2021 has been a frenetic year for startups. So much so, that the number of unicorns - companies that exceed a value of US$1 billion in their early stages of raising capital - were approaching 1,000 as of September this year. According to the Crunchbase database, they have reached a combined value in excess of US$3.4 billion, an increase of US$1.4 billion in less than a year.

The highest-valued unicorns as of September were China's ByteDance (owner of TikTok) and Ant (linked to Alibaba) and U.S.-based Stripe and SpaceX.

By geographic region, US unicorns have raised the most resources (US$99 billion, up 50% from the previous year), followed by Asia (US$51 billion, a marginal increase over last year). Latin America raised US$10 billion, four times more in 2020. Crunchbase's list of Latin American unicorns as of September totaled 22 companies, including Chile's NotCo.