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On April 18th, the Hurun Research Institute released the "2023 Global Unicorn List", which lists non-public companies founded after the year 2000 with a market value of over $1 billion as of December 31, 2022.

Overall, there are 1,361 unicorn companies worldwide with a total valuation of $4.3 trillion (approximately RMB 30 trillion), in 271 cities. The United States ranks first with 666 unicorn companies, while China ranks second with 316 unicorn companies.

The total value of global unicorn companies is $4.3 trillion, with 79% of unicorn companies selling software and services, mainly in fintech, software services, e-commerce, and the artificial intelligence sector. 21% of them sell physical products, mainly new energy, biotechnology, food and beverage, and semiconductors.

From a corporate perspective, the top three companies are ByteDance, SpaceX, and Ant Group, with market value being 1.38 trillion RMB, 945 billion RMB, and 830 billion RMB respectively.

Beijing and Shanghai rank third and fourth respectively on the global unicorn headquarters city list with 79 and 66 unicorn companies. Apart from Beijing and Shanghai, Chinese cities that made it to the top ten of the global list include Shenzhen (33 companies, ranked sixth), Guangzhou and Hangzhou (both with 22 companies, tied for eighth place).

Unicorn companies have high growth potential and to some extent represent the direction of economic transformation and upgrading. Taking SHEIN, a fast-fashion e-commerce company headquartered in Guangzhou, as an example, it has entered the top ten global unicorn companies for the first time this year, rising 12 places from a year ago, with a value of 450 billion yuan, an increase of 310 billion yuan from a year ago.