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At present, there are around 326 private companies around the world valued at $1B+. In fact, there are more startups raising angel funding with dreams to become the next unicorn of the year. Becoming a unicorn is not an easy job, it takes a hell lot of time, planning, strategies, sleepless nights and much more. In this process, a very few achieve, some sustain and a lot of them fail.
There are some common characteristics that every unicorn company shares. Most unicorn start-ups have disrupted the industry they belong to and have maintained their positioning by constantly innovating and improving the service they offer. In addition to it, they are very much consumer focused.
What is unicorn company?
A unicorn is a privately held startup company valued at over $1 billion.
Unicorns in Europe
In the case of Europe, four new company emerged as unicorns so far in 2019. Notably, Europe (excluding Israel) now counts 160 unicorns, of which 110 realised and 50 unrealised.
In this article, we have listed out 10 unicorns from the UK with the help of Dealroom.
OakNorth (London)
Founders: Joel Perlman, Rishi Khosla
Firm Valuation: $2.8B
Funding: €783M
Launched in September 2015, OakNorth is a UK bank that provides fast, flexible and accessible debt finance (from £500k to £45m) to established British businesses. The company was launched by the entrepreneurs when they faced in securing debt finance from high street banks for their previous business. The OakNorth clients include nurseries, hotels, care homes, private equity firms, bars, restaurants, tech companies, and much more.
Deliveroo (London)
Founders: Greg Orlowski, William Shu
Firm Valuation: $2B
Funding: €781M
Deliveroo is on a mission to transform the way the world thinks about food delivery. The company’s technology platform optimizes food ordering and delivery by integrating web and mobile consumers with restaurant tablet-based point-of-sale order management terminals, and their logistics optimization algorithm.
BenevolentAI (London)
Founders: Brent Gutekunst, Ivan Griffin, Ken Mulvany, Michael Brennan
Firm Valuation: $2.1B
Funding: €195M
BenevolentAI is an advanced technology company with end-to-end capability from early discovery to late-stage clinical development. Headquartered in London, the company has offices in New York and Belgium. The company seeks to improve patient’s lives by applying technology designed to lower drug development costs, decrease failure rates and increasing the speed at which medicines are generated.
The company aim to accelerate the journey from inventive ideas to medicine s for patients by developing AI to generate new treatments for some of the world’s 8,000 untreated diseases.
Improbable (London)
Founders: Herman Narula, Peter Lipka, Rob Whitehead
Firm Valuation: $2B
Funding: €547M
In the world of gaming and entertainment, Improbable aims to unlock next-generation gameplay through virtual worlds of unprecedented scale, persistence and richness through their platform – SpatialOS. It lets developers transcend the limits of regular computation to improve and achieve extraordinary things.
Oxford Nanopore (Oxford)
Founders: Gordon Sanghera, Hagan Bayley
Firm Valuation: £1.5B
Funding: € 529M
Oxford Nanopore Technologies develops nanopore-based electronic systems for analyzing single molecules, including DNA, RNA and proteins. This technology is being used in more than 80 countries, for a range of biological research applications including human genomics, cancer research, microbiology, plant science and environmental research.
Revolut (London)
Founders: Nikolay Storonsky, Vlad Yatsenko
Firm Valuation: $1.7B
Funding: €309M
Revolut is a digital banking alternative that includes a pre-paid debit card, currency exchange, and peer-to-peer payments. The company aims to build a fair and frictionless platform to use and manage money around the world. It has developed a platform allowing users to transfer, exchange, and spend money with a multi-currency card that is accepted everywhere.
DarkTrace (England)
Founders: Dave Palmer, Emily Orton, Jack Stockdale, Nicole Eagan, Poppy Gustafsson
Firm Valuation: $1.7B
Funding: € 210M
Darktrace is an artificial intelligence company for cybersecurity. It uses machine learning and AI algorithms to detect and respond to cyber-threats across diverse digital environments, including cloud and virtualized networks, IoT and industrial control systems. Furthermore, the technology is self-learning and requires no set-up, identifying threats in real time and updating its understanding as the environment changes.
Transferwise (London)
Founders: Kristo Kaarmann, Taavet Hinrikus
Firm Valuation: $1.6B
Funding: €360M
TransferWise is a money transfer service allowing private individuals and businesses to send money abroad without hidden charges. This platform provides customers with a lower-cost alternative to traditional means of moving money internationally. Notably, TransferWise is licensed and regulated by the UK Financial Services Authority.
Monzo (England)
Founders: Gary Dolman, Jason Bates, Jonas Huckestein, Paul Rippon, Tom Blomfield
Firm Valuation: £1.1B
Funding: €254M
Monzo (previously Mondo) is a bank targeted at people who want to get things done in a click and who don’t see the need for branches and cheque books. The company has more than one million customers as well.
Immunocore (Abingdon)
Founder: Bent Jakobsen
Firm Valuation: $1B
Funding: €327M
This UK-based biotechnology company is focused on the discovery and development of novel T cell receptor-based drugs to treat diseases with a high unmet need, including cancer and viral disease.
Stay tuned to Silicon Canals for more updates in the tech startup world.
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