Seattle doesn't have many unicorns. Does it matter?
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From left: Moderator Joaquin Gallardo, Flying Fish's Geoff Harris, Tola Capital's Sophia Lu, Amazon's Phoebe Wang, and Madrona's Tim Porter. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop)
It's hard to find Seattle-area startups represented on CB Insights' list of unicorn companies.
In fact, out of more than 1,200 startups on the list (as of January 2025), there are fewer than 20 active companies from the Seattle region that reached a $1 billion valuation in recent years. That's about 1.5% of all global unicorns.
San Francisco has nearly 200. New York has 125. Beijing has 62.
Seattle is in the same league as places like Chicago, Boston, and Austin.
But for a region with nearly a quarter of the nation's AI engineers and a super dense tech talent pool — the lack of unicorns wandering around the Pacific Northwest presents a bit of a paradox.
Or maybe it's just not that important of a metric.
'I think unicorns are a really bad measure of things,' Tim Porter, a longtime managing director at Seattle's Madrona Venture Group, said at a Technology Alliance event in Redmond on Tuesday.
Porter's point: while it would be great if Seattle had more unicorns, it doesn't tell the whole story — especially for this moment. He said Seattle is in the 'top two places in the world' to build an AI startup.
'It's a great place to build a business,' he said.
Seattle has plenty of fast-growing startups. Truveta and Statsig have emerged in 2025 as unicorns. The region has produced some sizable acquisitions and a handful of public offerings in recent years.
It also has the ingredients for billion-dollar value startup creation. There are homegrown cloud computing giants (Microsoft and Amazon), premier research institutions (Ai2, University of Washington), and more than 100 Silicon Valley engineering centers (Meta, Apple, Google, Salesforce, OpenAI, Anthropic).
But why aren't more unicorns sprouting out of Seattle?
Some believe Seattle founders should swing bigger — go for massive, disruptive growth rather than just steady, linear growth.
'Seattle has a history of building companies a little bit more pragmatically,' Porter said.
Maybe the city needs more on-ramps to help longtime corporate tech workers make the leap to startup land or welcome transplant entrepreneurs who are looking for community. Foundations and AI House are two new groups aiming to do that.
Even just three years ago, founders in Seattle wouldn't know where to find investors or connect with other company builders, said Sophia Lu, an investor with Seattle-based Tola Capital.
'That's definitely changing now,' Lu said.
It may just be a 'matter of time,' as Geoff Harris, managing partner at Seattle VC firm Flying Fish, said at the Tech Alliance event.
'For what we do, this is an absolutely amazing place to do that work,' Harris said.
Here are the companies included on the CB Insights unicorn list that are currently active and based in the Seattle area, along with the year they were added. (Caveat: some companies may no longer be valued above $1 billion due to down rounds, business slowdowns, etc.)
Tanium , cybersecurity (2015)
, cybersecurity (2015) Outreach , sales software (2019)
, sales software (2019) Icertis , contract management (2019)
, contract management (2019) Qumulo , data management (2020)
, data management (2020) Zenoti , salon software (2020)
, salon software (2020) Amperity , customer data (2021)
, customer data (2021) Helion , fusion energy (2021)
, fusion energy (2021) Highspot , sales enablement (2021)
, sales enablement (2021) Karat , technical interviews (2021)
, technical interviews (2021) Place , real estate (2021)
, real estate (2021) Rad Power Bikes , e-bikes (2021)
, e-bikes (2021) Rec Room , gaming (2021)
, gaming (2021) Flexe , warehouse logistics (2022)
, warehouse logistics (2022) Temporal , developer tools (2022)
, developer tools (2022) SeekOut , recruiting software (2022)
, recruiting software (2022) Chainguard , cybersecurity (2024)
, cybersecurity (2024) Statsig , developer tools (2025)
, developer tools (2025) Truveta, healthcare (2025)
Data from PitchBook also shows additional unicorns in the region:
EigenLayer , blockchain infrastructure
, blockchain infrastructure Group14 Technologies , next-generation batteries
, next-generation batteries iSpot , advertising tech
, advertising tech Veeam Software , data protection
, data protection Zap Energy, fusion energy
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