China is now home to 369 unicorns – start-ups valued at more than US$1 billion – with more than a quarter of these companies involved in the nation’s artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor sectors, according to a new report.
These Chinese unicorns have an average valuation of US$3.8 billion, according to a report jointly published on Sunday by five institutions – including professional services giant KPMG, the Zhongguancun Unicorn Company Development Alliance and consultancy Great Wall Enterprise Institute – at this year’s edition of the five-day Zhongguancun (ZGC) Forum, which concluded on Monday in Beijing.
Across 16 sectors, AI unicorns are the highest valued, at an average of US$6.76 billion, followed by financial technology firms at US$6.57 billion, the report said. The number of unicorns in the AI and semiconductor sectors accounted for 14.1 per cent and 12.2 per cent, respectively, of the 369 total.
China, however, continues to remain behind the United States in the overall number of unicorns, according to the report, which did not cover the mainland firms’ peers in the US.
There were more than 700 unicorns based in the US and over 340 in China in last year’s global tally of 1,453, according to the Global Unicorn Index 2024, published by the Hurun Research Institute earlier this month.
The ZGC report, meanwhile, said Beijing minted the most number of unicorns at 114, followed by 63 in Shanghai and 32 in technology hub Shenzhen in southern Guangdong province.
More than 70 per cent of the 369 Chinese unicorns also received investment from funds with an international background, the report said.
Established venture capital firms were major sources of funding for Chinese unicorns, according to the report. These included HongShan, formerly Sequoia Capital China, which invested in 96 of the 369 unicorns. Citic Capital was involved in funding 74 of these unicorns, while Tencent invested in 56 firms.
