Exits remain rare but are showing signs they may rebound in the year ahead. It is not a question of if, rather when, venture-backed companies will resume initial public offerings in earnest. As for which unicorns are likely to succeed when they do, PitchBook has some ideas.
The research firm released its latest quarterly report on venture activity Tuesday. In it is a list of 27 companies valued over $1 billion that PitchBook assesses to have the highest IPO probability.
AlphaSense, a market-research and data firm powered by artificial intelligence, earned the top slot among the five New York names on the list. The Union Square-based company, founded in 2011 by two Wharton School alums, has raised $1.4 billion in VC funding to date, most recently bringing in $650 million in Series E funding in June 2024. Per PitchBook’s assessment, the AI search engine company is the 13th most likely unicorn nationwide to successfully go public.
To create the list, PitchBook paired a machine learning tool hand-crafted by its analysts with the firm’s vast data on VC activity. The end result offers “objective insights into startups’ prospects of a successful exit,” wrote PitchBook’s lead quantitative research analyst Andrew Aker. Notably, PitchBook does not give a timeframe for when it expects these companies to go public — just that they are the most likely to eventually make the move and succeed.
The other New York-based unicorns on the list are Institutional Capital Network, a fintech company operating as iCapital out of One Grand Central Place that offers an alternative investment marketplace for wealth managers; Via, a Hudson Square-based software technology company that helps commuters find and use public transit routes; Wiz, a cybersecurity firm that in July turned down a takeover bid of as much as $23 billion from Alphabet’s Google to instead pursue an IPO; and Zocdoc, a roughly 17-year-old company that operates an online platform where prospective medical patients can find and book healthcare appointments.
Of the 22 other U.S. unicorns PitchBook says are most likely to successfully go public, 17 call California home. Three are based in Massachusetts. One has its headquarters in Missouri, another in Detroit.
“The VC landscape is lacking meaningful exits, driven by a host of issues including buyer-seller valuation mismatches stemming from inflated rounds in previous vintages and regulatory headwinds impeding deal appetite at the larger part of the market,” wrote Nizar Tarhuni, executive vice president of research and market intelligence at PitchBook, in the report.
Tarhuni added that “our view for 2025 is cautiously optimistic. A more M&A and business friendly presence in Washington, coupled with more time for startups and investors to recalibrate expectations around valuations, deal structures and growth may help entice more capital to come off the sidelines.”
PitchBook’s full IPO probability rankings, with VC funding to date, is as follows (New York-based companies are bolded):
1. Anduril – $4.3 billion
2. Ayar Labs – $0.4 billion
3. Carbon – $0.7 billion
4. Databricks – $14.2 billion
5. EquipmentShare – $1.1 billion
6. Form Energy – $1.4 billion
7. GrubMarket – $0.6 billion
8. Mainspring – $0.5 billion
9. Mythical Games – $0.3 billion
10. Sila – $1.3 billion
11. StockX – $0.6 billion
12. Synthego – $0.5 billion
13. AlphaSense – $1.4 billion
14. Cohesity – $1.8 billion
15. Freenome – $1.4 billion
16. Groq – $1.0 billion
17. Impossible Foods – $1.9 billion
18. Indigo – $2.0 billion
19. Institutional Capital Network – $0.7 billion
20. PsiQuantum – $1.3 billion
21. SandboxAQ – $0.8 billion
22. SpaceX – $9.4 billion
23. Stripe – $8.7 billion
24. Valo – $0.5 billion
25. Via – $0.9 billion
26. Wiz – $1.8 billion
27. Zocdoc – $0.4 billion
