Unicorn Hunters: These Investors Have Backed The Most Billion-Dollar Companies (2024)

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 344private 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 of2,018 disclosedinvestors have backed those unicorns. While 72% of unicorn investorshave 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:

• Top investors overall
• Top early-stage investors
• Most efficient investors
• Geographic trends
• Appendix: Past unicorn hunters analysis

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

Key takeaways

• 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.

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.

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 companyUber ($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

Investors that back these companies in early funding rounds stand to gain more from their exits. We evaluated which firms invested in the most unicorns at the seed and Series A rounds.

SV Angel has retained its #1 spot since our last analysis in February 2017, while Sequoia Capital has slipped in rankings from second to fourth place. Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital China round out the top 3 early-stage investors.

Most efficient investors

One way to measure a firm’s relative investment prowess is to look at the proportion of total unicorn investments to the number of those investments made at the early-stage. (In other words, how often a firm is getting in on the ground floor.)

A few of the most effective investors on this list are Y Combinator (18 unicorns, with 16 being early-stage investments), SV Angel (23 unicorns, 18 early-stage investments), and IDG Capital (18 unicorns, 11 early-stage investments).

Below is a complete list of the top investors in unicorn companies and the number of unicorn portfolio companies that they invested in at the early stages.

Geographic trends

The majority of unicorns are in the United States (49%), followed by China (26%). Among the top 10 unicorn hunters, unicorn portfolio companies are largely US-based, followed by China-based unicorns.

Unsurprisingly, China-based investors back proportionally more Chinese unicorns, and US-based investors back proportionally more American unicorns.

All top 10 US-based unicorn investors have at least half of their unicorn investments in US-based companies. All investors shown above have the majority of their investments in US-based companies, with the exception of Tencent Holdings and Sequoia Capital China.

Sequoia Capital China has backed the most number of Chinese unicorns (27), representing 29% of all China-based unicorns.

SoftBank has backed the most unicorns (18) that are based outside of the United States and China.

Appendix: Past analysis

February 2017

october 2016

july 2015

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