The Magnificent 7 'Unicorns': Startups That Dominate Private Investing

First, there was the Magnificent 7 of publicly traded companies: Apple Inc. AAPL, Microsoft Corporation MSFT, Nvidia Corporation NVDA, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN, Alphabet Inc. GOOG GOOGL, Meta Platforms Inc. META and Tesla Inc. TSLA.

Now, there is the Private Magnificent 7 of U.S. companies in the innovation space, according to private market platform Forge Global Holdings FRGE.

Forge has identified these startup “unicorns” — privately owned startups that are valued at $1 billion or more — as SpaceX, OpenAI, Stripe, Inc., Databricks, Fanatics, Inc., Scale AI and Rippling.

These companies, like their publicly traded counterparts, have shown “superior growth and remarkable resilience” during the Great Reset period of lowering valuations over the last 2.5 years, Forge said.

"While the post-2021 market downturn was undoubtedly a challenging period for the private market, the Private Magnificent 7 proved resilient," said Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Forge Global.

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"Forge believes these companies reflect the current and emerging themes of private investing and are driving the secular growth of the U.S. innovation economy."

The Private Magnificent 7 collectively account for $382 billion in implied valuation, according to latest Forge data on its website.

Though it is 30 times smaller in valuation than the public Magnificent 7 — which is roughly the equal to the size of Japan, Canada and U.K. stock markets combined — the Private Magnificent 7 has outperformed the listed companies by 16.9% in the past year, Forge said.

Over the last 12 months, the private Magnificent 7’s price performance rose 55.3% versus the public group of companies’ price performance growing 38.4% in the same period.

How Much Are These Companies Worth?

Here is a rundown of the valuations for the Private Magnificent 7, according to latest Forge data:

• SpaceX, an American spacecraft manufacturer founded in 2002 by billionaire Elon Musk, is worth $150 billion.
• OpenAI, an American artificial-intelligence company co-founded in 2015 by Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, is valued at $80 billion.
• Stripe, an Irish-American financial services and software as a service company founded in 2010 by Patrick and John Collison, is worth $50 billion.
• Databricks, a U.S. AI company co-founded in 2013 by CEO Ali Ghodsi and executive chairman Ion Stoica, is worth $43.4 billion.
• Fanatics, an American online sports retailer founded in 2011 by CEO Michael Rubin, is valued at $31 billion.
• Scale AI, a U.S. AI company founded in 2016 by Alexandr Wang and Lucy Guo, is worth $13.8 billion.
• Ripplng, a U.S. human resource mangement company founded in 2016 by Parker Conrad and Prasanna Sankar, holds a value of $13.5 billion.

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Image created using artificial intelligence via Midjourney.