World’s Ten Largest Unicorns Hit Over $563 Billion Value

According to fresh data gathered and released by AksjeBloggen, the world’s ten largest unicorn firms have now reached a collective valuation of $563.3 billion as of September 2020.

First on the list was the Chinese fintech Ant Financial, with a valuation of around $150 billion. The company, which offers clients a wide range of financial services, from lending and payments to investing and insurance using a platform business model, is said to have recorded a revenue of $10.5 billion in the first half of 2020. That makes up a 38% increase year-on-year, with a net profit that increased almost 11 times to £3.26 billion during the same period.

Privately held startup companies valued at over $1 billion, otherwise known as unicorns, have seen explosive growth since 2013.

Ant Group filed for its greatly anticipated IPO in August, and is expected to be listed on both the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Shanghai’s STAR Market.

Following closely behind Ant, ByteDance ranked second on the list of most-valued unicorns. The parent company of Chinese social media app TikTok gained a valuation of $140 billion as of September, showing an increase of 86% in 2020 alone.

Third on the list is Didi Chuxing, another Chinese company, with a $62 billion market value. The app-based transportation service provider boasts of over 550 million users, who use its ride-sharing, bike-sharing and taxi-hailing services, among many other services.

Rounding up the list of top 5 are US unicorns Infor and SpaceX, with valuations of $60 billion and %46 billion respectively. Data released by CBInsights shows that American companies are the most represented on the list of unicorn companies in the world, with 236 private companies valued at over $1 billion. China ranked second with 182.

When the term “unicorn company” was first introduced in 2013, only about 40 private companies held a valuation of over $1 billion worldwide. Today, there are at least 12.5 times as many unicorns currently in operation, with about 500 existing as of September this year.

73 new unicorns were added to the list in 2020, putting the total valuation of unicorns worldwide at $1.5 trillion as of September. What’s more is a third of these unicorns are in the fintech sector.