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jtsg_ OP t1_j3dv11j wrote

WSJ reported recently that OpenAI - the company behind viral AI tech like ChatGPT, Dall-E etc., is looking to sell shares at a valuation of $29B

This would make OpenAI, the 10th most valuable startup in the world.

Private companies valuations can be tough to gauge if they haven’t raised recently. To make this post, I collated info from public available media reports.

Over last 12-18 months, valuation of some of these companies has been marked down from their peak, while some others are still due for a correction:

  1. Epic Games (creator of Fortnite) raised in April 2022
  2. SpaceX and OpenAI are currently in talks to price their equity, and Fanatics raised recently in Dec-22
  3. Shein, ByteDance (Creator of TikTok), Stripe and Databricks have already written down their peak valuations. Some recent reports show that ByteDance may be further marked down (Link)
  4. Canva last raised in 2021 and is due for a correction (Note: one of Canva’s investor - Blackbird, has already written down their stake in Canva by 36% (Link)

Revolut also raised in 2021 and hasn’t marked down its valuation yet. This is quite possible in 2023, specially as 2 other large Fintech startups Klarna and Checkout.com has had a huge markdown (Klarna from $45.6B to $6.7B and Checkout $40B to $11B)

While there are many impressive companies on this list, OpenAI really stands out

  1. Together with Revolut, it's the youngest company in the list
  2. It has very few employees. Less than 500 according to most sources. All others have thousands of employees
  3. It has very little revenue - though the company projects to hit $1B revenue by 2024 (Link)

Note that the industry mentioned in the post is indicative to give an idea of their core businesses. In some cases, e.g. Fanatics, they engage in a lot of different businesses related to Sports fans.

If you like this, you can find more charts / data stories like this in my newsletter.

Source: Publicly Available Media reports

Tools: Google Slides and Vizzlo

−8

throwaway2454838 t1_j3e35no wrote

Replying to linklolthe3 (#1,304,761)

Apparently they are estimated at 10 billion in 2019 which seems kinda low for a company that has a virtual monopoly on the PC platform.

My guess is that epic games gets most of their value from licensing their engine.

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Netsugake t1_j3e6vsh wrote

You know I worked with startups this summer. And asked myself when does a company stop being a startup. And we should really all find a moment when it stops being a startup

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NLwino t1_j3e8pw1 wrote

I see 10 companies, but no startups...

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LAUSart t1_j3eb076 wrote

When is a startup not a startup anymore?

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kooky_creative t1_j3egkjg wrote

I’ve never heard of ByteDance. I’ll have to check them out.

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Sea_no_evil t1_j3eo2jv wrote

Not a good look for Databricks, they should have popped by now.

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MarketMan123 t1_j3f7zri wrote

At that valuation OpenAI is a steal!

Not a sure thing, but a good bet.

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wtmrFTW t1_j3fctrk wrote

Maybe 10 privately owned companies?

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JeffFerox t1_j3fgddu wrote

Yeah because a company founded in 1991 is a startup…

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sonofashoe t1_j3fnr54 wrote

Where would something like Bloomberg rank?

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leosadovsky t1_j3frafe wrote

Spacex is not a startup. It is not scalable. It even exits only because of government/military grants and nasa patents given to it for free.

−5

johnny-T1 t1_j3frdx0 wrote

I’d say 5 years should be the maximum. 20 year old startup? I don’t think so.

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Academic_Choice_7649 t1_j3fwynt wrote

This all is just a bubble valuation search on google profitable startups very rate you will find a list. I wouls suggest build a vision and creat product over it to achieve that vision if you want long-lasting impact in world

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[deleted] t1_j3g4k0b wrote

I’m pretty sure you don’t call a decade old company a startup. 😂 Most of the ones in the pic are more than 10 years old, that’s at least 3650 days that they’ve been around.

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wicktus t1_j3gc2ah wrote

Databricks who created that open source Spark project a startup ? Come on, we've been using it for years.

Epic Games has been around since forever with their unreal Engine and Quake Unreal games etc.

This is a very wrong definition of startup, OP, change the title to privately held 'tech' companies if you want but that's just wrong

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Inaksa t1_j3gxdf4 wrote

Epic and SpaceX are start ups? What definition was used?

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Big_TX t1_j3gyt3w wrote

Replying to LAUSart (#1,305,182)

When it no longer relies on investor capital to fuel its operations and is able to fund its self and its growth through its own profits.

I think the looser definition is once you finish rapid scaling up. Like some people controversially considered Tesla a startup for so long even though it was a huge organization that had been around for years and had a huge market cap, because they were still “scaling up” by building lots of factories to be able to rapidly increase production and weren’t technically profitable sense they were reinvesting all their money back into expensive factories.

I don’t think Stripe and Bytedance should be on the list as they’ve more or less finished growing and are self sustaining profitable entities

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medfreak t1_j3gzmsi wrote

No way a social media company controlled by the CCP in China is worth twice as much as SpaceX.

−2

[deleted] t1_j3h01et wrote

A startup is not a privately owned business. It is a new business in need of investment.

None of these are started in the last year.

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lohborn t1_j3h3x9j wrote

Replying to wicktus (#1,307,966)

Totally agree with your points, but Epic is not involved with the Quake franchise. First one was by id, newest games published by Bethesda.

You may be thinking of Unreal I and II and Unreal tournament which were originally competitors to Quake II etc.

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Dan19_82 t1_j3h47a9 wrote

How is Canva worth so much. Its garbage.

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wheniaminspaced t1_j3h4nul wrote

Replying to Inaksa (#1,308,819)

SpaceX can probably still be considered a startup its older, but rocket development is a longer timeline than say social media. I doubt that Spacex is profitable yet, it likely could be if it stopped development of new systems (starlink & starship).

That said the definition they are likely using is companies they expect to go public, but have not.

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geek66 t1_j3h8ovg wrote

“Valuation” is one of the least understood concepts in people’s economic knowledge.

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theXsquid t1_j3h8qfv wrote

ByteDance will lose value when tik-tok starts getting banned.

0

PantsB t1_j3klyis wrote

Replying to AfricanNorwegian (#1,308,783)

My employer is privately held continuously since the late 60s, its in tech and has valuation around ~2 billion but its not listed here either. It clearly isn't the spirit of the list but then neither is Epic Games

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cat_turd_collector1 t1_j4zfvnm wrote

Hello,
We are conducting a short survey about the life of a startup and would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to fill it out. The survey will assist us in gaining insight into the research methods employed by startups.

The link to the survey is:
https://forms.gle/vu53XaDxB8BczRma9
Thank you for your time and input.

1