Hi there, 

Here is this week in charts.

Off to the races. The generative AI unicorn club just welcomed 2 new members: Cohere and Runway. The addition of these players brings the total genAI unicorn count to 13. These startups are taking far less time to get to $1B+ valuations (3.6 years on average) than most of their unicorn peers (7 years on average). Another sign of the genAI market’s rapid growth is how quickly startups in the space are scaling their teams. Cohere and Runway, for example, have seen their headcounts grow by more than 40% in 2023 so far. Dive deeper into the genAI magic in this research brief.

CB Insights customers can take a look at this headcount data here.

Spend trend. US digital ad spending growth dropped sharply from 2021 to 2022, from 38% growth in 2021 to 11% growth in 2022. Growth is projected to fall even further in 2023 (to hit just 8%), though forecasts indicate that it will bounce back into the double digits in 2024 and largely remain at that level through at least 2027. While Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta are expected to keep eating up significant portions of US digital ad revenue, their efforts stand to be challenged by innovative startups. Dive into digital advertising disruption here.

Mid-stage boom. Early-stage deals continued to account for the majority of insurtech deals in Q1’23. However, unlike venture at large, insurtech early-stage deal share was down by 11 percentage points from 2022. Mid-stage deal share, on the other hand, was up 10 percentage points. Late-stage deal share remained largely unfazed — it was down just 1 percentage point in Q1’23. Want to dive deeper into insurtech’s performance in Q1’23? Explore investment trends, top investors, exit activity, and more in our State of Insurtech Q1’23 Report.

You’re watching Disney+? Disney+ saw its subscriber count drop for the first time in Q1’23. The streaming service’s subscriber base amounted to 162M in Q1’23, down from 164M in Q4’22. The decline didn’t stop there — last week, it was reported that Disney+ saw its subscriber count fall to 158M in its fiscal Q2’23. One of the main factors behind the downward trend is Disney+ Hotstar, Disney’s streaming service in India, which lost subscribers following its decision to give up streaming rights for the Indian Premier Cricket League. As Disney+ subscriber count falls, Netflix has its eyes set on growth. Learn more about how Netflix is evolving in our strategy map.

Millennial moment. In 2019, millennials took baby boomers’ position as the largest generation in the United States. As of July 2019, the millennial population amounted to 72.1M, while baby boomers posted a total count of 71.6M. The millennial population is expected to grow as young folks continue to immigrate to the US and peak at 74.9M in 2033. Following millennials, Gen X is set to surpass boomers in population count by 2028.

Try again. A very pretty man. A very ugly visualization.

I love you. 

Anand

@asanwal

P.S. What digital health trends should be on your radar? Join our analyst-led briefing on June 1 to find out. 

Idk if we’ll renew

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