Decacorns Hit Record 42 in 2026 as AI Accelerates $10B Climb

Forty-two startups have crossed a $10 billion valuation globally in 2026 with three months of the year still to run, Axios reported, citing PitchBook data. The previous record was 34 decacorns, set in 2021.

The time it takes to get there has compressed. PitchBook puts the global average at 5.5 years for the 2025 class, down from 9.4 years in 2020. That is faster than companies used to need to hit mere unicorn status, which averaged eight years in 2020. Of the twenty fastest climbers on record, seventeen emerged in 2025 and 2026.

The lede example is Discovery Loop, founded in August by former Google chief scientist Jeff Dean. Its initial $10 billion target was ramped up to $50 billion the next month. Modal, founded in 2021, is reportedly targeting a $15 billion round.

PitchBook's own write-up quotes SambaNova co-founder and CEO Rodrigo Liang on where the capital is going: "In that condensed timeframe, what you're seeing is that, in order to deploy [capital] faster, the industry is putting its bet on fewer players." SambaNova itself crossed the threshold with a $1 billion Series F led by General Atlantic at an $11 billion valuation. Other 2026 entrants named include Shield AI, Cerebras, Clear Street, ElevenLabs, Harvey and Notion.

AI absorbed the capital. $355.9 billion flowed into AI startups between January and June, 86% of all US venture investment in that window. US companies raised $412.7 billion in the first half alone, a 29% jump over the 2025 full-year total and 15% above the 2021 record. Mega-rounds of $100 million or more accounted for 87.5% of that total.

Not all of this is first-time founder velocity. The average age of newly-minted decacorns in the 2026 data is 7.1 years, and sixteen were over eight years old when they joined. Axios cites Webvan as the cautionary comparison. The surge fits a broader pattern on our funding tracker, which logged 435 AI funding stories in the last 90 days.