​Chinese tech firm ByteDance becomes world's largest unicorn company

Photo taken on Aug. 21, 2020 shows a logo of the video-sharing social networking company TikTok's Los Angeles Office in Culver City, Los Angeles County, the United States. (Xinhua)

BEIJING, Dec. 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese tech firm ByteDance has become the largest unicorn company worldwide, reported Shanghai Securities News quoting the Global Unicorn Index 2021 jointly released Monday by the Hurun Research Institute and related authorities in Guangzhou of south China's Guangdong Province.

The Global Unicorn Index 2021 lists global unlisted companies founded after 2000 with a value of more than 1 billion U.S. dollars as of November 30, 2021, and a total of 1,058 unicorns made the list this year, 472 more than last year and including 301 Chinese firms which is 74 more than last year.

According to the Index, the valuation of ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, rose by 1.7 trillion yuan to 2.3 trillion yuan. With TikTok having been downloaded 3 billion times worldwide, ByteDance has become a serious competitor to Facebook.

Ant Group, a leading provider of financial services technology in China, ranked second on the list with a valuation of 1 trillion yuan. Cainiao Network, the logistics arm of China's Alibaba Group, ranked ninth with a valuation of 220 billion yuan.

Chinese firms Yuanqisenlin engaging in innovative beverage, Sunshine Insurance Group and Didi Freight are also on the list with a respective valuation of 95 billion yuan, 70 billion yuan and 65 billion yuan.

According to Rupert Hoogewerf, founder of the Hurun Research Institute, a third of the Chinese unicorns on the list are engaged in e-commerce, healthcare and artificial intelligence, and 50 percent of the Chinese unicorns on the list are concentrated in Beijing and Shanghai.

The Index also shows that of the world's unicorns, 50 were incubated by their parent companies, with 49 of them from China. Alibaba Group incubated the most unicorns with five, followed by JD.com and Baidu with three each.

(Edited by Gu Shanshan with Xinhua Silk Road, gushanshan.1987@163.com)