US Top News and Analysis | 'Disrupted or dead': AI is crushing a generation of startups built before ChatGPT AI generated summary, Read the full article for complete information. Nearly half of the 857 U.S. unicorns haven’t raised new funding in three years, and their valuations have slumped—companies that last raised in 2021 are worth about 68 % less, and those from 2022 about 52 % less, according to PitchBook. More than 220 former billion‑dollar “unicorns,” such as Glossier, Savage X Fenty, AG1 and The Farmer’s Dog, are now “fallen unicorns” after the AI boom redirected over $250 billion into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI‑first firms, rendering pre‑ChatGPT startups with outdated technology and bloated cost structures unattractive to investors. The surge in generative AI has especially destabilized SaaS and enterprise software firms, which built valuations on low‑interest‑rate assumptions and large engineering teams; AI‑driven tools now enable far smaller teams to deliver comparable products, prompting a shift toward outcome‑based pricing and AI‑native infrastructure and driving many older startups toward steep discounts, acquisitions or collapse. Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/01/ai-startup-valuations-pre-chatgpt.html #Glossier #AG1 #OpenAI #Anthropic #Brooklinen #MrBeast