In times in which the world is facing great changes, in which it is plagued by pandemics, droughts and floods, by earthquakes, weather and climate catastrophes, in which children are proclaimed as saviors, but rulers and rulers are labeled as failures, mythical creatures have always moved people.

They let fairies and elves fly through their tales and legends, nymphs and trolls, the sphinx, the phoenix and the unicorn appear - and these days it gallops through many fantasies again particularly quickly.

Stephan Finsterbusch

Editor in business.

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In the middle of one of the most serious crises in recent times, the number of unicorns has now almost doubled.

What once appeared in the form of a snow-white horse with a long, thin horn on its forehead and extraordinary powers, now appears in the form of a technology company.

This is usually young, fast-growing and promising, it has a somewhat mystical-sounding name like Theranos, Zynga or Tuhu, is on many lips, but not yet on the stock exchange.

Above all, however, its creators attribute a market value of more than a billion dollars to it.

Today there are around 760 such companies in the world - more than ever before.

Before the Corona crisis, the herd of unicorns consisted of almost 400 young companies, according to CB Insights.

At that time they were worth a total of $ 1,200 billion;

today it is estimated at $ 2,400 billion.

In the first six months of this year, according to data from Crunchbase, $ 288 billion flowed into tech startups, almost as much as in all of last year.

More than 130 new unicorns saw the light of day between April and June 2021.

A flock of unicorns

Just under three dozen of all unicorns are worth more than ten billion dollars. They had turned new rounds of financing during the Corona crisis, raised further billions and thus drove up their company value. When ten years ago hardly anyone had associated the word “unicorn” with a young tech company, it was said that Germany was a start-up developing country. Today there are 17 unicorns in this country too. "We are now in a really good position," says Achim Berg, President of the Bitkom digital association.

According to him, there is no lack of know-how or good ideas in Germany, and certainly not of capital. "Although the general conditions could still be improved a lot." He talks about taxing rules that are hindering stock options for employees of young companies and about an often somewhat over-committed bureaucracy. With the Munich-based analysis and software company Celonis, the first German unicorn has just passed the valuation mark of ten billion dollars. The Swedish fintech Klarna is currently Europe's most valuable unicorn with 45 billion dollars.

While Europe cultivates its national diversity and economic fragmentation in the field of new technologies, there are around 100 unicorns. More than 150 unicorns are now active in autocratic China with its state monopoly dirigism. The United States has 385. There are currently around 100 unicorns in the San Francisco Bay Area alone. No wonder America not only has Silicon Valley, but also the most dynamic tech sector and the most experienced institutional risk investors in the world.