A unicorn is defined as a startup whose valuation has exceeded $1 billion. The term was coined in 2013. At that time there were less than 40 unicorns around the world. Until now, that is within 7 years, this number has grown to over 600. 85% of them are based in the United States or China. According to available data, the valuation of the ten largest unicorns exceeded 556 billion dollars. Read the article till the end and find out what are the biggest unicorns among startups.
ByteDance – Value: $140 billion
A Chinese unicorn involved in the IT industry. ByteDance’s main product is Toutiao, a content platform in China as well as around the world. Toutiao was initially a recommendation engine. It gradually turned into a service that provides content in various formats, such as images, text, Q&A posts, microblogs, and videos. Currently, Toutiao offers personalized news feeds. Their content is updated based on what machine learning algorithms learn about a user’s reading preferences.
Biggest unicorns among startups – Stripe – value: $95 billion
The startup was founded by two young brothers. In 2016, they became the youngest billionaires in the world to make their fortune independently. Stripe is an innovation in the financial market. It is an online payment operator, offers money transfers and loans, payment terminals, cards, and is becoming a marketplace platform. This unicorn has ambitions to become the market leader in financial innovation in the world – in this field it competes not only with other startups, but also with banks.
SpaceX – value: 74 billion dollars
One of the oldest unicorns, having joined the ranks in 2012. SpaceX is a space industry company founded by Elon Musk. The company focuses on multiple fields such as building rocket engines and launchers and spacecraft, including manned spacecraft. The key to its success is said to be significantly reducing the cost of launching cargo into orbit by building reusable rockets. In 2020, SpaceX was the first private company to send humans into orbit.
The full list of unicorns can be found here.