News Releases

Morningstar Sustainalytics, a leading provider of ESG research, ratings, and data, has expanded its Controversies Research to cover the constituents of the Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 30 Index. The index tracks the 30 largest and most liquid “unicorns,” or late-stage venture capital-backed private companies valued at USD 1 billion or more, including businesses such as SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Stripe.

Historical trends indicate a decline in the number of publicly listed companies, alongside increased maturity and transparency in private markets. As private markets continue to evolve, it has become increasingly important to provide robust insight into private companies. From an ESG perspective, this new research reflects the need to deliver the same level of quality, consistency, and decision-useful signals that investors rely on in public markets.

David Pagliaro, President of Morningstar Sustainalytics, said: “Private markets play an important role for investors, particularly with the incredible innovation in some private assets and as high-growth companies remain private for longer. Extending our Controversies Research to include private companies reflects our focus on providing consistent, decision-useful insights across the investment landscape. By applying a transparent methodology, we aim to help investors better understand potential risks and impacts as these companies evolve and move toward IPO.”

This research development follows enhancements to Morningstar Sustainalytics’ Controversies Research framework in 2025, which introduced both financial and impact signals to reflect a double materiality approach.

The impact signal draws on media coverage, regulatory actions, and NGO reporting to assess a company’s impact on stakeholders and society. The risk signal evaluates the financial materiality of a controversy by comparing potential financial impacts – such as fines, revenue effects, or increased costs – to company size.

For private companies, where market capitalization data is not available, Morningstar Sustainalytics uses valuation estimates provided by PitchBook, a Morningstar company. Applying Morningstar Sustainalytics’ proprietary Controversy Ratings framework, the current universe of unicorn companies shows low to moderate controversy exposure as of May 2026. Most identified issues relate to Business Ethics, with five of the 30 companies receiving a Category 2 (out of 5) rating. This pattern is consistent with what is seen in publicly listed companies, where Business Ethics incidents are the most common source of controversy.