In the past year, 44 unicorn startups and their founders have fallen out of favor, with estimated losses of $96 billion combined. At the same time, 12 ‘unicorn’ owners stopped being billionaires, starting with Sam Bankman-Friedprotagonist of the scandalous fraud of the FTX cryptocurrency platform.
According to a report from Forbes, in March 2022 these ‘unicorns’ were worth a combined $190 billion. Less than 12 months later, its value was reduced by 50.5% to 94,000 million dollars, causing the founders to lose a good part of their wealth (all, in some cases).
“A year later, with cryptocurrency crashing and markets plunging, Forbes, in consultation with leading investors and data providers, has reassessed billionaire-backed unicorns,” the publication stated.
How do unicorn startups become ‘unicorpse’?
Unicorn startups are those valued at $1 billion or more that are not yet listed on the stock market. The term was coined by Aileen Lee, founder of the investment fund Cowboy Ventures, in 2013. Most of them are related to the technology sector.
The term ‘unicorpse’ is the union of the words ‘unicorn’ and ‘corpse’ (corpse, in English). Thus, it refers to a ‘dead’ or fallen unicorn, which lost title along with its market value.
The first South American ‘unicorpse’ was the travel platform takeoff.combased in Argentina, which ceased to be a ‘unicorn’ in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Top 10 unicorns that fell from 2022 to 2023
Among the big losers are Sam Bankman-Fried and Gary Wang (both from FTX), as well as Barry Silvert (Digital Currency Group), who lost their entire fortunes and now their assets are zero.
Also on the list are Nik Storonsky, Victor Jacobsson, the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of gemini, Cliff Obrecht and malenaie perkins of canvasAnd till Kim Kardashian (Skims).
Source: Forbes.com
“The results are compelling: half of the wealth of the billionaires behind the unicorns has vanished, leaving this elite group of startup visionaries 96 billion dollars poorer than a year ago,” they explain from Forbes. “And that excludes a dozen Chinese unicorn founders who are facing their own set of problems (political and otherwise),” they clarify.
Editorial Team The editorial team of EMPRENDEDOR.com, which for more than 27 years has worked to promote entrepreneurship.