29 companies joined the Crunchbase Unicorn Board in May, with AI deployment services and robotics leading new entries as OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX prepare major exits.

OpenAI Deployment Company raised a $4 billion private equity round led by TPG and valued at $14 billion; Anthropic Applied AI JV raised $1.5 billion in funding to build an AI services company bringing Claude into enterprise operations. Together, these deployment ventures use forward-deployed engineers to help businesses implement AI systems.

The Unicorn Board reached $9.9 trillion in value in May. Anthropic moved ahead of OpenAI to become the second most valued private company after SpaceX. Chip company Cerebras went public in May at a valuation of $56.4 billion, above its last private valuation of $23 billion in February. SpaceX is expected to list this Friday in what would be the largest-ever IPO.

Of the 29 new unicorns, 17 are U.S.-based, while four each are based in China and the UK. Two new unicorns joined from Canada, and one each from India and Brazil. China dominated in the robotics sector; Canada did so in quantum.