These Startups Went From Zero To Unicorn In Under 3 Years
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0 Shares Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Every year, some young startups manage to secure ultra-high valuations. Still others quickly raise multiple big funding rounds. And a few manage to do both. It looks like this year was a boom period for the latter category. Forty-six companies founded in the past three years both held or obtained unicorn status in 2025 and raised fresh funding, per Crunchbase data. (See full list here.) Collectively, they pulled in nearly $39 billion in new investment this year. Predictably, it’s an AI-centric group. The three most highly valued among recently funded unicorns 1 founded in the past three years — xAI, Mistral AI and Safe Superintelligence — are all generative AI companies. Overall, a whopping 36 out of the 46 companies on the list are in AI industry categories. The heady sums the most sought-after startups are raising these days can lead one to forget just how young many of these businesses really are. But really, even by startup standards, these are fresh-faced newbies. Take xAI.
Founder Elon Musk made the first public announcement about it in July 2023 — less than two-and-half years ago. Since then it’s raised more than $12 billion in venture funding as well as billions more in combined debt and equity financings. Or consider Mistral, founded in April 2023. In that short time, the Paris-based generative AI unicorn has raised over $3 billion and secured a $14 billion valuation. Safe Superintelligence, the startup founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is an even faster climber. Founded just 18 months ago, it’s already raised at least $3 billion in known funding. On a similar note, Thinking Machines Lab, co-founded by onetime OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, launched just 10 months ago and has already picked up $2 billion. Young companies raised record sums in megarounds this year The numbers illustrate a rising trend in the AI startup era: An increasing share of venture funding is going to young companies raising megarounds. To quantify this, we used Crunchbase data to tally the number and total value of rounds of $100 million or more to companies less than three years old at the time. The results, charted below, show that 2025 is a record-setting year for total funding to this category. Strikingly, more than $115 billion has gone to these megarounds for younger companies this year — exceeding the prior high mark during the 2021 market peak. The largesse is being spread across fewer rounds, however, with concentration among the hottest AI upstarts. Not just GenAI (although that is where the most funding is going) Still, it would be inaccurate to walk away with the impression that giant rounds for nascent startups are solely a GenAI thing. In sectors including robotics, energy tech and storage, we’re seeing capital pile up. Robotics was a particularly active area, with Skild AI, Physical Intelligence and Field AI all scoring large rounds. Base Power — provider of residential battery backup systems — is another fast-scaling newcomer. And cloud backup provider Eon, founded less than two years ago, has already raised $300 million. Pick early, invest generously Young startups securing more giant rounds signals that venture investors are looking to bet early and big. Having identified who they perceive as the most promising founders and what they see as the leading areas for scalable innovation, they’re not waiting around or taking incremental steps. Of course, it’s to be expected that not all these wagers will work out. But it’s also likely that at least few will grow into something remarkable, if they haven’t already. Related Crunchbase list: Unicorns < 3 Yrs Old That Raised Funding In 2025 Related reading: Thinking Machines Lab’s $2B Seed Round Is Biggest By A Long Shot Illustration: Dom Guzman We did not include Project Prometheus, a Jeff Bezos-led startup applying AI to solve physical world problems in the top three because it appears to be mostly operating in stealth mode at present.↩ TagsAI startups unicorn venture Stay up to date with recent funding rounds, acquisitions, and more with the Crunchbase Daily. Nirvana Insurance, an AI-based commercial insurance platform for the trucking industry, has raised a $100 million Series D round at a $1.5 billion... After three slow years, unicorn exits have finally picked up in 2025, an analysis of Crunchbase data shows. IPO counts for unicorn-valued companies... At least 126,352 workers at U.S.-based tech companies have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2025, per a Crunchbase News tally, and the cuts... This year, investors put just over $24 billion across all stages into startups in Crunchbase's cleantech, electric vehicle and sustainability-related...