Today, there are a million and one startups, and while some will successfully navigate the startup journey and become fully self-sufficient companies, others will fizzle out and simply fail. A very small number of these successful and selected startups will become worth more than one billion dollars, thus earning the title of unicorns. Although everyone knows about unicorns and is aware of which companies they are, achieving a valuation greater than one billion is actually a rare feat, and even rarer is the purchase of such a unicorn.
In the U.S., over the past 25 years, more than a thousand private startups have reached valuations of one billion dollars. While some of these startups eventually go public and become household names, often the founders exit the startups through mergers and acquisitions, and even more frequently sell the startup to someone else. In fact, since 1997, more than half of the 1110 unicorns in the U.S. have been sold in some way – whether through an IPO, direct listing, SPAC, or acquisition.
Ilya Strebulaev, a professor of finance and private equity at Stanford Graduate School of Business, presents this visualization showing the companies that have acquired the most unicorns in the last 25 years. Strebulaev’s database lists 137 private and public companies along with those that have purchased at least one unicorn from 1997 to the present, totaling 177 acquisitions.
The Largest U.S. Unicorn Buyers
A total of 27 companies have purchased two or more unicorns, accounting for nearly 38 percent of all acquisitions. 110 companies have purchased only one unicorn.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, leads the group with the highest number of unicorn acquisitions in the U.S., having bought five unicorns since its founding in 2008, including: Kustomer, WhatsApp, Instagram, CTRL-Labs, and Oculus VR.
