HURUN GLOBAL UNICORN INDEX 2020, IN ASSOCIATION WITH SUZHOU NEW DISTRICT IN EAST CHINA 

HURUN RESEARCH FINDS 586 UNICORNS IN WORLD, UP 92

USA LEADS CHINA BY 233 TO 227, MAKING UP 79% OF WORLD’S UNICORNS

UK AND INDIA THIRD AND FOURTH WITH 24 AND 21

INDIANS FOUNDED A FURTHER 40 UNICORNS OUTSIDE INDIA, CHINESE FOUNDED FURTHER 16 OUTSIDE CHINA.

NEW TO TOP 10: BEIJING-BASED VIDEO-SHARING APP KUAISHOU UP US$10BN, HANGZHOU-BASED PARCEL TRACKER CAINIAO UP US$8BN AND PALO ALTO-BASED DATA MINER PALANTIR UP US$11BN

WORLD’S TOP THREE UNICORNS FROM CHINA: ANT GROUP US$150BN, ON BACK OF SHANGHAI AND HK IPO PLAN, BYTEDANCE UP US$5BN TO US$80BN, DESPITE RECENT US GOVT THREAT TO TIKTOK, AND TAXI-HAILING APP DIDI CHUXING US$55BN

SPACEX, WHICH JUST SUCCESSFULLY DELIVERED TWO ASTRONAUTS TO THE ISS, FIFTH IN WORLD, WORTH US$36BN

SAN FRANCISCO-BASED PAYMENTS PLATFORM STRIPE BIGGEST GAINER, ADDING US$13BN AND 5 PLACES TO 5TH PLACE

9 OF TOP 10 CITIES ARE IN CHINA AND USA, WITH LONDON THE ONLY OTHER CITY IN TOP 10

NO UNICORNS: ITALY, RUSSIA, MEXICO AND HOLLAND LARGEST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD BY GDP WITHOUT A UNICORN

USA AND CHINA ADDED 30 AND 21 UNICORNS IN THE PAST YEAR, EQUIVALENT TO THE NUMBER OF UNICORNS IN INDIA OR UK

FINANCIAL SERVICES AND RETAIL SECTORS MOST DISRUPTED BY UNICORNS, FOLLOWED BY MEDIA & ENTERTAINMENT, BUSINESS MANAGEMENT SOLUTIONS, HEALTHCARE, LOGISTICS AND AUTOMOBILES 

E-COMMERCE LED WITH 89 UNICORNS, FOLLOWED BY AI (EG AUTONOMOUS DRIVING AND FACIAL RECOGNITION) AND FINTECH (EG PAYMENT SOLUTIONS) WITH 63 EACH.  OTHERS INCLUDE SAAS 53, SHARED ECONOMY 33 AND HEALTH TECH 28

BIGGEST LOSERS: JUUL LABS AND WEWORK, DOWN US$36BN AND US$27BN

SEQUOIA WORLD’S MOST SUCCESSFUL UNICORN INVESTOR, INVESTING INTO ONE IN FIVE OF THE WORLD’S UNICORNS, FOLLOWED BY TENCENT, SOFTBANK AND IDG. HILLHOUSE AND ACCEL BROKE INTO TOP 10 FOR THE FIRST TIME

943 CO-FOUNDERS OF WORLD’S UNICORNS, AVERAGE AGE 42

33 UNICORNS FOUNDED WITHIN 3 YEARS, AVERAGE AGE 9YRS

80% SELL SOFTWARE AND SERVICES, 20% PHYSICAL PRODUCTS

59% ARE CONSUMER-FACING, 41% B2B

18 OF 20 SPIN-OFFS FROM LARGE CHINESE COMPANIES, LED BY ALIBABA AND JD

AFRICA HAS ONE UNICORN: NIGERIA-BASED PAYMENTS GATEWAY INTERSWITCH WORTH US$1BN. HALF OF UNICORNS IN ASIA

TOTAL VALUE OF ALL KNOWN UNICORNS IN WORLD US$1.9 TRILLION

(4 August 2020, Suzhou, China, Mumbai, India and Oxford, UK) The Hurun Research Institute, in association with Suzhou New District from East China, today released the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020, a ranking of the world’s start-ups founded in the 2000s, worth at least a billion dollars and not yet listed on a public exchange.  This is the second year of the list and follows on from six quarterly Hurun China Unicorn Indices. This report includes the Hurun Best Unicorn Investors in the World 2020, a ranking of the 100 most successful unicorn investors. Valuations are a snapshot of 31 March 2020.

Hurun Research found 586 unicorns in the world, based in 29 countries and 145 cities. On average, they were set up nine years ago, with 80% selling software and services and 60% consumer-facing.  5% were in traditional sectors, with the majority disrupting financial services, retail, entertainment, business management solutions, healthcare, logistics and automobile. The total value of all known unicorns in the world is US$1.9tn, equivalent to the GDP of Italy.

89 unicorns saw their valuations rise, 23 saw their valuations drop.  There were 142 ‘new faces’ and 50 drop-offs.  Of the drop-offs, 30 were because they went public or were acquired and 20 saw their valuation drop below US$1bn.

Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher Rupert Hoogewerf said: “We have found 586 unicorns in the world. These young companies, only nine years old on average, are the world’s most exciting start-ups, leading a new generation of disruptive technology and attracting the world’s top young talent. Just look at Elon Musk’s SpaceX – valued at US$36bn and fifth on the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020 – which caught the imagination of the world by delivering two astronauts to the International Space Station on 31 May. Others that have made headlines recently include Beijing-based ByteDance, which is seeing its massively popular short video app TikTok come under threat from both the US and Indian governments, as well as China fintech Ant Financial, which is reportedly looking at a whopping US$200bn IPO in Shanghai and HK.”

“The USA and China continue to dominate with 80% of the world’s known unicorns, despite representing only 40% of the world’s GDP and a quarter of the world’s population.  The rest of the world needs to wake up to providing an ecosystem that allows unicorns to flourish.”

“Hurun has set out to find every unicorn on the planet, ranking countries and cities by unicorn head office location. I hope this will help countries and cities to standardize the number of unicorns they have.”

“Of the 61 unicorns founded by Indians, a massive two thirds are based outside of India, predominately Silicon Valley in the USA, whilst only 21 are based in India. The Indian founders of the 40 unicorns outside of India deserve to be recognised in much the same way as Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella, an inspiration to many young Indian entrepreneurs.”

Where are the World’s Unicorns based?

The world’s unicorns are based in only 29 countries around the world, spread around 145 cities.

The USA pipped China to lead by 233 versus 227, together accounting for 79% of the world’s unicorns. “The dominance of the USA and China is such that they each have more than four times the number of unicorns in Europe, which today has 58 unicorns,” said Hoogewerf.

USA and China added 58 and 38 ‘new faces’ this year.

The UK was third with 24, led digital bank Revolut worth US$6bn. Europe’s largest unicorn was Switzerland-based biopharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences worth US$7bn. “The UK has more unicorns than Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Italy, Russia and Holland combined”, said Hoogewerf.

India was fourth with 21 unicorns, led by payments solutions platform One97 Communications (US$16bn), travel-stay finder OYO Rooms (US$8bn), online educator BYJU’s (US$8bn), and cab aggregator Ola Cabs (US$6bn).

Despite a population of just under 9 million, Israel was 7^th, ahead of France and Switzerland.

By city, Beijing is the world’s unicorn capital with 93, comfortably ahead of San Francisco with 68 and followed by Shanghai, New York, Shenzhen and Hangzhou. As a region, Silicon Valley leads the world with 122 or 21% of the world’s unicorns.

9 of the Top 10 cities for unicorn headquarters are in China and the USA, with London the only other city to make the Top 10. “China and the USA dominating the world’s unicorn cities is significant because these unicorns create an ecosystem of talent and investors,” said Hoogewerf.

Paris is the unicorn capital of mainland Europe with 6 unicorns, just ahead of Berlin with 5 unicorns.

Table 1: Top countries and cities where the world’s unicorns are based

* New to list

Source: Hurun Research Institute

USA. The USA led the world with unicorns, just ahead of China. In the USA, SaaS and AI unicorns led, followed by e-commerce and fintech. By valuation, fintech led but fintech unicorn valuations in the USA were only one quarter of those in China.

The USA was the country of choice for Indian and Chinese founders of unicorns, who between them founded 49 unicorns in the USA.

Table 2: USA unicorns key industries

Source: Hurun Research Institute

China. China follows the USA with 227 known unicorns and with a further 16 unicorns founded by first or second generation Chinese outside of China, predominantly in Silicon Valley. “Interestingly, two of the three largest unicorns co-founded by Chinese outside of China are US and UK versions of China’s on-demand food delivery platform ELEME, which went on to be acquired by Alibaba in 2018.”

By number of unicorns, China was driven by e-commerce, followed by AI.  By value, fintech led the way.

Table 3A: Unicorns outside of China with a Chinese co-founder

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Table 3B: China unicorns key industries

Source: Hurun Research Institute

India. 36 of the 40 unicorns founded by Indians outside of India are in the USA, led by the Bay Area, followed by two in the UK, and one in each of Germany and Switzerland.

Table 4: Unicorns outside of India with an Indian co-founder

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Can’t find a unicorn here

Italy, Russia, Mexico and Holland are the largest countries in the world by GDP without a unicorn. “Only 29 countries have unicorns, meaning that the other 170 or more countries in the world are without a single unicorn, led by 10 of the world’s 25 largest economies,” said Hoogewerf.

Table 5: Largest countries in the world without a unicorn

Source: Hurun Research Institute.  GDP rankings and dollar values based on IMF 2019 estimates

Asia leads North America as the continent creating the most unicorns in the world, both in terms of number of unicorns and in terms of total valuations of unicorns. “Interestingly, Asia has 50% of the world’s unicorns, whilst Africa was the most underrepresented, with only 1 unicorn for its 1.2 billion population,” said Hoogewerf.

Table 6: Continents where the world’s unicorns are based

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Biggest losers

JUUL Labs and WeWork led the way with the biggest drops in valuations. JUUL Labs, an e-cigarette company, was hit by new regulations, resulting in a US$36bn drop in its valuation from US$48bn to US$12bn. WeWork dropped US$27bn to US$3bn.

Table 7: Biggest drops in valuations

Source: Hurun Research Institute

And the biggest winners

89 unicorns registered a net increase in valuation, led by payments platform Stripe, which increased its valuation by US$13bn or 50% to US$36bn, driving it up 5 places to 5th spot. Stripe, founded in 2010, today counts the likes of Amazon, Google, Uber, Booking.com and Zoom as its clients. Other big risers, straight into the Top 10, were Pala Alto-based data analytics platform Palantir, which jumped US$11bn to US$26bn and video-sharing app Kuaishou, which was up US$10bn to US$28bn.

Table 8: Biggest gainers in valuation

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Years to Unicorn

The average age of the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020 is nine years, of which 33 are less than three years old. JD Health was spun-off last year from Chinese e-commerce giant JD and is the youngest unicorn on the list. “In the post-Luckin Coffee era, investors are much more careful now about management ability and systems,” said Hoogewerf.

Table 9: Youngest unicorns

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Software and services versus physical products?

80% sell software and services, led by E-commerce and followed by Fintech, AI and SaaS.

20% have a physical product as a core business offering, led by Consumer goods, E-cars and AI.

Top 10 Unicorns in the World

The Top 10 make up 28% of the total value of the world’s unicorns. All are from the USA or China.

Kuaishou, Cainiao and Palantir Technologies made the Top 10 for the first time with JUUL Labs and WeWork dropping out of the Top 10 because of drops in valuations, and Infor being acquired by Koch Industries and no longer being a unicorn.

Table 16: Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020 TOP 10

Source: Hurun Research Institute   * New to the Top 10

Hangzhou-based Ant Group, spun out of Alibaba in 2014, is the world’s biggest unicorn with a valuation of US$150bn, on the back of its impending IPO in Shanghai and HK. Ant Group’s main product is the payments platform Alipay.

Beijing-based ByteDance, founded by Zhang Yiming in 2012, is best known for its news aggregator platform Toutiao and short video platform TikTok. In March this year, Tiger Fund led a new round of investors, valuing ByteDance at US$80bn. In July this year, India banned TikTok and the US government is threatening to do the same.

Taxi-hailing app Didi Chuxing, founded in 2012, is the world’s third largest unicorn with a valuation of US$55bn. Last year Didi started expanding outside of China.

Shanghai-based wealth management platform Lufax, incubated by Ping An originally, is the fourth largest unicorn in the world, moving up one space after Infor was acquired by Koch Industries.

SpaceX. Elon Musk founded LA-based SpaceX in 2002, and has raised US$3.2bn in 27 funding rounds, with the latest one valuing the unicorn at US$36bn. The aerospace company, while collaborating with NASA, has just sent two astronauts to the International Space Station at the end of May 2020.

Stripe. Started by Irish brothers John and Patrick Collison in 2010, San Francisco-based Stripe holds the 5^th rank in the Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020. Stripe provides payment solutions to businesses and helps companies start up by providing the online infrastructure to manage operations. In a recent fresh round of funding in April 2020, the Silicon Valley-based e-payment technology venture announced that it had raised US$600mn, which raised the valuation of the company at US$36bn.

Airbnb. Founded in 2008, San Francisco-based Airbnb provides an online platform for people who wish to rent their homes to people who are in search of temporary accommodation while touring. The company is a brainchild of ‎Brian Chesky‎, Joe Gebbia‎ and Nathan Blecharczyk. It is currently valued at US$35bn. Recently, in April 2020, the company managed to raise US$1bn from private equity firms.

Beijing-based Kuaishou has transformed from an application app to a short video community since 2012, gaining a foothold in the short video field with more than 200 million daily active users. Kuaishou moved up 6 places to 8^th after a new round of investment, valuing it at US$28bn.

Cainiao, founded by Alibaba in 2013, focuses on working with partners to improve logistics efficiency, reduce social logistics costs and improve consumers' logistics experience. In November last year, Alibaba invested US$3.3bn to increase its stake from 51% to 63%, valuing Cainiao at US$27bn and shooting Cainiao into the Top 10.

With a valuation of US$26bn Palantir Technologies, a data mining and data analytics company, which was founded by Alex Karp along with Peter Thiel, Nathan Gettings, Joe Lonsdale and Stephen Cohen, was up 5 places to break into the Top 10. It is headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

What industries have been disrupted?

“Unicorns create value mostly by disrupting existing industries.  Financial services and Retail are the two sectors most disrupted by unicorns, followed by Media & Entertainment, Business Management Solutions and Healthcare,” said Hoogewerf. “The car industry, for example, is being disrupted by unicorns in the fields of autonomous driving and e-cars.”

Table 10: Industries most disrupted by unicorns

Source: Hurun Research Institute

What is the core business of these unicorns?

E-commerce is the core business for unicorns, followed by AI, FinTech and SaaS.

Table 11: Industries of the unicorns

Source: Hurun Research Institute

E-commerce. There are 89 e-commerce unicorns with a total value of US$196bn, which translates to 10.5% of the valuation of all unicorns combined. US online market-place Wish leads the industry with US$11bn valuations, followed by South Korea’s Coupang and China’s Cars (US$9bn) each. With 39 unicorns China has the largest number of e-commerce unicorns followed by USA (23) and India (7).

Artificial Intelligence boasts 63 unicorns up from 24 the previous year. With US$7bn valuation each US-based Argo AI, Uber ATG, UiPath and Automation Anywhere are the top AI companies in the list followed by China-based facial recognition platforms SenseTime (US$7bn) and Megvii (US$4bn). The total value of all AI unicorns is US$130.4bn or 7.1% of the global list. The key uses of AI are in autonomous driving and facial recognition. The USA leads with 34 AI unicorns, followed by China with 21 and the UK with 3.

FinTech. There are 63 VC-backed fintech unicorns. 56% are payment technology-related unicorns. The most valuable FinTech unicorn is Ant Group (US$150bn), followed by online wealth management platforms Lufax (US$38bn) and Stripe (US$36bn). FinTech dominates with US$403bn or 21.6% of the total value of all unicorns.

SaaS. With 16 new unicorn SaaS industry comes fourth with 8% of the unicorns in the list. Top SaaS companies are China-based property platform company Beike (US$15bn) and social commerce company Xiaohongshu (US$5bn), followed by USA-based HashiCorp (US$5bn). The total value of all cloud unicorns is US$88.3bn.

Shared Economy at 5^th spot with 33 unicorns and the total value of industry unicorn comes to US$175.5bn or just 9.3%. The sector is led by Beijing-based ride-hailing platform Didi Chuxing (US$55bn). Online marketplace Airbnb (US$35bn) comes second followed by Malaysia-based ride-hailing company Grab (US$14bn).

HealthTech has 28 unicorns, making it the 6^th largest sector with 4.8% of the unicorns. New York has seen the most unicorn activity in HealthTech and is home to 4 unicorns. With its own online healthcare ecosystem, PingAn Healthcare Technology is the most valuable at US$9bn, followed by Beijing-based pharmaceutical retailer JD Health (US$7bn) and Hangzhou-based WeDoctor (US$4bn).

Big Data sector offering services like data management and predictive analytics has 20 unicorns led by Palo Alto-based Palantir Technologies (US$26bn) and San Mateo-based Snowflake Computing (US$13bn), followed by San Francisco-based Databricks (US$6bn) and Mountain View-based Zume (US$4bn). These unicorns make up 3.2% of the global list and their combined valuation comes to US$67.5bn.

EdTech has 20 unicorns led by Bengaluru-based BYJU’s (US$8bn) and Beijing-based Yuanfudao (US$7bn), followed by VIPKID (US$4bn) and Zuoyebang (US$3bn). These unicorns make up 3.2% of the global list and their combined valuation comes to US$39.6bn.

Media & Entertainment has 19, or 3.2% of the unicorns. With US$3bn each, five Chinese unicorns lead: Yixia, NetEase Music, Himalaya, Dadi Digital Cinema and Bona Film. Other interesting entries include Skydance Media (US$2.5bn) and Sportradar (US$2.5bn). The total value of all the unicorns in this industry comes to US$37bn or 2% of the whole list.

Consumer Goods is in 10th place with 17, or just under 3% of the unicorns. At the top is E-cigarette company JUUL Labs (US$12bn), followed by four cosmetic unicorns: Seoul-based L&P Cosmetic, (US$3bn), Seoul-based GP Club (US$2bn), NY-based Pat McGrath Labs (US$2bn) and Santa Monica-based The Honest Company (US$1bn). The total value of all Consumer Goods unicorns comes to US$37.1bn or above 2.0% of the total.

Table 12: Core business of the world’s unicorns

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Which investors are the best at finding unicorns?

Sequoia is far and away from the world’s most successful investment platform at finding and investing into unicorns, investing into one in five of the world’s known unicorns, followed by Tencent, Softbank, IDG and Hillhouse Capital, Tiger Fund and Goldman Sachs. Hoogewerf says, “Unicorns are supposed to be hard to find, but investors like Sequoia, Tencent, Softbank and IDG make it look easy.”

31 investors made the Hurun Best Unicorn Investors in the World 2020 for the first time, led by Google Ventures, straight in at 21^st place with 16 unicorns invested and followed by Sinovation Ventures with 11.

“I was surprised not to see the likes of Google, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook towards the top of the Hurun Best Unicorn Investors in the World 2020,” added Hoogewerf.

Table 13: Most successful investors into unicorns – Top 10

(for the full list of the Top 100 investors, see Appendix 1)

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Start-up or incubated?

20 or 4% of the world’s unicorns were incubated by large companies before being spun off and attracting outside investors. Hoogewerf says, “Chinese companies are far and away the most successful at spinning off unicorns, with 18 of the world’s 20 ‘spun-off’ unicorns, led by the likes of Ant Group, spun off from Alibaba in 2014, and Lufax, spun off from PingAn.”

China-based e-commerce platform JD and Alibaba spun off three unicorns each followed by PingAn and Suning with two each. All but two were spun-off from a China-based company.

Table 14: Unicorns spun off from large corporations

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Unicorns recently listed

Of the 50 companies from last year that dropped off, 19 went IPO and 11 were acquired. 20 dropped off because their valuation dropped below US$1bn. Please note this report includes all known unicorns as of 31 March 2020, some of which have since gone IPO or been taken over.

California-based life science and diagnostic company 10X Genomics was the best-performing ex-unicorn, surging US$3.8bn in value since its IPO in September last year.

Nashville-based teledentistry platform SmileDirectClub was the worst performing, dropping US$6.3bn in value since its September IPO.

NY-based Infor was the largest of 11 ex-unicorns acquired in the last year. Infor was acquired by Koch Industries.

Table 15A: Best-Performing Unicorns since IPO

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Table 15B: Worst-Performing Unicorns since IPO

Source: Hurun Research Institute

Other Unicorns of Note

Beike

In March 2020, real estate agent platform Beike completed a D+ round of financing of $2.4 billion, and its valuation rose to US$15bn. Beike, spun out of China real estate agency Lianjia, is positioned as a technology-driven quality living service platform, providing consumers with a full range of living services including second-hand houses, new houses and rental.

Yuanfudao

Online education platform Yuanfudao has more than 400 million users in China, and is headquartered in Beijing. In March 2020, Yuanfudao completed a new round of financing of US$1bn, with a post-investment valuation of US$7bn.

Xiaohongshu

Shanghai-based Xiaohongshu is a social media platform with 300 million registered users as of July 2019. In March 2020, Xiaohongshu completed its E-round of financing, at a valuation of US$5bn.

Mininglamp

Beijing-based Mininglamp is a one-stop enterprise-level AI product & service platform. In March 2020, Mininglamp announced the completion of US$300mn for its E round, and its valuation rose to US$3bn.

CloudKitchens

Founded by Uber’s ex-CEO, Travis Kalanick, the concept of CloudKitchens is to provide exclusive food delivery to customers without having the customers at the restaurants. The task involved in this business is optimizing the food delivery services to customers by setting up restaurants with all the food preparation infrastructure sans the sit-in or dine-in facilities. The start-up was valued at US$5bn during the beginning of November 2019, when Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth invested US$400mn.

VistaJet

Founded by Thomas Flohr, Malta-based VistaJet operates a fleet of over 70 Bombardier Global and Challenger aircraft, covering 187 countries of the world. Currently valued at US$2.7bn, VistaJet has been offering complimentary empty leg flights to support governments and medical organisations repatriating citizens during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Notion Labs

Founded in the year 2012, Notion Labs is a San Francisco based start-up that is now valued at US$2bn. Notion Labs compete with several other workplace management applications such as Smartsheet, Airtable, Trello and Evernote. As of May 2020, the company has registered a subscriber base of 4 million. Amidst the Covid-19 pandemic the company managed to raise US$50mn funding at the current valuation.

Udemy

Currently valued at US$2bn, Udemy is an online educational platform that enables individuals and students across the globe to connect with various instructors. The startup was founded by Eren Bali, Oktay Caglar and Gagan Biyani in 2010, and is headquartered in San Francisco. The user base of the learning platform is comprised of 50 million students and 57,000 course instructors, while there are around 150,000 different courses available on the website for learning.

Verkada

Currently valued at US$1.6bn, Verkada is a new entrant to the list and it develops security cameras functioned to work for the Internet of Things (IoT). The startup was founded in 2016 by Filip Kaliszan, Benjamin Berkowitz, James Ren and Hans Robertson. Followed by that, in the beginning 2020, Felicis Ventures invested US$80mn in Verkada at the current valuation, which is triple the valuation in April 2019.

Lenskart

Optical devices aggregator, Lenskart operates in 100 cities across India and has around 500 stores in the country. In December 2019, Japan’s SoftBank Vision Fund announced that it will be investing US$275mn in Lenskart. Currently valued at estimated US$1.5bn, the company aims to utilize these funds to enhance its supply chain infrastructure.

You & Mr Jones

You & Mr Jones promotes itself as a ‘brandtech’ company, the word brandtech being a combination of branding and technology, which are the business wheels of the company. You & Mr Jones was valued at US$1.3bn in December 2019, after it raised US$200mn in a funding round.

ClassPass

Founded in 2013 by Payal Kadakia and Mary Biggins, ClassPass aims at providing its users access to various fitness studios, gyms and health clubs located across the globe while charging a monthly subscription fee in return. In January 2020 ClassPass, which now operates in 28 countries raised US$ 285mn to secure the unicorn status.

Grammarly

San Francisco-based Grammarly is now the most popular AI based online spell-check and grammar check-application. The company was founded by Alex Shevchenko and Max Lytvyn in 2009. In October 2019, the company raised US$90mn to hit the unicorn “button”.

Methodology

The Hurun Global Unicorn Index 2020 is compiled by the Hurun Research Institute with a 31 March 2020 cut-off.  Hurun defines a ‘unicorn’ as a start-up founded in the 2000s that has reached a valuation of US$1bn, but not yet listed on a public exchange.

Hurun Research believes the Hurun Global Unicorn Index to be the most serious attempt to capture all of the world’s unicorns into one list.

Valuing unicorns can be tricky. The very nature of these super-fast growing companies makes valuations hard to pin down, but to ensure consistency of the valuations, the Hurun research team used the most recent valuation based on a sizeable round. Countries and cities are ranked according to the unicorn head office.

The Hurun research team used databases that specialize in recording rounds of investments by the professional investment world, cross-checking the data with some of the world’s top investment houses, industry experts, unicorn co-founders and media sources.

Unicorns can drop out from the list either by going public (IPO), being acquired by another company, or dropping in valuation below US$1bn. 

Hurun Research has been tracking China’s top unicorns since 2017, starting with the Hurun China Unicorn Index and the world’s unicorns since 2019.

About Suzhou New District

Located in the southeast of China and the Yangtze River Delta, Suzhou New District (SND) is one of the first batch of national high-tech industrial development zones in China. The district covers 332 square kilometers (including 109 square kilometers of Taihu Lake water area), with a total population of 980,000. SND has developed to be the key driving force of economic growth and a demonstration area for self-innovation in Suzhou city, and the indicator of innovative development ranks among the best in the national high-tech zones.

In recent years, the R&D investment of the whole region accounts for 3.5% of the GDP. The number of effective invention patents of 10000 people is 123.09, which is more than twice of the city’s average. It has become one of the first batch of national ecological industry demonstration parks, one of the first batch of national intellectual property demonstration parks, national innovative park of science and technology and national Green Park. In 2019, the GDP reached 133 billion yuan, the foreign trade value stood at $41.98 billion and the actual use of foreign capital surged 21.8% to $530 million.

SND owns 19 listed enterprises, 11 Unicorn incubating enterprises, 198 national and Gazelle enterprises, and 692 national high-tech enterprises, ranking among the top high-tech zones in China.

There are more than 1700 foreign-funded enterprises (including 59 Fortune Global 500 enterprises), with the actual use of foreign capital $16.4 billion. Among them, there are more than 580 Japanese enterprises.

The district is endowed with excellent land and watery resources, with 27 kilometers of Taihu Lake coastline, 49 hills and mountains. The protection rate of natural wetlands reaches 60.3%, the forest coverage rate exceeds 26.1%, the green coverage rate reaches 44%, and the per capita public green space area is 12.8 square meters.

About Hurun Inc.

Promoting Entrepreneurship Through Lists and Research

Oxford, Shanghai, Mumbai, Sydney, Paris

Established in the UK in 1999, Hurun is a research, media and investments group, widely regarded as an influential opinion-leader in the world of business on the back of generating 4 billion views on the Hurun brand last year.

Best-known today for the Hurun Rich List series, ranking the most successful entrepreneurs in China, India and the world, Hurun’s other key properties include the Hurun Global Unicorn Index, the Hurun U30s, an awards recognizing the most successful entrepreneurs under the age of thirty, the Hurun 500, a ranking of the world’s most valuable companies, the Hurun Philanthropy List and the Hurun Art List, ranking the world’s most successful artists alive today.

Hurun provides research reports co-branded with some of the world’s leading financial insitutions, real estate developers and regional governments.

Hurun hosted high-profile events in the last year across China and India, as well as London, Paris, New York, LA, Sydney, Luxembourg, Istanbul, Dubai and Singapore.

For further information, see www.hurun.net.

Appendix 1 – Hurun Global Best Unicorn Investors 2020