Unicorn (finance)

A unicorn is a start-up company valued at over $1 billion. The term was coined in 2013 by venture capitalist Aileen Lee, choosing the mythical animal to represent the statistical rarity of such successful ventures. Canadian unicorns are known as narwhals. A decacorn is a word used for those companies over $10 billion, while hectocorn is the appropriate term for such a company valued over $100 billion. According to VentureBeat, there were 229 unicorns as of January 2016^[update]. The largest unicorns included Uber, Xiaomi, Airbnb, Palantir, Snapchat, Dropbox and Pinterest. As of October 2015, Uber was valued by Fortune at US$51 billion.

Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark predicted in March 2015 and earlier that the rapid increase in the number of unicorns may presage what he has termed a "risk bubble" that will eventually burst, leaving in its wake what he terms dead unicorns.

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