Close to 40 VC-backed startups reached billion-dollar valuations in the first half of 2026, according to a TechCrunch compilation published on July 5, 2026, drawing on Crunchbase and PitchBook data. The list will be updated as new entrants are confirmed throughout the year.

The monthly rhythm tells its own story. January 2026 opened with 31 companies joining The Crunchbase Unicorn Board — the highest single-month count since June 2022. March topped that with 37 additions, the strongest monthly figure in nearly four years, with robotics leading all sectors at six new entrants. May produced another 29, of which 17 were US-based, four were Chinese, four were British, and two were Canadian.

AI is the dominant driver. Of the January cohort, manufacturing and security each contributed three new unicorns, both sectors explicitly propelled by AI integration. Fintech placed fourth overall in the half-year, generating ten billion-dollar startups — among them Juspay, the Indian payments infrastructure company.

The Standout Raises

The May cohort contained several entries worth examining closely, both for their scale and their positioning in the current infrastructure buildout.

AI research lab Recursive, founded in 2025, closed a $650 million Series A led by GV and Greycroft to reach a $4.65 billion valuation — a valuation-to-age ratio that would have been implausible in any prior funding cycle. Medical device company MiRus arrived at $4.41 billion after a $1.5 billion late-stage strategic round from Boston Scientific, the largest single check in the cohort by a considerable margin.

EXA, which builds web retrieval infrastructure for AI agents, raised $250 million in a Series C led by Andreessen Horowitz, landing at $1.95 billion. That positioning — agentic retrieval rather than model training — reflects where a significant slice of infrastructure spend is now flowing. AI hardware startup Positron, founded in 2024, reached $1.06 billion on $234 million in Series B funding, underscoring continued investor appetite for alternatives in the inference hardware stack.

On the healthcare side, Vi Labs closed a $145 million round at $1.64 billion, and healthcare automation company Forus raised $160 million in a Series B led by Accel to hit $1.01 billion. The pairing illustrates that "AI in healthcare" now spans both clinical workflow automation and enterprise platform plays.

Away from AI, Socket — the software supply-chain security startup — raised $60 million in a Series C led by Thrive Capital to reach a $1 billion valuation. Supply-chain security has been a persistent theme since the SolarWinds and Log4Shell episodes; Socket's unicorn moment reflects maturing enterprise procurement rather than speculative excitement. SendCutSend, which produces custom industrial parts using digital fabrication, raised $110 million in a Series A led by Paradigm and Sequoia to cross the billion-dollar threshold — an unusual Sequoia-backed manufacturing play that signals broadening LP interest in physical-world automation.

Inventory management platform Radar raised $170 million in a Series B to reach $1 billion, while wealth management platform Farther closed a $150 million Series D led by General Atlantic at $1.25 billion. In June 2026, MainFunc — the company behind AI workspace Genspark — completed a $485 million Series B, bringing total funding to $645 million and pushing its valuation to $2.6 billion.

What the Pattern Suggests

The sectoral spread here is wider than the 2021 vintage, which was heavily concentrated in fintech and SaaS. This cohort runs from inference hardware to industrial fabrication to supply-chain security to wealth management. AI either directly defines the product or sits beneath the hood as an operational accelerant in the majority of cases.

Valuations in the AI-native group also compress time in ways worth noting carefully. Recursive at $4.65 billion on a single Series A, one year after founding, and Positron at $1.06 billion two years in, reflect a market where investors are pricing expected infrastructure dominance rather than demonstrated revenue scale. That is not inherently irrational — platform bets in early infrastructure cycles have historically rewarded early commitment — but it places significant weight on technical execution and go-to-market speed that few young organizations have yet proven they can sustain.

The geographic distribution of the May cohort — 17 of 29 in the US, with the UK and China tied at four each — is consistent with a broader re-concentration of early-stage AI capital around established deep-tech ecosystems, even as the underlying models and tooling grow more accessible globally. The year is not yet complete. With the pace running at roughly six to eight new unicorns per month, the 2026 full-year total is tracking toward the highest count since the 2021 peak.