The SF Bay Area controls 26% of global unicorn market cap, and combined with New York (8%) and LA (6%), three US cities hold 40% of the world total. The US overall sits at 53%. The "build anywhere" narrative of COVID did not move the needle. Data pulled from CB Insights as of July 20, 2023.
The doubling of single-unicorn cities from 37 to 75 in four years is not a decentralization story. Elad Gil and Shreyan Jain coin the term "ZIRPacorns": companies that crossed $1B only because of COVID-era zero interest rate policy and inflated multiples, not because of real value creation. Valuations in the dataset are last-round numbers, many from 2021, and do not reflect current fair market value. Single-company concentration is extreme: Bytedance is 58% of Beijing's $387B, SpaceX is 62% of LA's $222B, Shein is 64% of Shenzhen's $157B. New York's top 10 unicorns break down as 6 crypto and 3 fintech. Paris and London gained share. China kept losing it.
SF holds 81% of generative AI unicorn market cap right now. That number will move, but the piece digs into why the cluster effect is compounding rather than dispersing, and what the Barry's Bootcamp to unicorn ratio (SF scores 48) reveals about which cities have culture versus which have companies. Read it for the city-by-city breakdowns and the ZIRPacorn framework, not just the headline percentages.
[READ ORIGINAL →]