Newly minted US decacorns are on track to surpass 2021’s record of 22 by the end of this year. Already, 19startups have crossed the $10 billion valuation mark in 2026, eclipsing 2025’s full-year tally of 18, according to PitchBook data.
The trend reflects a broader resurgence in the venture market driven by mega-deals, especially as investors pile into AI startups insatiably.
Mega-deals, or rounds of at least $100 million, accounted for 87.5% of the $412.7 billion VCs invested in startups in the first half of 2026. That total has already surpassed last year’s cumulative deal value of $319.2 billion.
There are now 63 active decacorns in the US, up from 53 last year and 26 in 2021.
The latest crop of decacorns is dominated by AI startups. SambaNova Systems, a chip manufacturer specializing in AI inference tech, crossed the threshold earlier this month when it raised $1 billion in a Series F round led by General Atlantic at an $11 billion valuation.
The furious pace of AI investment has been driven by VCs and other private markets investors betting that scaling AI startups requires much larger checks written in rounds that follow one another in quick succession, said SambaNova co-founder and CEO Rodrigo Liang.
“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 that have gotten to scale,” Liang said. “‘Let me try these technologies and see what works,’ because the transition is happening so fast, and whoever is there is going to become the default player. So, what you’re seeing is the investor base coming in and saying ‘well, we’re going to make that bet.'”
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Other startups that joined the decacorn club this year include Shield AI, Cerebras, Clear Street, ElevenLabs, Harvey and Notion.
Total deal value of investments into AI startups from January through June amounted to $355.9 billion, or 86% of all US venture investment, according to the Q2 2026 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor.
A portion of the decacorn boom has been driven by late-stage startups weighing when to go public, said Jason Woon, a partner at Armanino who advises pre-IPO companies. Without naming it, Woon said a client valued at more than $10 billion had IPO plans ready in Q1, but pumped the brakes when market volatility spiked.
Many decacorns have been private for years, generate ample revenue and face no immediate pressure to go public, especially thanks to tender offers enabling longstanding investors and employees to cash out without an IPO. Other emerging decacorns are still pre-revenue or are burning large amounts of cash for growth, such as Colossal Biosciences, which is raising new funding at a valuation north of $20 billion, Axios reported.