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Where we stand with gaming unicorns vs gaming studios in public market. TL;DR:
» No studio, no publisher, no free-to-play operator on the unicorn list.
» Delisting and going pvt is the trend with listed studios.
Stats from Pitchbook unicorn list (2026)
1. 256 companies have hit unicorn status of with 4 are from gaming (not studios) and 2 are from game-adjacent (AI)
2. 5.1B combined value from gaming, its the smallest sector
4 gaming companies are not game studios:
» Brave Group runs VTuber IP
» ModRetro is into selling retro consoles
» Odyssey is into building world models
» Shengshu is into building world models
2 gaming adjacent Unicorns from AI space:
» Meshy, AI that generates 3D assets
» General Intuition, AI that trains on gameplay video
Trends with public markets:
» Devolver listed in 2021 at 940M, now its worth about 45M. In action to delist from LSE. Its revenue grew 60% in H1 2026, but the market simply would not pay for it.
» EA just went private
» Delisting and going pvt is the trend.
Gaming unicorns are from either in AI or tooling space in 2026.
Craft business or the technology business? In 2026, capital only showed up for one of them.
Take CARe, CARtic
iCartic.com
Source: link to Pitchbook