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The Increasingly Crowded Unicorn Club

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The Increasingly Crowded Unicorn Club

The Increasingly Crowded Unicorn Club

Unicorns, a moniker applied to private startups valued at over $1 billion or more, are supposed to be mythical in nature.

At best, there are supposed to be so few of them that venture capital firms would be absolutely elated to have a stake in any unicorn out there. (Or even their Canadian narwhal equivalents)

However, the truth is that unicorns are simply not rare or mythical anymore. According to the real-time list that CB Insights hosts, the number is now at 145 unicorns globally. In other words, the once exclusive Unicorn Club is becoming increasingly crowded.

That said, the odd member of the club does find the door.

Square, a prominent member of the club led by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey since mid-2011, finally IPO’d just a month ago with mixed results. It rose money from the public market at $9/share, which was a significant discount on the last private capital it raised at $15.46/share. Today it is trading closer to $12, which shows there is still optimism towards these kinds of technology companies.

Box’s IPO in January 2015 also sent mixed messages. It was privately valued at $2.4 billion, but then IPO’d at $1.7 billion. It soared on the first days of trading to $2.7 billion but then fell back down to a value below its IPO as lockups on insider traders expired during the summer.

Is the appetite for unicorns still frothy, or is it starting to sour?

We certainly agree that many of these companies have a great opportunity ahead of them. Many are growing at breakneck speed, and others are starting to find ways to monetize their offerings. However, is there really room for hundreds of them?

Today, the Australian software company Atlassian IPOs on the Nasdaq with a reported valuation of $4.4 billion. At time of publishing, it is up 33% on the day, and we will be continuing to watch the stock closely.

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Charted: The Jobs Most Impacted by AI

We visualized the results of an analysis by the World Economic Forum, which uncovered the jobs most impacted by AI.

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Charted: The Jobs Most Impacted by AI

This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.

Large language models (LLMs) and other generative AI tools haven’t been around for very long, but they’re expected to have far-reaching impacts on the way people do their jobs. With this in mind, researchers have already begun studying the potential impacts of this transformative technology.

In this graphic, we’ve visualized the results of a World Economic Forum report, which estimated how different job departments will be exposed to AI disruption.

Data and Methodology

To identify the job departments most impacted by AI, researchers assessed over 19,000 occupational tasks (e.g. reading documents) to determine if they relied on language. If a task was deemed language-based, it was then determined how much human involvement was needed to complete that task.

With this analysis, researchers were then able to estimate how AI would impact different occupational groups.

DepartmentLarge impact (%)Small impact (%)No impact (%)
IT73261
Finance70219
Customer Sales671617
Operations651817
HR57412
Marketing56413
Legal46504
Supply Chain431839

In our graphic, large impact refers to tasks that will be fully automated or significantly altered by AI technologies. Small impact refers to tasks that have a lesser potential for disruption.

Where AI will make the biggest impact

Jobs in information technology (IT) and finance have the highest share of tasks expected to be largely impacted by AI.

Within IT, tasks that are expected to be automated include software quality assurance and customer support. On the finance side, researchers believe that AI could be significantly useful for bookkeeping, accounting, and auditing.

Still interested in AI? Check out this graphic which ranked the most commonly used AI tools in 2023.

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