Who Made the Most U.S. Unicorn Acquisitions Since 1997? (+Are Unicorn Acquisitions Slowing Down?)

🧐 Who Made the Most U.S. Unicorn Acquisitions in the Last 25 Years? 🧐

Meta! But there’s more…

Unicorn status - the dream of many startups.

A difficult milestone to achieve, but certainly reachable.

There were 1,110 unicorns in the United States in the last 25 years, according to data from Visual Capitalist.

Over half of those have made some kind of exit through various methods:

→ IPO

→ Direct listing

→ SPAC

→ Acquisition

Meta was the company that purchased the most unicorns in the last 5 years, including Kustomer, WhatsApp, Instagram, CTRL-Labs, and Oculus VR.

However, the rate of acquisition has slowed down in recent years.

A 2023 report by PitchBook showed the following number of unicorn acquisitions through the years:

> 2022: 5 unicorn acquisitions

> 2021: 24 unicorn acquisitions

> 2020: 17 unicorn acquisitions

The current capital demand far outstrips supply and Biden’s antitrust crackdown on the tech sector isn’t helping.

Do you believe the US unicorn acquisition activity will pick back up? 💬

#startups #fundraising #venture