World’s Top Unicorns – $1 bn+ Private Companies’ Map is Very Interesting

Desh Kapoor -

As of end of May, 197 privately held companies were valued at $1 bn and above with a combined net worth of $697 bn.  These companies have raised $142 bn until now.

World's Top Unicorns - $1 bn+ Private Companies' Map is Very Interesting #Startups Click To Tweet

These companies are in 13 verticals:

  1. E-Commerce/Marketplace
  2. Internet Software & Services
  3. FinTech
  4. Social
  5. Cybersecurity
  6. On-Demand
  7. Big Data
  8. Healthcare
  9. Media
  10. Hardware
  11. Mobile Software & Services
  12. Real Estate
  13. Other (includes, among others, Ed Tech, Aerospace and Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality)


What is a Unicorn?
A Unicorn is a startup company which has a valuation of over $1 billion.  To describe how rare such enterprises are, Venture Capitalist Aileen Lee had used this term in one of her articles.  By the same token, decacorn are companies over $10 billion and hectocorn  are companies valued over $100 bn.

Of these the top three sectors are: e-commerce / marketplace (17%), internet software & services (14%) and fintech (11%) which contribute to the top unicorns!  The top guns in these three sectors are:

The most valuable company in the e-commerce/marketplace category is Airbnb ($29B), while Infor and Dropbox are the two most valuable companies operating in internet software & services, worth $10B and $9.4B, respectively. China’s Lu.com ($18.5B) is the most valuable private fintech company, followed by Stripe ($9.2B).

The top 5 Unicorns by their valuation are:

  1. Uber ($68 billion)
  2. Didi Chuxing ($50 billion)
  3. Xiaomi ($46 billion)
  4. Airbnb ($29 billion)
  5. Palantir Technologies ($20 billion)

The countries where these companies are located are: USA (54%), China (23%), India (4%), the UK (4%), Germany (2%) and South Korea (2%).  No other country has three or more private companies with a $1 bn valuation.  One can say that the top four countries to set up a start-up are US, China, India and the UK.

Which of these companies will become the next Google or Microsoft is to be seen, but the future of the world is being defined today by these players!