AI now dominates new unicorn creation. Over half (57%) of the 54 companies reaching $1B+ valuations in 2025 YTD are AI companies.
Capital is flooding the landscape, with 1 in 2 venture dollars going to AI startups.
These trends reflect AI hype. Investors are placing big early bets on AI potential, with many companies still proving out sustainable revenue models. For example, Thinking Machines Lab — co-founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati — raised a record-breaking $2B seed round at a $12B valuation in June 2025 with no product yet launched.
But beyond the hype, CB Insights Commercial Maturity scores highlight a shift toward increasing maturity among the AI companies hitting unicorn status. We highlight the trend below.
Commercial Maturity: Measures a private company’s current ability to compete for customers or serve as a partner based on 30+ signals. Ranging from 1 to 5, it provides a clear, quantitative measurement for where a company lies in its development and growth process.
2024: Racing ahead of revenue
More than half of the AI unicorns born in 2024 were at the validating/deploying stages of development. Meanwhile, non-AI new unicorns mostly had to get to at least the scaling stage before earning their unicorn status.
2025: The maturity shift
In 2025 so far, the gap with non-AI unicorns is closing. Both new AI and non-AI unicorns are mostly in the scaling stage.
This indicates that investors are increasingly looking to proven business models over pure potential, and that companies themselves are gaining traction with customers as the genAI space matures.
For example, among the AI startups surpassing the $1B+ valuation mark in 2025 are:
- Sales automation platform Clay (CM: 4), which is projecting $100M in revenue this year
- Workflow automation platform Tines (CM: 5), which has 200 business relationships on the CBI platform
- AI scribe Abridge (CM: 4), which has $117M in contracted ARR
If 2024 was the year of AI hype with investors placing big early bets, 2025 marks a shift toward increasing maturity as AI unicorns prove out sustainable revenue models.
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