UK Unicorn Company Tracker
There is no agreed number of UK unicorns. Ask two respected data providers in the same month and you get 205 and 80. Neither is wrong. They are counting different things, and almost nobody quoting the figure says which.
That is the first thing this page tries to fix. The second is dating: a $1bn valuation is a price from one day, and companies cross the line in both directions.
Checked August 2026.
The counts, and what each one means
| Source | UK count | Dated | What it counts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dealroom | 205 | August 2026 | Unicorn-tier companies valued at $1bn or more, no restriction by founding decade |
| Hurun UK Unicorns 2026 | 80 | 1 July 2026 | Startups founded in the 2000s, not yet listed on a public exchange, worth $1bn or more |
Hurun’s rule is the stricter one, and it explains most of the gap. It excludes anything founded before 2000 and anything already public. Dealroom’s is broader.
The other headline numbers, from the same two sources:
- Dealroom puts the UK third in the world behind the United States (2,298) and China (497), and first in Europe.
- Hurun values its 80 at £242.4bn, up 47% year on year, and counts 23 new entrants in 2026, the largest cohort in UK history.
- Hurun puts 60 of the 80 in London, more than the whole of Germany (31) or France (29).
- Fintech is still the largest block on Hurun’s count: 27 companies holding 53% of the total value.
Use one source consistently if you are tracking change over time. Mixing them produces trends that are really just definition changes.
The largest, with the deal behind each mark
Aggregate counts are estimates. Individual valuations do not have to be, because most of these came from a deal somebody announced.
| Company | Valuation | Set by | Announced |
|---|---|---|---|
| Revolut | $75bn | Secondary share sale led by Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer and Fidelity | 24 Nov 2025 |
| Nscale | $14.6bn | $2bn Series C led by Aker ASA and 8090 Industries | 9 Mar 2026 |
| Checkout.com | $12bn | Employee share buyback | 26 Sep 2025 |
| ElevenLabs | $11bn | $500m Series D led by Sequoia Capital | 4 Feb 2026 |
| Wayve | $8.6bn | $1.2bn Series D led by Eclipse, Balderton and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 | 25 Feb 2026 |
| Ineffable Intelligence | $5.1bn | $1.1bn seed round led by Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed | 27 Apr 2026 |
| Synthesia | $4bn | $200m round | Oct 2025 |
| CuspAI | $2.6bn | $450m Series B led by Kleiner Perkins and NEA | 20 Jul 2026 |
| PhysicsX | ~$2.4bn | $300m Series C led by Temasek | 8 Jun 2026 |
The marks are ten months apart at the extremes, so ranking them against each other is rough. More on how each type of deal sets a price, and where secondary sales differ from priced rounds, on the valuation tracker.
Joining the club in 2026
Five UK companies that crossed $1bn during 2026, with the round that did it:
- Nscale, $14.6bn on a $2bn Series C, 9 March. AI data centre infrastructure.
- Ineffable Intelligence, $5.1bn on a $1.1bn seed round, 27 April. Founded in 2025 by UCL professor David Silver.
- Nyobolt, $1bn on a $60m Series C led by Symbotic, May. Cambridge fast-charging batteries.
- Fresha, just over $1bn on an $80m investment from KKR, 21 May. London beauty and wellness bookings, profitable, running at over $140m revenue.
- Kraken Technology Group, $1bn on a $175m Series B led by DTCP, 9 July. Uncrewed maritime vessels, backed by the NATO Innovation Fund and Rheinmetall.
Two of those are not software companies, which is a change worth noticing. Batteries and naval vessels are not where UK billion-dollar valuations have traditionally come from.
Leaving the club
Unicorn lists rot because they only track arrivals. These UK companies were on them and should not be:
- Deliveroo. DoorDash completed its acquisition on 2 October 2025 at 180p a share, about £2.9bn.
- Darktrace. Thoma Bravo completed a $5.3bn take-private on 1 October 2024. Its London listing was cancelled the next day.
- Alphawave Semi. Acquired by Qualcomm, completed 18 December 2025 at $2.4bn.
- Oxford Ionics. Acquired by IonQ, completed 17 September 2025 at $1.075bn.
- Wise. A public company since 2021, and since 11 May 2026 primarily listed on Nasdaq with a London secondary listing.
A valuation can also fall below the line without any event to report. Checkout.com was marked at $40bn in 2022 and $12bn in 2025, a drop of about 70%. It is still a unicorn. It is not the company the 2022 figure described.
Checking a unicorn valuation yourself
- Start with the company’s own announcement. A priced round with a named lead and a stated valuation is the strongest evidence there is.
- Then Companies House. UK companies file form SH01 for every share issue, giving the number of shares and the price paid, usually within a month. Multiply by the fully diluted share count for a floor on the post-money figure.
- Check whether it is still private. An acquisition or a listing removes a company from most unicorn definitions, and lists are slow to notice.
- Ignore estimated valuations on aggregator sites unless the method is published. Many are an old round with a multiple applied.
Frequently asked questions
How many unicorns are there in the UK?
It depends on the definition. Dealroom counted 205 unicorn-tier UK companies in August 2026. Hurun, which counts only companies founded in the 2000s and still private, counted 80 on 1 July 2026 worth £242.4bn. Quote the source alongside the number.
Which is the most valuable UK unicorn?
Revolut, at $75bn. That mark came from a secondary share sale led by Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer and Fidelity, announced on 24 November 2025.
How many new UK unicorns were there in 2026?
Hurun counted 23 new entrants in 2026, the largest cohort it has recorded for the UK. Five with clearly dated rounds are listed above: Nscale, Ineffable Intelligence, Nyobolt, Fresha and Kraken Technology Group.
Is Darktrace still a UK unicorn?
No. Thoma Bravo took it private for $5.3bn on 1 October 2024 and its London listing was cancelled the following day. It is a portfolio company of a US private equity firm.
Why do unicorn lists disagree so much?
Three reasons: whether public and acquired companies are included, whether a founding-date cut-off applies, and how old each provider’s valuation marks are. Those three choices comfortably account for a gap of 125 companies.
What this page dropped
The previous version reported 49 UK unicorns, £387bn of total valuation, 12 new in 2024 and 73% based in London, none of it sourced or dated. It also gave an average annual growth rate of 127%, a median time to unicorn of 7.3 years, an international expansion rate of 84% and an employee growth rate of 145%, all attributed to an internal tracking system that did not exist.
Its four featured companies were stale by the time it was archived. Revolut was listed at £24.5bn against a real mark of $75bn, Deliveroo at £2.1bn nine months after DoorDash bought it, and Darktrace at £4.2bn as an active unicorn nearly two years after Thoma Bravo took it private. The claim that the UK was Europe’s second-largest unicorn ecosystem behind Germany was wrong in both directions: every source on this page puts the UK first in Europe by a wide margin.
Quotes attributed to named staff have gone too, along with the daily-updated database that was never accessible.
Related: the startup valuation tracker, the UK startup funding tracker and London tech company profiles.