World's Top 5 Unicorns

There are approximately 1,191 unicorns—a privatelyowned firm valued at more than 1 billion—worldwide, worth a collective 3.9 trillion, according to estimates from CB Insights. Here are the world’s top five. Figures are as of October 2022.

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1. ByteDance

Valuation: $300 billion

Country: China

Beijing-based Byte Dance, which became a unicorn in 2017, is valued at $140 billion according to its last fundraising round in 2020.

However, secondary market transactions in 2022 have reportedly placed a higher valuation of $300 billion. The company is best-known for its social video app TikTok and its local version Douyin. Main investors in the company are Sequoia Capital China, SIG Asia Investment, KKR, and SoftBank Group. ByteDance reportedly more than tripled its operating losses in 2021 to over $7 billion.

ByteDance was cofounded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, who was China's second richest billionaire as of November 10, 2022, with a net worth of $49.5 billion. Zhang owns nearly 22% stake of ByteDance. He decided to step down as the company's CEO in 2021, handing over the position to the company's cofounder and HR head Liang Rubo who is also a billionaire with a net worth of $2.3 billion as of November 10, 2022.

2. SpaceX

Valuation: $127 billion Country: U.S.