Led By DeepSeek, 10 Frontier Labs Rush Onto The Crunchbase Unicorn Board In June

A surge of new unicorns in June saw 34 companies added to the global private market board, collectively bringing more than $110 billion in value — including 10 frontier AI labs that together are valued at roughly $65 billion. Leading the cohort was Beijing-based DeepSeek, which raised a $7.4 billion Series A and was valued at $50 billion; the 2-year-old open-source model developer is said to be "planning to list in Shanghai as early as Q2 2027." Overall, 16 of the new unicorns are U.S.-based, eight are from China, two each from India, Germany and the U.K., and one apiece from the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada and Saudi Arabia.

"planning to list in Shanghai as early as Q2 2027."

Frontier labs, robotics and infrastructure dominate

The new entries reflect heavy investor interest in AI model innovation, robotics and AI infrastructure. The 10 AI labs include companies working on new model architectures for robotics, physics, embodied intelligence, neuroscience-inspired systems and sovereign AI. Notable raises and valuations among the AI labs:

• DeepSeek (Hangzhou) — $7.4 billion Series A; valued at $50 billion; led by CEO Liang Wenfeng.
• Flourish (New York) — $500 million Series A; valued at $2.5 billion. Investors included Jeff Bezos, Lux Capital, GV and Catalio Capital Management.
• PhysicsX (London) — $300 million Series C led by Temasek; valued at $2.4 billion.
• General Intuition (New York) — $320 million Series A led by Khosla Ventures; valued at $2.3 billion.
• Generalist AI (San Mateo) — $400 million Series B led by Radical Ventures; valued at $2 billion.
• Sarvam AI (Bengaluru) — $234 million Series B first close led by HCLTech; valued at $1.5 billion (sovereign AI).
• Mirendil (San Francisco) — $200 million seed led by Andreessen Horowitz and Kleiner Perkins; valued at $1 billion.
• Vast (Hangzhou) — $200 million Series A led by Ince Capital; valued at $1 billion.
• Odyssey (Menlo Park) — $310 million Series B led by Natural Capital; valued at $1.5 billion.

Robotics also featured prominently, with Germany-based Neura Robotics raising a $1.4 billion Series C led by Tether and reaching a $7 billion valuation. Shenzhen-based Astribot ($148 million Series B; $1.5 billion valuation) and Guangdong-based DexForce ($147 million Series B; $1.5 billion valuation) both joined the board, as did New York’s Standard Bots ($200 million Series C; $1 billion valuation).

AI infrastructure, defense and other sectors

Four AI infrastructure companies made the list, among them Ionic Digital (Coral Gables), which pivoted from crypto mining and raised $400 million led by Attestor, Oaktree Capital Management and Sachem Head — valued at $2.4 billion and reported to have filed for a direct Nasdaq listing. TensorWave (Las Vegas) raised $350 million led by AMD Ventures and Magnetar Capital, valuing the cloud operator at $1.6 billion. Beijing’s SiliconFlow raised $296 million Series B and was valued at $1.2 billion, while Runpod (New Jersey) raised $100 million Series A and hit a $1 billion valuation with roughly 1 million developers using its platform.

Defense and proptech deals also featured: Allen Control Systems (Austin) raised $200 million Series B (valued at $2.2 billion); Mach Industries (Huntington Beach) raised $300 million Series C (valued at $1.8 billion); and Montreal-based Nesto raised $217 million Series E (valued at $1.1 billion).

Despite the influx of new unicorns, the overall private market board lost more than $1 trillion in aggregate value in June as SpaceX went public and several high-value companies exited via acquisition, including Anysphere (acquired for about $60 billion), Modular (acquired by Qualcomm) and Fin (acquired by Salesforce). Looking ahead, attention will center on potential public-market debuts such as DeepSeek’s planned Shanghai listing window and Ionic Digital’s Nasdaq filings, and whether investor appetite for capital-intensive AI and robotics plays endures amid broader market churn.