In the terminology of venture capital, a startup company valued at $1 billion or more. For details and examples, see The Unicorn List at Fortune.com and The Billion Dollar Startup Club at the website of The Wall Street Journal.

The widespread use of unicorn in this sense apparently dates from November 2013, when it was popularized in an article at TechCrunch.com written by the founder of Cowboy Ventures (Welcome To The Unicorn Club: Learning From Billion-Dollar Startups). She defines unicorns as "US-based software companies started since 2003 and valued at over $1 billion by public or private market investors."