Unicorn funding dries up

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In 2022, unicorn companies — start-ups with a market valuation of $1bn or more — attracted $131.6bn of funding worldwide, less than half the capital raised a year earlier, according to Crunchbase data. Unicorns have raised just $42.1bn this year.

An economic downturn and higher interest rates have weighed on investor sentiment for fledgling companies. Many start-ups are burning through their reserves and venture capitalists are struggling to raise cash for illiquid private tech funds.

Silicon Valley heavyweights expect many unicorns to do “down rounds”, where they raise funding at a lower valuation than their previous capital injection, or to go out of business entirely.

“The repricings have to occur,” said Brad Gerstner, the chief executive of Altimeter Capital, adding that even at the right price he would probably want to own less than 5 per cent of the roughly 1,400 unicorns across the globe.

Alex Irwin-Hunt

Our other charts of the week

Over the past decade, the average decibel level of hit songs has fallen after more than 20 years of rapid growth, according to Spotify data on track listings from Now Music’s compilation albums. 

Between 1983 and 2008, median hit song loudness increased by 45 percentage points, from -8.53 dB to -4.63 dB. However, between 2013 and 2023, this metric decreased by 9 percentage points. 

According to American mix engineer Andrew Scheps and recording expert Greg Milner, flatlined decibel levels are a result of “the loudness war’s” culmination and the dominance of digital streaming platforms such as Spotify. 

At the turn of the century, producers used ever-greater levels of dynamic compression to make their songs louder, aiming to grab listeners’ attention and generate more sales. 

The 2008 release of Metallica’s Death Magnetic record marked the end of competitive loudness as thousands of fans complained that the release sounded harsh and petitioned the band to remix the album. 

Felix Wallis

The number of daily commercial flights has risen above pre-coronavirus levels for the first time, with 130,758 take-offs on Thursday. Lockdowns during Covid-19 across the world saw flights plummet by as much as 75 per cent.

The turnaround has been driven largely by “a recovery of traffic in mature markets where airlines were able to stabilise their operations more quickly and bring existing planes back online”, according to Flightradar 24.

The International Air Transport Association forecast net profits across the airline sector would rise to $9.8bn in 2023, compared with net losses of $3.6bn in 2022.

Steven Bernard

More than two-thirds of Europeans believe corruption is widespread in their country, an uptick of 2 percentage points since 2022, according to a new poll from the European Commission.

Perceptions regarding the extent of corruption in their country differ significantly across EU member states, with the figures ranging from 13 per cent in Finland to 97 per cent in Greece.

Respondents are most likely to think that corruption is rampant among political parties, officials who award public tenders or officials granting building permits.

The biggest increase in the perception of graft was in Malta, where 92 per cent of people consider corruption to be widespread. In 2017, Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was murdered in a car-bomb attack. Since then a public inquiry found the state should bear responsibility for the assassination “by creating a climate of impunity . . . which led to the collapse of the rule of law”.

Max Harlow

Women and girls are losing out on work and education opportunities because they are still overwhelmingly responsible for fetching water, the UN has warned

Water collection is a “highly gendered activity”, but responsibility varies by country and cultural context, the UN said.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the region with many of the longest journeys, has the highest proportion of women and girls responsible for water collection, putting them at greater risk of injury and danger, the authors said.

North Africa and western Asia, where journeys tend to be shorter, feature more journeys by men and boys.

Globally, women and girls have primary responsibility for collecting water in seven out of 10 homes, meaning they are losing precious educational, work, and leisure time, according to a report by Unicef and the World Health Organization.

“Every step a girl takes to collect water is a step away from learning, play, and safety,” said Unicef director Cecilia Sharp.

In total, 1.8bn people globally live in households without water supplies on the premises, the UN said.

Lucy Rodgers

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