while several smaller ecosystems build depth.