Tech & Science dictionary
hectocorn
[hek-tuh-kawrn]
What does hectocorn mean?
It is the most elusive, and expensive, creature of them all: the hectocorn, a financial term for a company valued at over $100 billion.
Where does hectocorn come from?
A unicorn is a mythical horse with a single horn protruding form its head. In 2013, venture capitalist Aileen Lee wrote an article for TechCrunch where she likened new companies (startups) valued at over $1 billion to unicorns—famously rare in legend, just like such companies.
In 2015, as unicorn companies became more common, a Business Insider article referred to companies valued at over $10 billion decacorns, with deca– a Greek-based prefix meaning “ten.” Around the same time we see the next power of ten occur: hectocorn, with hecto– a Greek-based prefix meaning “one hundred.”
A decacorn is a word used for those companies over $10 billion while hectocorn is the appropriate term for such a company valued over $100 billion.According to TechCrunch, there were 279 unicorns as of March 2018. Unicorns, Narwhals, Dedacorns & Hectocorns https://t.co/Dpub2j3csD pic.twitter.com/is6WXK99ZV
— Bali Promotion Center ⭐️⭐️❤️⭐️⭐️ (@translatorbali) March 4, 2019
Hectocorn made news in 2018–19 when Uber was seeking valuations of over $100 billion ahead of its IPO, or “initial public offering” of its stock to the public.
Examples of hectocorn
Who uses hectocorn?
The term hectocorn is principally found in tech and business media and discussions. While some apply the criterion that a hectocorn (as with a unicorn and decacorn) must be privately owned and relatively new (i.e., a not (yet) publicly traded startup), hectocorn can be more generally applied to any company that is worth over $100 billion.
This includes Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple, which at one point in 2018 was technically the world’s first kilocorn kilo (kilo-, “thousand”), valued at over $1 trillion.
Coinbase could become crypto's first Hectocorn.
Crypto has added a value layer to the internet. So it makes sense that cryptos first >$100b company is a service for trading and storing digital value.
— Ryan Sean Adams (@RyanSAdams) May 23, 2018
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of hectocorn like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of hectocorn that will help our users expand their word mastery.