Available venture data show that far more than “dozens” of new AI‑driven startup unicorns were created globally in the ~2 years after early 2023.

Key points:

• Using CB Insights data, AltIndex reports that 83 companies became unicorns in 2024, of which 36 were AI startups (≈45%), and that 22 AI startups reached unicorn status in 2023. That’s ≈58 new AI unicorns across 2023–2024 alone.(altindex.com) Even if you restrict to the post‑ChatGPT “AI wave” (early 2023 onward), this is well above the “dozens (≥24)” threshold.
• A UBS report based on CB Insights similarly finds 186 AI unicorns by end‑2023, with 16 new AI unicorns added in 2023.(scribd.com) Combined with the 36 new AI unicorns in 2024, that still implies >50 new AI unicorns in 2023–2024, comfortably satisfying the prediction.
• CB Insights’ own “State of AI” / Generative AI reports note that out of 16 new AI unicorns in 2023 year‑to‑date, 11 were generative‑AI companies, showing that a large share of unicorn creation was directly driven by AI technologies.(edocr.com)
• A Nikkei/CB Insights analysis cited by NASSCOM shows generative‑AI unicorns alone grew from 20 at end‑April 2023 to about 37 by mid‑2024 (an 85% increase), and that generative‑AI startups made up around 60% of new unicorns at that point, again underscoring how much of new unicorn formation was AI‑driven.(community.nasscom.in)
• These counts refer specifically to startups whose core business is AI (including generative AI, AI infrastructure, and AI applications), matching the spirit of the prediction that the “AI wave” itself would mint the new unicorns.

Because multiple independent tallies based on CB Insights data show well over two dozen new AI unicorns, and in fact several dozen, created worldwide between 2023 and 2024 (before mid‑2025), sacks’s forecast that “dozens of unicorns could be created in the next couple of years” by the AI wave is borne out by the data.