Recently, SpaceX moved its latest Starship to the launch pad for its 11th test flight. A key design aspect of this spacecraft is its role in reusable interplanetary travel. This is also good for profitability for there is currently a projected $15.5 billion revenue from Starlink.
This pattern of tech-led financial growth is clear across the private market: in 2025, the most valuable unicorns are those turning innovation and scalable technology into high valuations. In this context a new report (“Unicorn Startups: AI & Enterprise Tech Companies Hit Record Valuations in 2025”) exploring the world of private companies valued at $1 billion or more captures this trajectory.
For the report, a team from BestBrokers analysed CB Insights’ list of private startups with a valuation of at least $1 billion, the so-called “unicorns”. The analysts updated some of the information and then aggregated data from Pitchbook regarding the largest funding rounds for private companies and company valuations throughout 2025.
The research shows that Elon Musk’s SpaceX is the world’s most valuable private company, reaching a valuation of $400 billion during an insider share sale in July 2025. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, follows in second place with $330 billion, while OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, rank third with a valuation of $300 billion, which the company reached in March 2025, following a $40 billion funding round led by SoftBank.
The top five most valuable private companies in 2025
- SpaceX – $400 billion – Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite company SpaceX reached a $400 billion valuation in July 2025 via an insider share sale, up from $350 billion in December 2024. The valuation was largely driven by Starlink’s rapid growth, acquiring over 8 million users around the world.
- ByteDance – $330 billion – In August 2025, ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, launched a new employee share buyback programme that valued the company at over $330 billion. This marked a 5.5% increase from the previous valuation six months earlier, when ByteDance’s worth was estimated at approximately $315 billion.
- OpenAI – $300 billion – OpenAI completed a $40 billion funding round in April 2025, the largest private tech funding in history, led by SoftBank and co-funded by many other investors, including Microsoft and Coatue. This brought the company’s valuation to $300 billion.
- Anthropic – $183 billion – Anthropic, the AI research lab behind Claude, achieved a significant milestone in September 2025 by raising $13 billion in a Series F funding round led by ICONIQ Capital, propelling its valuation to $183 billion.
- xAI – $113 billion – Following the merger of Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI with the social media platform X in March 2025, and a $300 million employee share sale in June, xAI went on to raise a further $5 billion in July 2025, including $2 billion from SpaceX and $3 billion from other investors, increasing its valuation to an impressive $113 billion.
Bubbling under are Databricks – $100 billion; Stripe – $92 billion (a San Francisco-based fintech company); Revolut – $75 billion, Revolut reached a $75 billion valuation in September 2025 after a secondary share sale, following 46% revenue growth in Q2 2025 to £1.01 billion. The fintech company is currently in the process of obtaining a full UK banking license, which would enable it to offer a broader suite of financial products.
The comes Canva – $42 billion. Canva achieved a $42 billion valuation in August 2025 following an employee share sale led by Fidelity Management & Research and JPMorgan Asset Management, marking a significant increase from its previous valuation of $32 billion in October 2024. In fifth place is SHEIN, valued at $30 billion.
Aside from these upper echelons, a total of 63 private companies have achieved unicorn status so far in 2025, meaning that they reached a valuation of $1 billion or more. The most valuable of them, Thinking Machines Lab, was founded by Mira Murati, the former chief technology officer of OpenAI, in February 2025. By July 2025, it had already raised $2 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz to achieve a company valuation of $12 billion.
Many of the world’s ten most valuable private companies are AI companies, including titans such as OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, and Databricks, each with a valuation exceeding $100 billion. Currently, the world’s 10 most valuable startups have a combined worth of $1.665 trillion. Meanwhile, all 63 companies that became unicorns in 2025 are valued at around $104 billion.
