KUALA LUMPUR (Aug 3): After nearly two years of rapid growth, the number of new unicorns and value added to the Crunchbase Unicorn Board abruptly fell in July.

In a report on Tuesday (Aug 2), Crunchbase — which tracks trends, investments and news of global companies from start-ups to the Fortune 1000 — said 14 companies joined the Crunchbase Unicorn Board in July 2022, the lowest count since August 2020 when nine companies joined the board.

It said these 14 new unicorns added US$26 billion in value to the board this past month.

This contrasts with June, when 32 companies joined, adding US$49 billion in value.

Crunchbase said the new unicorns hail from six countries.

It said of those, seven are headquartered in the United States. India and the United Kingdom each have two, and one new unicorn hails from Mexico, South Korea and China respectively, per Crunchbase data.

The portal said that since the public tech rout this year, the value of billion-dollar private companies has been called into question.

It said there were zero unicorn companies undertaking initial public offering in July 2022.

E-commerce tech startup Klarna dropped its value from U$45.5 billion in June 2021 to US$6.7 billion in its most recent funding in July 2022.

London-based crypto borrowing platform Celsius Network, a unicorn since its oversubscribed Series B round in November 2021, which valued the company at US$3.5 billion, has filed for bankruptcy.

Crunchbase said July saw a single acquisition of a unicorn company and one merger.

It said FTX US signalled it would acquire BlockFi for up to US$240 million.

FTX had already provided a US$400 million revolving line of credit to BlockFi, which was last valued at US$4.5 billion in August 2021, it said.

France-based satellite provider Eutelsat is merging with London-based satellite provider OneWeb, valuing the combined companies at US$2.8 billion.

OneWeb had declared bankruptcy in 2020 and was bought by a consortium that included Bharti Global and the UK government.

In 2021, OneWeb raised US$1.75 billion in capital.

The most highly valued new unicorn is India-based EV Co, valued at US$9 billion, through a US$500 million investment from British International Investment and Mahindra and Mahindra to establish an electric vehicle company arm.

The second-most highly valued and new to the board unicorn is South Korea-based online gaming company Lionheart Studio, valued at US$3 billion in a secondary financing.

The unicorn board currently hosts 1,377 private companies with a combined valuation of US$4.6 trillion.