China had 357 unicorn enterprises at the end of 2022, the highest number in the country's history, according to statistics released on Wednesday at the 2023 China Unicorn Enterprises Conference in Suzhou City, east China's Jiangsu Province.

The definition of a unicorn enterprise is a company that has been set up for less than a decade, valued at more than $1 billion but not publicly listed.

The number increased 13 percent in 2022 compared with 2021. The number of newcomers to the list was 98.

Most of China's unicorn enterprises are in the sectors of chips, new retail, innovative drugs, digital health, digital entertainment, smart logistics and AI.

The chip industry has the highest number of unicorns, at 39.

Unicorns around the world

Currently, there are 1,361 unicorns in the world, based in 48 countries and 271 cities, according to the Global Unicorn Index 2023 released by the Hurun Research Institute. 

The world is looking at the unicorns for their disrupting financial services, business management solutions and healthcare. The total value of all known unicorns in the world is $4.3 trillion, more than the GDP of Germany, double that of unicorns pre-COVID. Some 79 percent sell software and services, such as fintech, SaaS (software as a service), e-commerce and AI, whilst 21 percent involve a physical product, led by new energy, biotech, food and beverage and semiconductors.

"Unicorns are dramatically changing the way we live and spend our money. OpenAI's ChatGPT has had perhaps the largest impact across the world of any unicorn, shooting up in value to $20 billion and hitting the milestone of 100 million users within just over two months, the fastest-growing consumer software application ever," said the report. 

Rupert Hoogewerf, chairman and chief researcher of the Hurun Report, said that "when researching unicorns, it is now possible to split the world into three: the U.S., China and the rest of the world." 

The U.S. has 666 unicorns, China has 316 and 379 are in the rest of the world. The main sectors of U.S.-based unicorns were SaaS, fintech and health tech; for China it was AI, semiconductors and e-commerce; whilst for the rest of the world it was fintech and e-commerce, according to the report. 

China's high-tech, innovative unicorns

According to data released by the Great Wall Enterprise Institute, China's unicorn companies have strong tech features, with high-tech unicorns covering more than 60 percent (216 in number) of the nation's total, and the proportion of such companies among new unicorns exceeding 80 percent.

In addition, more than half of the new unicorns are in the clean energy and new materials sectors.

In 2022, Chinese unicorns covered 38 fields, and there were at least 15 unicorns in each of these industries: chips (integrated circuits), new retail, innovative drugs, digital medical care, digital entertainment, smart logistics, internet celebrity explosion products, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.

There were 39 unicorn companies in the integrated circuit track, which has had the largest number of unicorn companies for two consecutive years, according to the Great Wall Enterprise Institute. 

The number of new unicorn companies in clean energy, new materials, new energy vehicles, power batteries and other tracks exceeded 50 percent.

For the first time, unicorn companies appeared in the agricultural technology and synthetic biology sectors.

In 2022, there were 245 Chinese unicorn companies gaining valid invention patents, with accumulated valid invention patents total of 12,301.

In the same year, the number of Chinese unicorns applying for international PCT patents increased to 81 from 71 on the previous year, with the number of PCT patent applications for robots, integrated circuits, power batteries and autonomous driving track companies leading the race, also according to the Great Wall Enterprise Institute. 

(CGTN's editor Liu Xun and Gong Zhe contributed to the story.)

Data editor: Yao Nian

Graphics designer: Mukesh Mohanan