Europe A New Stomping Ground For Unicorns?

For the magical land of (sustainable) unicorns look to … the continent?

The storied $1 billion valuation club, home to tech startups and other young tech firms, may find fertile ground in Europe, as a report this week from a British Investment Bank, GP Bullhound, found that although Europe gave rise to fewer unicorns (that would be 10 in the last 12 months) than had been seen the year before. The total tally of unicorns in Europe now stands at 47, said the firm, but perhaps the more interesting statistic is that the unicorns abroad generated an average of $315 million in the last 12 months, while their U.S. counterparts garnered a relatively paltry $129 million on average over the same timeframe – and more than half of the European players make a profit.

In company-specific news, cybersecurity firm Tanium, according to the financial trade press, has rejected a series of takeout offers from VM Ware and Palo Alto Networks. Those offers came last fall, according to reports, and thus before the slowdown started to hit those larger players. By way of contrast, Tanium is growing nicely and the rumored buyout prices have pegged the company at being worth at least $3 billion.

In terms of layoffs, the major downsizing came last week as Zenefits last week gave an offer to its employees to either embrace the company’s turnaround efforts or leave – and 10 percent of the staff chose the latter. That comes on top of the 9 percent, or more than 100 employees who left earlier this year.

And in a move that brings continued unicorn presence to China, late last week it was announced that children’s eCommerce player BeiBei got a $100 million investment from Banyan Capital and Capital Today. Not a downround, but the financial press had said that the amount to be raised would be more than $150 million, so this is a bit of a haircut.

It seems the week would not be complete without some mention of an IPO, or the consideration of an IPO. This time around, and most recently, software company AppDynamics is looking to come public as early as this year and at present is valued at roughly $1.9 billion.