China and USA battles for the top spot in Hurun’s Global Unicorn Index for 2020

According to Hurun’s latest Global Unicorn Index China, and USA accounts for 460 of the worlds 586 Unicorns corresponding to a dominating 79% of the world’s Unicorns. UK and India came in third and fourth trailing behind China and USA by a large margin:

1. USA: 233 (+30)
2. China: 227 (+21)
3. UK: 24 (+11)
4. India: 21 (0)

China and USA are also dominating the top spots in the city ranking with the top 6 cities for Unicorns located in these two countries. The top city outside of China and USA is London claiming seventh place:

1. Beijing: 93 (+11)
2. San Francisco: 68 (+13)
3. Shanghai: 47 (0)
4. New York: 33 (+8)
5. Shenzhen: 20 (+2)
6. Hangzhou: 20 (+1)
7. London: 16 (+7)

When it comes to the youngest Unicorns China is dominating with 6 of the 9 Unicorns founded in the last two years (2018 and 2019) followed by 2 from the USA and 1 from Brazil.

Finally, when it comes to the top Unicorns by valuation China is dominating the US with Unicorns from China claiming the top 4 spots by valuation followed by US based SpaceX on fifth place:

1. Ant Group, USD 150 billion, China
2. ByteDance, USD 80 billion, China
3. DIDI Chuxing, USD 55 billion, China
4. Lufax, USD 38 billion, China
5. SpaceX, USD 36 billion, USA

To summarize the Unicorn battle between China and USA, it seems that China is the place to be for achieving Unicorn status the fastest and for growing your Unicorn valuation to tremendous heights. At the same time, it seems that USA has a broader Unicorn base.

Industry wise, most unicorns can be found in the E-commerce space (89) followed by Artificial Intelligence and FinTech (63 each). However, when ranked by % of total Unicorn value FinTech claims the top spot (21.6%) followed by E-commerce (10.5%) and Shared Economy (9.3%).

Link to the full Global Unicorn Index 2020 by Hurun’s can be found here: https://www.hurun.net/EN/Article/Details?num=E0D67D6B2DB5

Note: The definition of a Unicorn is a start-up founded in the 2000s that has reached a valuation of USD 1 billion but not yet listed on a public exchange.