Business
Morningstar Introduces Industry's First Global Unicorn Index Series
Powered by PitchBook and Morningstar Indexes, the new benchmarks are the first to daily measure Unicorns, or privately held venture-capital companies with
About this update from Morningstar, Inc.
[{"type":"text","content":"Powered by PitchBook and Morningstar Indexes, the new benchmarks are the first to daily measure Unicorns, or privately held venture-capital companies with valuations of $1 billion or more. \nCHICAGO, Nov. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment research, introduces the Morningstar® PitchBook Global Unicorn Indexes™, the first index series to provide daily insights into the behavior and performance of late-stage venture capital (VC)-backed companies, empowering investors to better understand and access this rapidly growing but difficult-to-track asset class.\nThis new series of market indexes combines the leading VC data, analytics, and insights from PitchBook, an independent subsidiary of Morningstar, with the indexing best practices of Morningstar Indexes, one of the fastest-growing global index providers.\n\"In today's market, investors are increasingly looking to nontraditional asset classes like private markets for portfolio diversification and investment opportunity,\" said Ron Bundy, president, Morningstar Indexes. \"Our new global unicorn indexes combine the deep data and insight of PitchBook with the best practices of Morningstar Indexes to deliver a new series of benchmarks for the late-stage venture capital market.\"\nAccording to Morningstar research, private capital markets have grown substantially in the last decade, with more companies staying private longer or pursuing less traditional funding strategies. This trend has fueled a growing number of \"unicorns,\" or VC-backed companies valued at $1 billion or more. Companies like Instacart, Stripe, and ByteDance are widely considered to be some of the most dynamic, fast-moving companies, driving new global markets and economic developments.\nOnce only accessible to sophisticated investors like pension funds and the ultra-high net worth, late-stage VC-backed companies are increasingly making inroads into individual portfolios through retirement plans and ownership of \"crossover\" mutual funds. But investor access and insight into the late-stage VC market has not improved as quickly as the market has grown. This market has been difficult for index providers to track due to its illiquidity, lack of reporting standards, and no mark-to-market pricing capability.\n\nThe Morningstar PitchBook Global Unic...