So who are some of these top VC firms? It’s hard to identify top firms because their data is rarely public and their performance numbers are tightly held. Even if you know how large a funding round is, you don’t know how much the lead investor invested and how much they owned.

Based purely on the number of investments in billion-dollar companies, the firms SV Angel, Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Accel, Andreessen Horowitz, Benchmark, First Round Capital, Founders Fund, DCVC, and Felicis Ventures came out on top in my study.

Some, including Index Ventures, Accel, and Sequoia, also met great success investing in billion-dollar companies in Europe and India.