DeepSeek leads June unicorn additions as AI labs dominate Crunchbase list

Thirty-four companies reached Crunchbase’s private unicorn threshold in June, adding more than $110 billion in stated value, according to Crunchbase data. AI labs accounted for 10 of the additions and $65 billion of that total, led by DeepSeek, which Crunchbase listed at a $50 billion valuation.

The concentration is notable even by current AI funding standards. The new AI lab cohort spans open source models, robotics intelligence, physics-based design, self-learning systems and sovereign AI. Crunchbase said robotics and AI infrastructure followed as the next most active categories, with four new unicorns each.

DeepSeek was the outlier in size. Crunchbase said the Hangzhou-based open source model developer raised a $7.4 billion Series A, its first outside financing, in a round led by CEO Liang Wenfeng. The company is two years old and is said to be considering a Shanghai listing as early as the second quarter of 2027. No revenue figure was disclosed.

Other AI lab rounds were smaller but still large for early-stage companies. New York-based Flourish raised a $500 million Series A from investors including Jeff Bezos, Lux Capital, GV and Catalio Capital Management at a $2.5 billion valuation. PhysicsX, based in London, raised a $300 million Series C led by Temasek and was valued at $2.4 billion. General Intuition raised a $320 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures at a $2.3 billion valuation.

The list also included Generalist AI at $2 billion, Shanghai-based Bulage at $2 billion, Odyssey at $1.5 billion, Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI at $1.5 billion, Mirendil at $1 billion and Hangzhou-based Vast at $1 billion. Several of these companies are less than two years old, a sign that investors are still paying up for research teams and model claims before broad commercial traction is disclosed.

Robotics and infrastructure also drew large checks

In robotics, Germany-based Neura Robotics raised a $1.4 billion Series C led by stablecoin issuer Tether and other strategic and growth investors, according to Crunchbase. The company was said to be valued at $7 billion and to have a $1 billion order pipeline and strategic deployments. Crunchbase also listed Astribot, DexForce and Standard Bots as new robotics unicorns.

AI infrastructure additions reflected demand for compute and deployment tooling. Ionic Digital, which Crunchbase said shifted from crypto mining toward AI data centers, raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion valuation and has filed for a Nasdaq direct listing. TensorWave raised $350 million at a $1.6 billion valuation, SiliconFlow raised $296 million at a $1.2 billion valuation, and Runpod raised $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. Runpod said it has 1 million developers on its platform.

Unicorn board value still fell after exits

The new entrants did not prevent a decline in the overall value of the Crunchbase Unicorn Board. Crunchbase said the board’s total value fell by more than $1 trillion in June after SpaceX, previously its most valuable company, went public.

Other exits included Anysphere, maker of the Cursor AI coding tool, which Crunchbase said was acquired by SpaceX for $60 billion after its last private valuation of $29.3 billion. Modular was acquired by Qualcomm, and Fin was bought by Salesforce, both for amounts Crunchbase described as well above their last private valuations. Specific prices for those two transactions were not provided.

Geographically, 16 of June’s new unicorns were U.S.-based and eight were from China. India, Germany and the U.K. each contributed two, while the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and Saudi Arabia had one apiece.

This story draws on original reporting from Crunchbase News.