Published on 6/28/2026
The Chinese Xinhua Agency quoted a specialized report that the number of billion-dollar “unicorn” companies in China reached 381 companies as of January 1 of this year, an increase of 38 companies compared to last year.
According to the “Global Unicorn Index 2026” report recently issued by the Hurun Research Institute in Guangzhou, southern China, the number of unicorn companies around the world rose to a record level of 1,603 companies, an increase of 5.3% year-on-year, while the total value of these companies reached 54 trillion yuan (about 7.92 trillion US dollars).
The “Global Unicorn Index 2026” is a classification of emerging companies around the world that were founded after the year 2000 and have a market value of one billion US dollars or more without being listed on public stock exchanges.
The report indicated that:
- The United States ranked first with 806 unicorn companies, an increase of 48 companies, accounting for 50.3% of the total number of these companies globally.
- China ranks second with 381 companies, concentrated in the fields of semiconductors, artificial intelligence, biosciences and new energy.
The head of the institute and chief researcher in the Hurun Report, Robert Hoogewerf, said that the focus of the industries to which the “global unicorn” companies belong has shifted over the past eight years from e-commerce to financial technology, and then to artificial intelligence at the current stage.
He added that the number of unicorn companies in artificial intelligence witnessed faster growth compared to any other sector during the past year.
Hoogwerf pointed out that China…Outperforms the rest of the world in areas Semiconductors, new energy and robotics.
unicorn race
The New York Times explained in a previous report that the title of “unicorn” (start-ups worth more than a billion dollars) is no longer limited to a rare few startup companies.
She said that reaching a valuation exceeding one billion dollars no longer takes the same amount of time as before. Before 2015, companies needed an average of about 6.5 years to achieve the “unicorn” title, but during the last decade the average has decreased to about 3.5 years, according to Strebulaev research.
The newspaper distinguishes between:
- Sonicorn: Startups valued between $500 million and $999 million.
- “Unicorn”: companies worth more than a billion dollars.
- Decacorn: Companies worth more than $10 billion.
- Hectocorn: Companies worth more than $100 billion.
