While by itself it wasn鈥檛 the leading sector for unicorn creation last month, artificial intelligence was a significant technology in the new healthcare and cybersecurity sector unicorns, as well as for those companies in the sales and marketing industries.

Four of the new February unicorns are U.S.-based, and Saudi Arabia, China, Israel, Ireland and Canada each added one new unicorn last month.

Private equity continues to play an outsized role in private venture-backed companies. Of the nine new unicorns, growth equity firms led six of the funding rounds, with venture capital firms leading three of the rounds with new unicorn valuations.

Altogether, the nine new unicorn companies added $15.6 billion in value and $1.9 billion in funding to the board.

February鈥檚 minted unicorns

Here are the nine newly minted February unicorns, by sector.

Healthcare

• , an AI tool for recording patient-clinician conversations that support billing, raised a $250 million Series D led by and . Adopted by 100 health systems, the 6-year-old Pittsburgh-based company was valued at $2.8 billion.
• , provider of an AI copilot for doctors, raised a $75 million Series A led by . The 3-year-old Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company, used by 10,000 care centers across the U.S. and hundreds of thousands of doctors, was valued at $1 billion.

Privacy and security

• , a no-code workflow automation tool for data and security oversight, raised a $125 million Series C led by with participation from . The 6-year-old Dublin-based company used by , , and , was valued at $1.1 billion.
• , a national cybersecurity company for governments or countries, raised a $100 million Series B led by . The 2-year-old Tel Aviv, Israel-based company was valued at $1.1 billion. Its founders include , the former prime minister of Austria, alongside cybersecurity experts.

Advertising

• , a multichannel advertising platform used by brands and agencies, raised a $235 million growth funding led by , the investment arm of . The 10-year-old Toronto-based company was valued at $2.5 billion.

Food and beverage

• , a prebiotic soda company, raised a $50 million Series C led by . The 7-year-old Oakland, California-based company, which reached $400 million in sales in 2024, was valued at $1.9 billion.

Sales and marketing

• , which builds customer personalized messaging using data and AI, raised an $80 million Series C led by . The 6-year-old San Francisco-based company was valued at $1.2 billion.

Chemical manufacturing

• , a chemical manufacturer, raised a Series D led by . The 7-year-old Ningbo, China-based company was valued at $1.1 billion.

Environmental engineering

• , a subsidiary of , provides decentralized waste water solutions. The Riyadh, Saudi Arabia-based startup raised a Series A led by and that valued the less-than-1-year-old company at $1 billion.

Related Crunchbase unicorn lists

• (1,571)
• (110)
• (100)
• (782)
• (493)
• (204)
• (37)
• (449)
• (501)

Related reading:

• Rise Of AI Drives US Growth In New Unicorns
• Healthcare Leads For New Unicorn Counts In January As AI Theme Continues

Methodology

The Crunchbase 糖心视频 is a curated list that includes private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more and is based on Crunchbase data. New companies are as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round.

The unicorn board does not reflect internal company valuations 鈥� such as those set via a 409a process for employee stock options 鈥� as these differ from, and are more likely to be lower than, a priced funding round. We also do not adjust valuations based on investor writedowns, which change quarterly, as different investors will not value the same company consistently within the same quarter.

Funding to unicorn companies includes all private financings to companies that are tagged as unicorns, as well as those that have since graduated to .

Exits analyzed here only include the first time a company exits.

Please note that all funding values are given in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted. Crunchbase converts foreign currencies to U.S. dollars at the prevailing spot rate from the date funding rounds, acquisitions, IPOs and other financial events are reported. Even if those events were added to Crunchbase long after the event was announced, foreign currency transactions are converted at the historic spot price.

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The company is obsessed with figuring out exactly what kinds of visuals you will click on. And, thanks to generative AI, that obsession is going to spread.

Two of the largest digital ad platforms in the world 鈥� and 鈥� have loudly voiced their enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. Google is itching to use its generative AI platform to create ad campaigns that rival those made by advertising agencies. Companies that want to advertise on the platform will send in specific visuals and text that the AI can 鈥渞emix鈥� to create ads that are targeted toward specific viewers.听

Meta, according to CTO , across , and .听

Generative AI is bulldozing through every industry possible, and the world of advertising and brand marketing isn鈥檛 immune. Startups are popping up that promise to create flawless ad copy and brand design fast, and at a fraction of the price and time it would take people to do that work.听

But generative AI adoption in content is still nascent, and venture firms need to make a split-second decision: Should they hop on this fast-moving train with the hope of making it to paradise, and hope it doesn鈥檛 crash along the way?

鈥淰Cs are basically throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at teams that maybe don’t have the right credentials and basically have an idea,鈥� said , co-founder of the enterprise-focused VC firm . 鈥淚t requires a little pause to figure out who are going to be the winners.鈥�

How do startups compete?聽

Perhaps it鈥檚 not surprising that advertising and marketing are being inundated with generative AI applications. Both fall under the general umbrella of content creation, which tools like and have pioneered for text and visuals.听

鈥淢arketing content generation 鈥� anybody can use the foundation model and let it generate,鈥� said , a partner at focused on automation. 鈥淵ou let it generate, you give it a prompt, it’s nothing special.鈥�

, a Canada-based generative AI tool, was trained by copywriters to spit out original ad copy or Instagram captions. It boasts a slogan generator and text summarizer. The company has raised $131 million, per .听

Then there鈥檚 , which launched in February with $65 million in funding to create visual branding and blog posts for small companies.

These kinds of companies perhaps have the potential to disrupt the industry for the better 鈥� instead of working on five or six different variations of the same ad, artists, designers and writers can focus on branding aesthetic, tone and voice.

But startups in this space have to come up with a value-add that goes beyond what free language models already offer in order to produce a long-term business model.

鈥淲hat are the features on issues that look really promising today, but would in fact be absorbed as part of the basic value?鈥� Hippeau said. 鈥淚t’s too early to tell what’s going to be part of the basic platform and what’s going to be a standalone growth business that is big enough to be backed by venture capital.鈥�

AI adtech startups go niche

, another adtech startup, bills itself as a marketing firm that specializes in highly regulated industries such as auto manufacturing, biotech and insurance. The company recently began using generative AI in the space of highly regulated industries, which has long been a tough area for scalable adtech solutions to penetrate.听

鈥淎I is a very big thing right now, and everybody is homing in on it, and they want to use it for everything that’s out there,鈥� Constellation co-founder said. 鈥淭he problem is industries that are highly regulated are scared of AI because that can cause a lot of lawsuits, right?鈥�

Let鈥檚 use pharma as an example. Pharma companies are required to abide by strict, and often subjective, advertising standards issued by the . Using the wrong words in an advertisement 鈥� there can be a difference between 鈥渟hown,鈥� 鈥減roven鈥� and 鈥渄emonstrated鈥� 鈥斅燾ould mean a pharma company has to stop commercialization and pay a massive fine.听

An adtech startup that takes on a pharma client also has to keep track of all these regulations.

Constellation builds parameters into the AI for each industry in order to help with this process. It allows the marketing firm to use generative AI while still ensuring the platform meets the regulatory standards of its clients.听

Startups building language models based on a proprietary source of information could be the key to winning venture firms鈥� hearts.听

鈥淎 lot of people, myself included, are interested in those use cases because suddenly the folks that own unique data have an advantage to own the process that revolves around that proprietary information, rather than generating marketing content that anyone can do,鈥� Kaufman said.听聽

Perhaps it鈥檚 the downfall of huge crypto firms, or the slow innovation in the metaverse, but it looks like tagging your company as one that uses generative AI isn鈥檛 enough for venture firms these days.听

鈥淭his is in the context of a lot of mania, right?鈥� Hippeau said. 鈥�We had the crypto mania, the Web3 mania, and now we have the AI mania.鈥澛�

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, the New York-based marketing startup, announced on Thursday it raised $76 million in Series C funding, . led the round, bringing total funding to the company to $151.9 million per Crunchbase data.

Formerly known as BounceX, Wunderkind started in 2010 to better find niche consumers and market to them at scale. The company promises customers it can increase page views, convert readers into subscribers and generate more e-commerce revenue through its data-capturing and analytics services. The company knows when a viewer has stopped reading, watching or otherwise engaging with an ad.听

Wunderkind has worked with brands like fast-fashion retailer , media group and cosmetics company .

A changing world

Behavioral marketing strategies like the ones Wunderkind employs 鈥� triangulating customers based on a spat of information about people鈥檚 interests, age and location (among other things) 鈥� is a popular strategy for brands. If you鈥檝e ever been inundated with pet food ads after befriending your new cat-owning roommate, you鈥檝e certainly been the unintended victim of behavioral marketing. (No? Just me?)

But behavioral marketing, however popular, has been scrambling lately. and other social media platforms have significantly increased the cost of advertising after the direct-to-consumer marketing boom. has made it easier for users to opt out of data tracking on apps.听

In addition, the European Union鈥檚 data privacy and protection law, known as GDPR, enforces sizable fees to companies that use 鈥渋nvasive鈥� data mining. A lot of behavioral marketing tactics commonly deployed in the U.S. won鈥檛 fly in Europe.听

Marketing tactics will have to involve getting active consent from users to mine their data, as well as relying less on automation. Perhaps the future will move away from behavioral marketing and more toward contextual marketing 鈥� if you鈥檙e watching a video about cooking, you may be served cookware-related ads.听

That means brands are often stuck paying more money to target potential customers while being less informed about who those customers actually are. And companies like Wunderkind will have to adapt to being just as effective without being able to rely on cookies or automation.听

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