The popular fast-fashion startup based in China has reportedly raised $2 billion at two-thirds of its valuation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The company rose through The Crunchbase Unicorn Board ranks during the pandemic, receiving a valuation of $100 billion and ranking just under the likes of TikTok owner ByteDance and SpaceX. But this new round of funding cut its valuation down to $66 billion. No big deal — it’s still the fourth-highest-valued startup in the world. 

Shein quickly won the hearts of American consumers as e-commerce and delivery exploded during work-from-home orders, and investors took note — in 2021, funding rose to more than $27 billion, around three times higher than the year before. 

The company has remained relatively quiet as rumors swirled that the e-commerce giant had a plan to raise money and, later on, go public. But while Shein contemplates its lofty plans, the company faces numerous obstacles to going public, including weaving through complex international regulations and declining activity in e-commerce.

E-commerce loses its luster

Funding toward e-commerce has seen a slow but steady rise in the last 10 years. 

That all changed in 2021, when the tech industry pinpointed e-commerce as a long-lasting consumer behavior much like working from home was. Funding jumped around 3x higher than 2020, and then immediately crashed to normal levels in 2022. Several big tech giants like Amazon and Meta were quick to build up their e-commerce services, only to lay off thousands of workers when those strategies didn’t play out. 

It’s unclear if Shein will face a similar, less drastic fate. The company reportedly garnered $23 billion in revenue in 2022, on par with other fast-fashion retailers like H&M and fashion conglomerate Inditex, which owns popular brands like Zara. But the e-commerce model isn’t as popular as it once was, and global regulations around environmental and sustainability laws could dwindle its popularity even further.

Stricter environmental regulations

Shein’s clothing is known for being extremely cheap — women’s shirts sell for as little as $2. The company has had to dodge questions over forced labor and environmental impacts of its production line. 

Despite telling U.S. congressional members Shein worked with third-party firms to audit its supply chain of forced labor, the company used cotton from Xinjiang (which has been cited for using forced labor) in at least two instances. In some instances, workers spent 18-hour days in the factories, or were given one day off a month, which violates China’s labor laws. 

The European Union is also setting strict sustainability standards on imports, taxing companies more based on how high their carbon footprint is. This could drive up the price of Shein-made items, or require the company to make changes to its supply chain in order to lower its environmental impact. 

If Shein does go through with its IPO, it has the potential to disrupt the $1.53 trillion apparel industry, but changing headwinds could ruin its course.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Shein raised money at a third of its previous valuation. We have updated the story to reflect the accurate number.

Related Crunchbase Pro queries:

• Global Funding Toward E-Commerce Startups

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BoltRock Holdings and Centaurus Capital led the round for Boston-based Gradiant, which is now valued at $1 billion. 

The startup develops technology to reduce water usage and wastewater treatment systems for companies in the pharmaceutical, semiconductor, food and beverage, and other water-demanding industries. The company says its client list includes chip companies Micron Technology and TSMC, pharma giants Pfizer and GSK, and food and beverage manufacturers AB InBev and Coca-Cola.

The company said it will use the fresh capital to expand into new markets, including the Middle East and Europe, and to invest in R&D.

“As global manufacturing and supply chains continue to advance, they demand more and more water resources which are increasingly rare and finite,” Centaurus founder John Arnold said in the funding announcement. “We are excited to partner with a company that has truly proven the ability to support these demands in an economic and energy efficient manner.”

Gradiant has now raised $392.4 million total, per Crunchbase data. The company was founded in 2013 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It now has more than 900 employees internationally, it says, and has achieved more than 100% top-line revenue growth for four consecutive years. 

Gradiant marks one of the largest venture funding rounds so far this year. It’s also the largest, by far, funding in the wastewater treatment space, at least since the beginning of 2022. 

Other recently funded startups in the industry include:

• Heartland Water Technology, which develops wastewater technology for the energy industry and raised just under $45 million last year;
• ZwitterCo, which raised $33 million last year and uses a membrane technology for water treatment; and
• Greyter, which makes water recycling systems for residential and commercial buildings and raised $10 million in January.

Related Crunchbase Pro queries

• Funding To Wastewater Startups In 2022 and 2023

Related Reading

• The Crunchbase Megadeals Board
• The Crunchbase Unicorn Board

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Technology-focused Accel-KKR is the latest, announcing it has closed on $5.3 billion of new capital commitments for both its Capital Partners VII LP and Emerging Buyout Partners II LP funds.

The Menlo Park, California-based private equity firm has made more than 350 investments in its two-decade-plus history. It invests in tech companies through a series of different funds and strategies including buyout, emerging buyout, growth capital and credit. It now has $19 billion in cumulative capital commitments. 

Some of the firm’s most recent investments include: Australia-based workforce management software developer Humanforce; Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation data provider Salary.com; and U.K-.based processor of rental payments PayProp.

The new funds

The Capital Partners VII LP closed with $4.4 billion of equity capital commitments and will continue the firm’s strategy of making majority buyout investments in lower-middle market and middle-market tech companies.

The Emerging Buyout Partners II closed with $920 million of equity capital commitments. That will enable Accel-KKR to invest in software and tech-enabled services companies — with a special focus on small-cap companies.

“In raising these two new funds, we will continue our long-term strategy of working in partnership with management teams of the companies in which we invest, aggressively supporting their growth objectives by providing capital and operational support to fuel accelerated organic and inorganic growth,” said Tom Barnds, co-managing partner at Accel-KKR, in a release.

As financing options decline for startups and share prices of publicly traded companies drop, many think the M&A market will heat up later in the year. That likely is especially true for private equity firms, as many have raised huge funds recently that could take advantage of bargains in the market.

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Positive indicators are scarcer. That’s why it’s encouraging to see at least one small sign of positive momentum coming from the startup sector. It comes in the form of more money.

In recent quarters we’ve seen unprecedented sums going to software startups focused on tracking and reducing carbon emissions, and on speeding up the shift to cleaner energy sources. The funding surge comes amid a broader rise in funding to climate-focused startups of all stripes.

A sampling of top funding recipients for climate and clean energy software shows at least $1.68 billion in capital raised since the beginning of 2022, per Crunchbase data. For a sense of where the money is going, we chart out 34 of the most recently or heavily funded companies below:

Consumer is out, enterprise is in

The most heavily funded companies are an enterprise-focused bunch, with many of the largest rounds going to those selling technologies to energy industry customers.

Washington, D.C.-based Arcadia, a climate software and data startup focused on decarbonizing the electric grid, is a perennial top fundraiser in this space. The company closed on $325 million in the past year alone, in rounds led by Magnetar Capital and J.P. Morgan, bringing total funding to over $495 million.

Aurora Solar, a platform for designing and cost-estimating solar power installations, is also up there, with $523 million in funding to date, including a $200 million Series D a year ago. It’s currently posting annual revenue over $100 million while still growing over 50% per year, according to John Tough, managing partner at backer Energize Ventures.

But Aurora isn’t the only company in the space with significant revenue that’s scaling fast. Since launching early-stage-focused Energize seven years ago, Tough said he’s seen revenue at climate- and clean energy-focused software companies rising alongside venture investment.

“When we launched in 2016, there probably wasn’t a single (software-focused) company in the solar or wind space with more than $25 million in revenue,” he said. “Now there are a dozen.”

Tough sees the likelihood of further growth given that companies in the energy industry have historically spent less on software than those in other sectors. One analysis his firm conducted estimated that energy companies spent only about 1% of their budgets on software — roughly half the Fortune 2000 average.

A maturing startup pipeline

The pipeline of funded climate and clean energy software startups is also maturing at a rapid clip.

In an initial Crunchbase roundup of climate software deals, published in October 2021, virtually all the cited companies were seed or Series A funded at the time. Since then, a majority have raised subsequent rounds and a number have moved on to Series B.

Clean energy-focused software companies, meanwhile, are also moving to later stage, with the largest funding recipients mostly at Series B and beyond. Per Tough, there are also a handful with metrics suitable for a public offering should the IPO window open further.

That could be in the cards. This week, Silicon Valley-based Nextracker, a provider of software and hardware for solar tracker systems, raised $638 million in its IPO after raising its price per share to $24. The higher-than-expected demand for its offering bodes well for other clean energy- and climate-focused offerings.

Impact of broader slowdown to be seen

Still, the resilience of climate and clean energy software funding comes against a backdrop of falling venture investment across most other industries. As tech valuations flatten and the biggest growth investors scale back the pace and size of deals, it’s not unlikely this space will see some impacts too.

For now, though, it looks like this corner of the space continues to heat up — but in a good way.

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On Friday it was revealed the investor offering up the money would be none other than tech titan Google — obviously not willing to stand idly by and let Microsoft win the battle for AI supremacy.

The news was first reported by the Financial Times.

The deal — which gives Google a 10% stake in the company — comes just weeks after news broke of Microsoft’s massive investment in OpenAI.

Anthropic’s AI chatbot, Claude, is in closed beta mode, but in a paper detailing its goals, it is expected to combat harmful prompts by explaining why they are dangerous or misguided.

This is not Google’s and its parent Alphabet’s first foray into AI. In 2015 Alphabet bought DeepMind, a London-based AI startup founded in 2010, and is building an NLP model similar to ChatGPT.

AI dominance

The new year is shaping up to be an all-out AI war. Late last month, Microsoft finally confirmed it has agreed to a “multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment” into OpenAI, the startup behind the artificial intelligence tools ChatGPT and DALL-E for a reported $10 billion. 

Per Crunchbase data, funding in the AI space has accounted for around 10% of all venture funding in recent years. Even last year, as venture dried up, AI flourished in its second-best funding year ever. 

Just this week, it was reported by The Information that an AI startup co-founded by a pair of entrepreneurs who had left Adept AI recently raised $8 million. And Perplexity AI, which is developing a search engine that lets people ask questions through a chatbot, is looking to raise a $15 million seed round. 

Anthropic’s new round could bring the company’s total valuation to $5 billion, The New York Times reported. The startup previously raised $704 million across Series A and Series B funding rounds in 2022, according to Crunchbase data.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

Clarification: This story has changed since its original publication to clarify terms of the deal.

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It’s no secret that the relationship between the Securities and Exchange Commission and the crypto industry is akin to that of a dog and a feral cat.

However, an interesting report by The Wall Street Journal further illustrates that frayed relationship and the fact that the SEC will not make it any easier for crypto to break out of its tailspin.

According to the story, the SEC did not give approval for public listings to crypto-focused companies such as Bullish Global, Circle Internet Financial and eToro. The companies all were looking to go public through mergers with special-purpose acquisition companies.

While the SEC did not stop any of the firms from merging, the slow pace of the review process and extensive questioning seemed to hurt their efforts to list, per the report.

Circle’s plight

Boston-based Circle’s effort to go public certainly caught our eye before finally reaching its long, winding conclusion last month.

Circle’s proposed merger with blank-check firm Concord, which is backed by former Barclays boss Bob Diamond, has been its own long and winding story.

The company — an issuer of USD Coin, a type of stablecoin — announced in July 2021 it would merge with Concord in a deal that would value the company at $4.5 billion. However, USD Coin’s circulation quickly doubled and, in February of last year, Circle terminated its previously announced merger agreement and agreed to new terms that doubled the crypto company’s valuation to $9 billion. 

That deal was expected to close last month, but instead the company called off its proposed merger agreement.

According to the report, the SEC raised more than 100 questions with Circle’s disclosures about the SPAC agreement.

Again, none of this comes as a surprise, but it is significant. VCs and other institutional Investors are likely more wary than ever about backing crypto startups. If it becomes clear one of the paths to a liquidity event is blocked by an agency such as the SEC, the appetite to invest in the space becomes even less.

In a market where it likely will be hard to raise funding for crypto-focused startups, the SEC’s actions may increase that difficulty level even slightly more.

Further reading:

• Funding To Web3 Startups Plummets 74% in Q4
• FTX Collapse Will Reverberate Throughout The VC World For A Long Time
• How VCs Invest In Crypto Will Be Changed By FTX’s Spectacular Fall
• Semafor To Buy Back Bankman-Fried’s Stake — Report

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The deal has been rumored for weeks. While the exact dollar amount was not confirmed, Semafor reported earlier this month that Microsoft was in talks to invest as much as $10 billion.

The deal follows a $1 billion investment in 2019 from Microsoft into the AI startup. That deal made Microsoft’s Azure the exclusive provider of cloud computing services to OpenAI. 

“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratize AI as a new technology platform,” said Satya Nadella, chairman and CEO of Microsoft. “In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organizations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications.”

Microsoft is in a battle for AI dominance with other tech giants such as Alphabet and Amazon.

Big money for AI

Earlier this month The Wall Street Journal reported the startup could be valued at $29 billion thanks to a new tender offer.

Venture firms Thrive Capital and Founders Fund were reported to be in talks to invest in the offer that would have allowed them to buy shares from existing OpenAI shareholders.

OpenAI had been valued at $14 billion during a tender offer in 2021.

Related reading:

• ChatGPT Creator OpenAI Could Be Valued At $29B In Tender Offer — Report
• Writing-Focused Startups Draw Big Bucks
• The Promises And Perils Of A Decade Of AI Funding
• Billions Of Dollars Roll Into AI-Enhanced Cybersecurity
• AI Could Transform Medical Imaging — So Why Don’t We See It More?
• From Wigs To Fish, Some Very Quirky AI Startups Got Funded In 2022

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With layoffs, massive funding pullbacks and an overall sense of doom clouding the economy, we naturally saw attention drawn to our coverage of those issues. Readers want to be prepared and understandably gravitated toward our reporting on why these unfortunate economic events are happening.

Layoffs specifically drew interest from readers, namely our updated tracker of tech companies that cut workers in a given week. This year we also launched The Crunchbase Unicorn Board, where we list the most valuable private companies in the world, and our Emerging Unicorn Board of up-and-coming unicorns.

1. Weekly tech layoffs: Earlier this year we noticed the uptick and then steady pace of tech companies laying off workers. Hence, we began tracking those numbers — seeking tips from readers and also watching for the latest layoff news. As of mid-December, 90,000 workers in the U.S. tech sector have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2022. Companies large and small made unfortunate debuts on this list, which we will continue to update throughout 2023.

2. The Crunchbase Unicorn Board: Earlier this year, we launched our curated list of private unicorn companies with post-money valuations of $1 billion or more. New companies are added to the board as they reach the $1 billion valuation mark as part of a funding round. Data for companies already on the leaderboard is updated when there is a new funding round announced.

3. Layoff analysis: Consistently throughout the year, we have paused to reflect on what our layoff tracker told us. These analyses (including this one written by reporter Chris Metinko in May and others written later in the year by Sophia Kunthara and Keerthi Vendatam) provided thoughtful insight on the road ahead.

4. Emerging Unicorn Board:  In addition to the Unicorn Board, we also launched the Crunchbase Emerging Unicorn Board this year to track global private companies on the path to achieving unicorn status. Powered by Crunchbase’s comprehensive data, this list is updated as companies reach a valuation of $500 million or more but less than $1 billion and consistently drew readers this year.

5. VCs spent billions on scooters, with little to show for it: Five years ago, the scooters came. These nimble little vehicles offered riders a quick trip to work or a quick trip to the ER, depending on who you asked. Scooter mania spread worldwide, fueled by more than $5 billion in total funding. Since then, many scooter stocks have been tossed aside with Bird just a penny stock. We wrote about the industry and readers took an interest in what we had to say.

6. The VC reset: Senior Data Editor Gené Teare has done a stellar job this year providing monthly recaps of funding at every stage. This report from May held particular appeal for readers as it illustrated that while late-stage and technology-growth investing have been most severely impacted, seed funding remains surprisingly robust (at the time, anyway). Times have certainly changed since then.

7. Global VC pullback dramatic in Q3: With our recap of Q3 data, we could definitively say that the big global venture capital pullback we were all expecting had arrived. Venture and growth investors in private companies scaled back their investment pace significantly as the slump in the public markets stretched into the third quarter.

8. Self-driving truck upstart Embark: From $5B+ to basically worthless: San Francisco-headquartered Embark, which develops autonomous driving technology for the trucking industry, has presided over a roughly 98% share price decline since going public a year ago. In the process, it’s wiped out close to $5 billion in market capitalization. Contributing reporter Joanna Glasner dove into the company’s numbers and her insights struck a chord with readers.

9. VCs embrace a new type of dating app: Nothing better than a startup dating story in February. We wrote about a fresh crop of dating startups getting venture funding to help people find connections in new mediums.

10. Y Combinator warns of economic downturn: In May, accelerator Y Combinator warned the good times may be coming to an end for startups and the venture market. “No one can predict how bad the economy will get, but things don’t look good,” the letter said. The warning came shortly after SoftBank announced it would become much more selective in investments after posting a loss of $27.7 billion on investments in its Vision Fund for its just-ended fiscal year.

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Last week it seemed like big rounds were making a comeback. That’s not the case this week, as even the largest rounds were on the small side and there weren’t a lot of them. Investors continued to go big on biotech and another agtech company made the list, along with a mini golf startup—a first.

1. Odyssey Therapeutics, $168M, biotech: Developing drugs is big business, for both biotech firms and investors. This week, Boston-based Odyssey Therapeutics closed a $168 million Series B led by General Catalyst. Odyssey is developing precision immunomodulators and oncology medicines to treat serious human diseases. The company’s drug discovery engine uses artificial intelligence and machine learning for molecular design, a functional genomics platform for target discovery and other proprietary tech. Founded last year, Odyssey has raised nearly $386 million, according to the company.

2. Uniswap Labs, $165M, crypto: Crypto and blockchain have been relatively quiet recently, but there does usually seem to be at least one round that makes this list every week. This week it was New York-based Uniswap Labs—the company behind the Uniswap Protocol exchange— that landed a $165 million Series B led by Polychain Capital. The raise values the company at $1.66 billion, TechCrunch reported. Founded in 2018, Uniswap is a decentralized exchange platform operating on the Ethereum blockchain. The exchange allows users to deposit tokens into larger liquidity pools and buy and sell at predetermined pricing. In a blog post announcing the round, the company said it has now supported $1.2 trillion in trading volume to date. The company has now raised $176 million, according to Crunchbase data.

3. TripActions, $154M, travel: TripActions has been in the news a lot lately. Just two weeks after it was reported the company had confidentially filed to go public next year, the Palo Alto, California-based business travel startup raised $304 million at a $9.2 billion valuation. The round is comprised of $154 million in equity from new and existing financial investors and a $150 million structured capital transaction led by Coatue. The business travel startup raised $275 million in a Series F round led by Greenoaks Capital last October at a $7.25 billion valuation. In May, Bloomberg reported the company was in negotiations to raise funding at a $9 billion valuation. Late last month, Business Insider first reported the company had filed confidentially to go public and is aiming for a $12 billion valuation in Q2 of next year. The report also said Goldman Sachs has been hired to handle the listing.

4. Puttshack, $150M, sports: Who didn’t at one point love miniature golf? Apparently many people still do. Chicago-based Puttshack locked up a $150 million from funds managed by BlackRock and continued support from Promethean Investments. The company blends a night out—food and beverages—with miniature golf and uses its patented Trackaball technology to help automate scoring and create interactive games at each hole. Puttshack plans to use the new cash to expand into many more locations across the U.S. Founded in 2017, the company has now raised $244 million, according to Crunchbase.

5. Soli Organic, $125M: Agtech continues to be big with investors. Virginia-based indoor farming startup Soli Organic raised $125 million Series D led by CDPQ. Soli sells greens and herbs. However, unlike most indoor farming companies that use hydroponics and vertical farming tech, Soli utilizes soil and its own special fertilizer to grow their crops indoors. The company has been around for a while. It started off as Shenandoah Growers in 1989—making it an OG of the agtech sector. The company has raised $487.5 million since being founded, according to Crunchbase data. 

6. Neumora Therapeutics, $112M, biotech: Watertown, Massachusetts-based Neumora Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotech firm developing medicines for brain diseases, closed a $112 million Series B from investors that included Abu Dhabi Growth Fund (ADG), Amgen, ARCH Venture Partners and others. Founded in 2019, Neumora has raised $650 million in capital, per the company.

7. SprintRay, $100M, 3D printing: Los Angeles-based dental 3D printer maker SprintRay raised more than $100 million in a Series D led by the SoftBank Vision Fund 2, according to a Deal Street Asia report. This is the first disclosed round, per Crunchbase data.

8. Matchpoint Therapeutics, $70M, biotech: Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Matchpoint Therapeutics, a developer of precision covalent medicines to treat immune diseases, closed on a Series A funding of $70 million led by Sanofi Ventures. The company has raised a total of $100 million including its seed round led by Atlas Venture and Access Biotechnology.

9. NorthOne, $67M, fintech: New York-based financial management platform NorthOne raised a $67 million Series B from new and existing investors. Founded in 2016, the company has now raised more than $90 million from investors such as Redpoint and Battery Ventures, per Crunchbase.

10. Ascidian Therapeutics, $50M, biotech: Boston-based Ascidian Therapeutics came out of stealth and announced it had raised a $50 million Series A from ATP, who also developed the company. Ascidian is trying to treat human diseases by replacing mutated exons at the RNA level.

Big global deals

With so few large rounds this week in the U.S., the biggest round globally went to a China-based firm.

• Horizon Robotics, which creates computing platforms for smart vehicles, received a $1 billion investment from Volkswagen for a joint venture. 

Methodology

We tracked the largest rounds in the Crunchbase database that were raised by U.S.-based companies for the seven-day period of Oct. 8 to 14. Although most announced rounds are represented in the database, there could be a small time lag as some rounds are reported late in the week.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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Then, the SPAC and IPO boom of 2020-2021 arrived. All of a sudden, companies in scores of sectors once confined to venture capital portfolios were widely available on public markets. Developers of technologies tied to self-driving vehicles were particularly well-represented, launching market debuts with collective initial valuations of over $50 billion. 

But investors’ love affair with the space didn’t last. A Crunchbase analysis of 14 companies developing technologies tied to self-driving vehicles 1that went public in the past couple of years shows an average post-debut decline of more than 80%.

The worst performers—a list that includes autonomous truck developer Embark and LiDAR technology companies Velodyne Lidar and Quanergy—are down over 95% or more. Both Quanery and Embark also completed reverse stock splits this year to lower the danger of delisting, only to see further valuation declines.

For a full rundown of how these 14 companies have performed, we put together a chart, seen below, showing valuations at time of debut compared to now:

VCs are still investing

Given the public market’s rapidly decelerating interest in the space, one might expect to see venture investors put the brakes on big rounds for private companies tied to autonomous driving. That hasn’t entirely been the case.

We’re still seeing some big rounds this year. For instance, London-based Wayve, developer of what it describes as a “next generation” autonomous vehicle technology driven by machine learning, pulled in $200 million in a Series B, bringing total investment to over $450 million. (It should be noted that this was in January, before public markets posted their most severe declines).

Meanwhile, Cavnue, a developer of advanced roadways tailored for connected and autonomous vehicles, pulled in $130 million in an April Series A co-led by Ford. Several China-based companies have also secured big rounds, including WeRide, a developer of autonomous vehicles, and Soterea, which focused on automating vehicle safety features.

Still, things are way down from 2021, particularly for large, later-stage rounds. We aren’t seeing financings similar in stage or size to last year’s biggest round in the space, a $600 million Series D for Nuro, which makes self-driving electric vehicles for local deliveries. Obviously, pre-IPO rounds aren’t happening either, given both the state of the IPO market and the condition of already public companies in this industry.

It’s not about profits

As we ponder the causes of the great 2022 sell-off of stocks related to LiDAR and self-driving vehicles, one possibility can immediately be stricken from the list.

No one is dumping shares in these companies because profits are down. They never had profits in the first place. 

It’s also unclear to what extent revenues might be a driver. Those that have sales are by-and-large early in their scaling, while others are still pre-revenue. This was never a bet on present earnings but rather on the future potential of a massive technological shift.

If we look at valuations of the worst performers on our list, it appears investors have mostly given up. 

Take Embark Technology, which develops software to power self-driving trucks. The San Francisco-based company was valued around $5.2 billion when it went public in November through a SPAC merger. It had raised over $117 million as a private company, pulled in another $614 million for its public offering, and counted Tiger Global and Sequoia Capital among its lead backers.

Just a year after its debut, Embark is valued at less than the cash reserves it had at the end of its last quarter. Shares are down a whopping 97% from their debut price. 

So, just to put it in perspective: This would be like if the price of your $1 million California house went down in a few months to just $30,000. It’s pretty catastrophic.

For Embark, which is pre-revenue, it’s tough to say what could be the catalyst for such a cataclysmic decline. By the same token, it’s also difficult to surmise what supported that $5.2 billion valuation just 11 months ago. Investors just aren’t paying what they used to for this kind of thing.

In coming quarters, it’ll be interesting to see which companies that went public during the 2020-21 window of opportunity have regained investors’ favor. For now, it’s looking like pretty much the whole autonomous driving unicorn herd has headed downhill fast.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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