29 Companies Joined The Unicorn Board In August, Led By AI Software And Semiconductors

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A total of 29 companies joined The Crunchbase Unicorn Board in August, adding around $63 billion in value to the board. More than a third of the companies to join last month were under 3 years old, underscoring how quickly some of today’s best-funded startups are reaching multibillion-dollar valuations.

The highest-valued new entrants were China-based humanoid robotics business XPeng Robotics, valued at more than $6.3 billion; San Jose, California-based photonics company Lumilens, valued at $5.5 billion; and Palo Alto, California-based AI model platform River AI, and San Francisco’s semiconductor manufacturing startup Source Foundry, both valued at $5 billion.

AI software featured prominently across model training, assistants, agentic and enterprise workflow automation, coding and voice transcription.

Semiconductors was the second-largest sector, with five new unicorns. Robotics and financial services each added three, while data centers, security and energy each added two.

The U.S. accounted for 16 of August’s new unicorns. China followed with four. South Korea, India, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Germany and Turkey each added one. Nigeria and Indonesia also each added one new unicorn — for both, their first new unicorn of the year.

Nine companies exited the Unicorn Board in August, per Crunchbase data: Three that went public — the most notable being Unitree Robotics — and six via acquisition, including Hugging Face, OpenRouter and Airtable.

New unicorns in August

Here are August’s new unicorn companies:

AI and software

  • River AI, a Palo Alto, California-based platform for training, fine-tuning and deploying custom AI models based on proprietary data, announced $1.1 billion in funding led by General Catalyst and AMP PBC. The less-than-1-year-old company, founded by former xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin, was valued around $5 billion.
  • San Francisco-based Instinct, an AI assistant that executes personal tasks, raised a $250 million Series B led by Benchmark and Index Ventures. The 1-year-old company was valued at $2.5 billion.
  • Shanghai-based Pragmatik Labs, a builder of agents for digital and physical environments, raised a $220 million seed round led by Gaorong Capital and HongShan. The less-than-1-year-old company was valued at $2 billion. Its founder, Junyang Lin, a Qwen researcher, left Alibaba Group earlier this year.
  • San Francisco-based Wispr Flow, which builds AI-powered voice-writing and meeting-transcription tools, raised a $280 million Series B led by Menlo Ventures, who also led its Series A in 2025. The 5-year-old company was valued at $2 billion.
  • San Francisco-based CodeRabbit, which provides AI-powered code review and change-management tools, raised a $143 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation. Atomico and Smash Capital co-led the round. The 3-year-old company said it would commit more than $10 million to keep its tools free for open-source projects over the next year.
  • San Francisco-based HappyRobot, which deploys AI agents across calls, email, documents and enterprise systems, raised a $150 million Series C at a $1.2 billion post-money valuation. Prysm Capital and Eurazeo led the round. The company is 4 years old, started in logistics and has expanded to insurance, energy, telecommunications and airlines among others and counts 150 enterprise customers.
  • Turkey-based HubX, a developer of consumer mobile applications, raised a $50 million Series A led by Point72. The 4-year-old company was valued at $1.25 billion. Its apps include AI chatbot Nova, diagnosing plants with PlantApp, and art generator DaVinci.

Semiconductors

  • Lumilens, a San Jose, California-based developer of photonic interconnects for AI computing infrastructure, raised a $700 million Series C at a $5.5 billion valuation. Atreides Management, Bain Capital Ventures, Meritech Capital Partners, Seligman Ventures and Spark Capital led the round. The 2-year-old company is already deployed within data centers.
  • Source Foundry raised $400 million in funding led by hedge fund Situational Awareness. The 1-year-old company was valued at $5 billion. The San Francisco-based company creates tooling for semiconductor manufacturing and was founded by Stanford researchers.
  • South Korea-based DEEPX, which develops edge AI processors for on-device inference, raised about $29 million in the first tranche of its Series D funding from existing investors. The 8-year-old company targeting robotics and electronics was valued at about $2.2 billion.
  • Shanghai-based FangQing Technology, an AI chip startup for inference, raised a Series A led by local state capital investors Xuhui Venture Capital and Zhuhai Science and Technology Industry Group. The 4-year-old company was valued at about $1.5 billion with plans to ship its product in Q4 2026.
  • Santa Clara, California-based Velaura AI, which develops low-power silicon and software for AI data centers and physical AI, raised a $110 million Series A led by Seligman Ventures. The 4-year old company was valued at more than $1 billion.

Robotics

  • China-based XPeng Robotics, which is building the general-purpose IRON humanoid robot, raised more than $900 million in its first outside financing at a post-money valuation exceeding $6.3 billion. IDG Capital led the round, with participation from Gaorong Capital and support from Tencent and Alibaba Group. The company, a subsidiary of public smart electric vehicle company XPeng Motors, is 10 years old.
  • Singapore-based Sharpa, which develops robots to operate in real-world environments, raised about $669 million in funding. The 2-year-old company was valued at about $3.3 billion and is set to deploy robots in a Dairy Queen in Shanghai to handle the entire 55-step process of taking orders, preparing the food and handing it to a customer.
  • Zurich-based Gravis Robotics, which develops autonomous technology for heavy construction machinery, raised a $200 million Series A led by SoftBank. The 4-year-old company was valued at $1 billion and works across multiple construction brands.

Financial services

  • Bengaluru-based Navi Technologies, a financial-services company spanning payment, lending and insurance, raised $100 million in funding led by Prosus Ventures. The 7-year-old company was valued at $1.3 billion.
  • Berlin-based Moss, a finance AI platform for European mid-sized businesses to  manage spend, card issuing and expenses, raised a $40 million Series C led by Portage Ventures and Cherry Ventures. The 7-year-old company was valued at around $1.15 billion. The company says it has 5,000 businesses that use the service to give finance teams control.
  • Palo Alto, California-based Rillet, an AI-native enterprise resource planning platform for accounting, raised a $100 million Series C led by Iconiq Capital. The 4-year-old company was valued at $1 billion.

Aerospace and defense

  • Los Angeles-based Neros Technologies, a manufacturer of autonomous military drones and counter-drone systems, raised a $250 million Series C at a $2.5 billion post-money valuation. Sequoia Capital and the American Strategic Technology Fund co-led the round. The company is 3 years old. Neros has contracts with the U.S. military as well as half a dozen allied countries.
  • Mountain View, California-based Muon Space, which builds and operates satellite constellations for national security, civil and commercial customers, raised a $250 million Series C led by Eclipse. The 5-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Data centers

  • Palo Alto, California-based Volta, a vertically integrated AI infrastructure platform, raised a $300 million Series A led by Altimeter Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Azora and Nvidia. The less-than-1-year-old company was valued at $2.4 billion. Alongside the equity, Volta secured $5 billion in debt to fund data center buildouts.
  • Zankore, a full-stack AI infrastructure and neocloud platform, received $800 million in corporate funding led by Doha-based broadband provider Ooredoo, which holds a 49% stake. Jakarta-based Zankore is less than 1-year-old and is valued at $1.6 billion. The platform is targeting 1 gigawatt of AI computing capacity.

Security

  • San Francisco-based Horizon3.ai, an AI-native security company that provides autonomous penetration testing, raised a $250 million Series E led by New Enterprise Associates and NightDragon. The 7-year-old company was valued at $2 billion and is used by 7,000 organizations including defense, Fortune 10, banks and healthcare companies among others.
  • Palo Alto, California-based Obsidian Security, which provides security for AI agents and third-party applications, raised an $85 million Series D led by Crescent Cove Advisors. The 9-year-old company was valued at $1.1 billion.

Energy

  • China-based Nova Fusion, a nuclear fusion company developing small modular reactors, raised about $179 million in seed funding. The 1-year-old company was valued at about $1.5 billion.
  • Washington, D.C.-based Emerald AI, which develops software that adjusts AI data-center workloads based on power-grid demands, raised a $150 million Series A at a $1 billion valuation. Energize Capital and DCVC co-led the round. The 2-year-old company says the round brings total funding to more than $220 million.

Transportation

  • Nigeria-based Moove, a vehicle financing and autonomous fleet management infrastructure, raised a $250 million Series C led by Ion Pacific, Mubadala and Woven Capital. The 7-year-old company was valued at $2.1 billion. It operates a fleet of 42,000 vehicles — both human-driven and autonomous — across 29 cities, with annual recurring revenue of $420 million. 

Critical minerals

  • Houston-based Mariana Minerals, which builds mines and refineries using its MarianaOS software platform, raised a $310 million Series B led by Khosla Ventures. The 2-year-old company was valued at $1.5 billion.

Web3

  • Dubai-based Fasset, an AI-enabled stablecoin neobanking platform for cross-border payments and tokenized assets, raised a $68 million Series C led by Tokyo-based SBI Group at a $1 billion valuation. The 7-year-old company says it processes more than $40 billion in annualized transaction volume.

Related Crunchbase unicorn lists:

Related reading:

Methodology

The Crunchbase Unicorn Board is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are added to the Unicorn Board as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round. 

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations — such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options — as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter. 

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to The Exited Unicorn Board. 

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits. 

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

Illustration: Dom Guzman