February 20, 2025

Game time

Hi there, 

Here is this week’s Hot or Not.

Hot: Web3 in gaming

Web3 gaming is staging a comeback. 

Blockchain-based platforms made up nearly a third of 2024’s top early-stage gaming startups based on CB Insights Mosaic startup health scores.

Get the full breakdown of gaming's next wave in our latest report. 

Not: Zombie unicorns

The unicorn boom is fading.

Over one-third of today’s 1,200+ unicorns haven’t raised funding since 2021.

And more than 100 sit precariously at a $1B valuation — one down round away from losing their status.

With the public markets largely shut, many of these unicorns are stuck in limbo, as Bloomberg recently highlighted using CB Insights data.

As investors grow more selective, many late-stage startups face a stark choice: accept steep valuation cuts, sell at a discount, or risk becoming unicorpses.

Get the full picture of the unicorn landscape here. 

Hot: Bigger early-stage insurtech deals

Early-stage deal sizes surged in insurtech last year, jumping 52% YoY.

However, those early checks are getting harder to come by. 

The number of early-stage deals declined for the third straight year in 2024. Meanwhile, early-stage deal share in insurtech hit its lowest measure in 13 years.

Investors are getting pickier when it comes to emerging players but going bigger when they spot a winner.

Explore some of the largest early-stage insurtech deals in our State of Insurtech 2024 Report.

Not: AI pins

AI breakthroughs have launched the search for the next iPhone, but it’s not going to be Humane’s Ai pin.

The startup announced earlier this week that it had sold most of its assets to HP and that it would immediately stop selling its Ai pins.

This highlights a trend we started looking at last year: while startups are working on consumer AI devices to replace smartphones, incumbents with deep AI talent and pockets have an advantage.

Take Meta as an example. Since releasing its Ray-Ban smart glasses in late 2023, it has already sold 2M pairs.

And by the end of 2026, it’s aiming to produce 10M pairs… per year.

The race for AI's "iPhone moment" may not come from a plucky startup after all, but from tech giants who already have the capacity to bring innovative AI hardware to the masses.

Take a look back at our other generative AI predictions in this report.

The +1

Look away. Another day, another pie sore.

I love you.

Anand

@asanwal 

Co-Founder & Exec Chair

P.S. Autonomous shopping is on the rise. How should businesses prepare? Join our analysts on March 6 to find out.

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