South China Morning Post Citing the latest Global Unicorn Index results released by Hurun Research Institute on December 20, ByteDance has surpassed Ant Group to become the world’s largest technology unicorn. A “unicorn” is a term for a privately held startup valued at more than $1 billion.
Startups from the US and China continue to dominate the unicorn rankings. This comes despite the fact that Chinese tech companies are under intense regulatory scrutiny in both the mainland and the US. Out of 1,058 unicorns globally as of November 2021, China has 301 startups, second only to the US with 487.
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| ByteDance has seen its valuation increase by nearly 30%, from $270 billion last year to $350 billion this year. |
Beijing-based ByteDance, whose short-video app TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users globally, is seen as a major challenger to Facebook. The company has seen a valuation increase of nearly 30%, from $270 billion last year to $350 billion this year. Ant Group, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding and operator of online payment platform Alipay, is valued at $150 billion. Ant’s $39.5 billion initial public offering, which was pulled back at the last minute in November 2020, once locked in the company’s short-term valuation then in the year, according to analysts. about 350 to 450 billion USD.
“The year 2021 is officially the most successful year for startups ever. The country with the most unicorns has the best startup ecosystem in the world,” said Rupert Hoogewerf, president and research leader of the Hurun Report.
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The 10 largest unicorns in the world account for 25% of the total value of the world’s unicorns. Four of them are from the US, three from China, while Australia, the UK and Sweden each have one unicorn.
SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Tesla boss Elon, has risen two places to be the world’s third most valuable startup. The Los Angeles-based company (USA) is currently valued at $ 100 billion, is the largest unicorn in the US.
According to a Hurun report, while the US and China dominate the global unicorn market with 74%, the rest of the world also increased their market share to 26% this year from just 17% two years ago. India and the UK are third and fourth on the global unicorn ranking list, with 54 and 39 unicorns respectively. “Countries with more unicorns are considered to have more dynamic economies,” said Hoogewerf.
Among the global cities that harbor the most unicorns, San Francisco topped the list with 151 unicorns, surpassing Beijing’s 91. New York, Shanghai and Shenzhen made the top 5 with 85, 71 and 32 unicorns respectively. Half of the world’s unicorns are related to financial technology (fintech), SaaS (software as a service), e-commerce, artificial intelligence, health technology and cybersecurity. Metaverse, the newest sector attracting many companies, has yet to see any unicorns.
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