A favourite pastime in Silicon Valley, second only to inventing the next new thing, is bubble-spotting. Even industry insiders tend to get these things spectacularly wrong. “You’ll see some deadunicornsthis year,” Bill Gurley, a noted venture capitalist, predicted in 2015, the year thatincubationof these startups worth more than $1bn really got going.
在硅谷，仅次于发明出下一个新事物的最受欢迎的消遣方式就是发现泡沫。即使是业内人士也往往会把这些事弄得大错特错。著名的风险投资家比尔·格利 在 2015 年预测说：“今年你会看到一些倒闭的独角兽”。在这一年，这些价值超过 10 亿美元的初创企业的孵化工作才真正开始。
High-flying startups that went public in recent years have been hit hard, too. The shares of Robinhood are 80% below the level at which the retail-trading app went public in July 2021. Those of Peloton, which makes internet-connected exercise bikes, have lost over 90% of their value from their peak. As a group, the largest newly listed firms are worth 38% less than at the start of the year.
近年来高歌猛进的上市的初创企业也受到了重创。鲁滨逊公司的股价比 2021 年 7 月该散户交易应用程序上市时的价格水平低了 80%。生产可联网运动自行车的珀洛东公司的股价已经从顶峰时期下跌了 90%以上。整体来看，最大的新上市公司的价值比今年年初减少了 38%。
Small wonder that IPOs havedried up. From January to April 2021 some 150 companies went public in America, most of them techie. this year only 30 have done so. The boom in SPACs, which go public and then find a startup with which to merge, hasimploded. Of the more than 1,000 such firms that have floated in America since 2018, only a third have merged with a target. many of those that have done deals have lost their shine. According to an index that tracks the 25 largest de- SPACed vehicles, they have lost 56% of their value since the beginning of the year.
首次公开募股已经枯竭，这并不奇怪。从 2021 年 1 月到 4 月，大约有 150 家公司在美国上市，其中大部分是科技公司。今年只有 30 家。特殊目的并购公司的繁荣已经爆发了，这类公司先上市，然后找到一家可以并购的初创公司。2018 年以来，在美国上市的 1000 多家此类公司中，只有三分之一的公司成功实现对目标公司的并购。其中很多完成交易的公司已经光彩不再。一项追踪了25 家最大的去特殊并购目的公司的指数显示，从年初开始，这些公司的价值已缩水 56%。
As tech shares crash, they are pulling valuations of private firms down with them. CB Insights, a research firm, reckons that tech startups raised $628bn globally in 2021 in more than 34,000 deals. Between January and March this year the number of transactions fell by 5% compared with the previous quarter.
随着科技公司股价崩盘，这些公司把私人企业也一起拖下了水。研究公司CB洞察认为，2021年，科技初创企业在全球范围内通过 34000 多笔交易筹集了 6280 亿美元。今年1月至3月期间，交易数量比上一季度下降了 5%。
The amount of capital invested dropped by 19%, the biggest quarterly decline since 2012. The unicorn boom’s superstar investors have beenwalloped. On May 12th SoftBank, a Japanese tech investor with apenchantfor risky bets, most of which are private, reported that its flagship funds lost an eye-watering $33bn in the past 12 months.
投资金额下降了 19%，这是2012年以来季度最大下降额。独角兽热潮中的超级明星投资者已经遭到了打击。翻译划线句，长按文末小程序码打卡，答案下期公布~
