The Unicorn Hunter: follow the money, find the future

Welcome to AI Collision 💥,

In today’s collision between AI and our world:

• The roll call of 2025 unicorns
• A few extras that are close enough
• From start-up to billion dollar IPOs?

If that’s enough to get the money flowing, read on…

AI Collision 💥

If the stock market was a bubble driven by FOMO and speculative bets on risky themes like AI, someone forgot to tell the investors.

I’ve seen at least a half dozen articles this weekend about the market, FOMO and speculative “retail” investor mania. And for me, sure that’s part of it, but also, I don’t think the mainstream and Wall St give “retail” investors enough credit.

You don’t need a CFA and MBA to profit from the market, and if the stock market is in or about to step into melt up mode, my take is Wall St and the mainstream are the last voices you’d want to listen to anyway.

Also, it’s clear this is no bubble. To see that, just follow the capital…

According to TechCrunch and PitchBook, 36 new tech unicorns have been minted so far in 2025. And when you actually dig into the list the guts of what these companies do, a striking pattern emerges.

At least 11 of these 36 companies are fundamentally AI businesses, and several more are riding the AI coattails into unicorn status. That’s nearly a third of all new unicorns this year either built on AI or using it as a competitive edge. If you want to understand where the smart money is going in 2025, it’s not complicated.

Follow the money, follow the AI, find the profits…

Here’s some of them, some to add to your watchlist, because while they’re unicorns now, good chance you’ll see a few of these IPO in the not-so-distant future.

1. Thinking Machines – The crown jewel. Founded by OpenAI alum Mira Murati, this year-old AI research outfit landed a jaw-dropping $2 billion seed at a $10 billion valuation. Backed by a16z and Nvidia, this is a foundational AI play—core research, model development, next-gen infrastructure. In short, the next OpenAI, but maybe faster and leaner.

2. Decagon – Building AI agents for customer service. Not a “bot,” but an agent—trained, persistent, context-aware AI. Decagon raised $131 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, backed by a16z and Accel. The pitch is simple, replace call centers with intelligent software.

3. Celestial AI – This California-based startup raised $250 million Series C at a $2.5 billion valuation. What they do is photonic interconnects for AI workloads. In short, AI infrastructure needed for AI to scale, using light instead of electricity to move data. Investors include BlackRock and Engine Ventures.

4. Assured – AI-powered insurance claims processing. Think of it as the invisible back office for insurers—where claims are triaged, validated, and resolved via models, not people. Raised $23 million, valued at $1 billion.

5. Clay – AI for sales prospecting. Not CRM, but an AI brain that finds the right people, crafts the message, and queues the contact automatically. Raised $40 million Series B at a $1.25 billion valuation. If your sales team isn’t using AI, they’re about to be obsolete.

6. Hippocratic AI – This one’s a big deal… a healthcare LLM. A vertical-specific model built to reason, communicate, and assist in medical decisions. Raised $141 million Series B at a $1.6 billion valuation. Backed by Kleiner Perkins and General Catalyst. Healthcare AI is going to be one of the biggest AI opportunities of this decade.

7. Truveta – AI-driven genetic and medical data analytics. They raised $320 million to build models on population-scale health data. Investors include Microsoft and Regeneron’s venture arms. Valued at $1 billion.

8. Abridge – Another medtech AI play. Turns medical conversations into structured notes and insights. It’s clinical documentation powered by voice and LLMs. Raised $250 million Series D, now worth $2.8 billion.

9. OpenEvidence – Think AI-powered legal and research assistance for clinicians. The system understands complex documentation and helps professionals navigate evidence-based medicine. Valued at $1 billion, backed by Sequoia.

10. Cyberhaven – This company is doing AI-based data leak prevention and behavioral analytics—essentially, AI as a sentinel watching your digital infrastructure. Valued at $1 billion after a $100 million Series D.

11. Netradyne – Computer vision for road safety. AI-powered dashcams and fleet monitoring tools that analyze driver behavior in real time. Raised $90 million Series D, valued at $1.35 billion.

Now, off the back of those 11, there’s a bunch more that may not be AI-first, but they’re using AI in big ways to justify their unicorn status…

Gecko Robotics – AI plus hardware. These bots crawl, fly, and swim to inspect critical infrastructure. AI turns the sensor data into real-time maintenance recommendations. Valued at $1.6 billion.

Peregrine – A data integration and analysis platform that’s all-in on AI analytics. Backed by Sequoia, valued at $2.5 billion.

Mercor – Contract recruiting marketplace using AI to match companies with the best global talent. Raised $100 million, valued at $2 billion.

Even Pathos, Function, and Insilico Medicine in healthtech, and Statsig in product development, are all incorporating AI deeply enough that you could consider them AI companies.

It’s tempting to believe the narrative that AI is overcooked. That the FOMO is running hot and valuations are just fluff.

But when you look at the deals, when you see who is investing, Sequoia, a16z, BlackRock, Nvidia, Microsoft, you realise this isn’t a top.

It’s an inflection point.

The AI rollout isn’t mature. It’s barely begun. These are the foundation-layer companies. The ones building infrastructure, vertical platforms, enterprise tools, and intelligent agents. And they’re not raising $10 million pre-seeds—they’re raising $250 million Series Cs without blinking.

They’re unicorns out of the gate.

So, don’t let the headline fatigue fool you. The capital markets are still betting big on AI—and they’re doing it with precision.

Today, they’re unicorns.

Tomorrow, they’re IPOs.

And a good chance that in this list are some future mega-stars of the stock market.

#AD

Missed Out on the AI boom? AI’s “Second Wave” Could Be 10X Bigger 

Genius investor James Altucher just revealed a rare opportunity he calls the “Wealth Window” – triggered by a new wave of AI innovation he calls AI 2.0. 

He believes it could unlock a $15.7 trillion boom… and early movers could change their fortunes using his three AI wealth-building strategies. 
 
Capital at risk. 

Boomers & Busters 💰

AI and AI-related stocks moving and shaking up the markets this week. (All performance data below over the rolling week).

Boom 📈

• Rambus (NASDAQ:RMBS) up 5%
• Xpeng (NYSE:XPEV) up 5%
• Taiwan Semi (NYSE:TSM) up 5%

Bust 📉

• Micron (NASDAQ:MU) down 3%
• Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) down 3%
• Albaba (NYSE:BABA) down 5%

From the hive mind 🧠

• Chances are that yes, there are AI “fingerprints” in these papers. But mainly because they’re trained on the data that comes from humans, hence, humans then reference for these papers. So is it really AI, or is it just a machine that’s been able to pull on huge amounts of human data?
• The Figma IPO is coming, and there’s a good chance it’s going to be big considering the hype that’s building behind it. How’s this related to AI? Well as a creative design business, the biggest threat to Figma isn’t necessarily a company like Adobe… it’s AI.
• China wanting AI from Australia is a bit rich, don’t you think?

Artificial Polltelligence 🗳️

Weirdest AI image of the day

Historical pictures of catfish in German history

ChatGPT’s random quote of the day

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to leave comments and questions below,

Sam Volkering

Editor-in-Chief

AI Collision