Record 136 Unicorns Born in Q2 2021, a Spike of 491% YoY
The number of new global unicorns has spiked 491 percent from 23 to a staggering 136 between Q2 2020 and Q2 2021, according to the data acquired by Finbold. During the first three months of this year, the figure stood at 113, representing a growth of 140.4 percent from 2020 Q4’s 47 unicorns. During the first quarter of 2020, the number of unicorns dropped to 21 from the previous quarter’s figure of 31.
The spike in unicorns has been fuelled by increased funding, high levels of innovation, high-quality talent, and the ability to sell to a large market. Furthermore, companies attaining the unicorn status have either disrupted existing markets or created entirely new markets backed by technological innovation and smart market strategies.
IBM Delivers Strongest Revenue Growth in 3 Years
IBM shares rose as much as 4 percent in extended trading early this week after the enterprise technology and services provider posted the strongest quarterly growth in three years.
The company reported a Q2 2021 profit of $2.33 per-share, $0.04 higher than estimates, while revenue rose a modest 3.4 percent year-over-year to $18.75 billion, $400 million higher than consensus.
Cloud and Cognitive Software division income rose 6 percent year-over-year while Global Business services added 12 percent. IBM reported $27 billion in total cloud revenue in the last 12 months, marking a 15 percent year-to-year improvement. It posted less spectacular results in the most recent quarter, with $7 billion yielding a 13 percent gain. Red Hat revenue grew a respectable 20 percent in the sixth full quarter since the company was acquired in a $34 billion transaction.
Airtel, Intel Collaborate to Accelerate 5G in India
Bharti Airtel has collaborated with Intel for 5G network development by leveraging vRAN/O-RAN technologies.
The collaboration is part of Airtel’s 5G roadmap for India as it transforms its networks to allow its customers to reap the full possibilities of the hyper-connected world where Industry 4.0 to cloud gaming and virtual/augmented reality become an everyday experience. Airtel is the first telecom operator in India to demonstrate 5G over a LIVE network and is conducting 5G trials in major cities.
Airtel will deploy Intel’s latest 3rd gen Xeon Scalable processors, FPGAs and eASICs, and Ethernet 800 series across its network to build a solid foundation for rolling out wide-scale 5G, mobile edge computing and network slicing.
