According to a recent report of CB Insights, an international commercial media, 326 unicorn companies with a global valuation of over $1 billion were listed, including 98 companies from China, accounting for one third of the total number.

Latest statistics show that 119 new companies have joined the global unicorn company list, an increase of 67 percent over the 71 unicorns in 2017.

A unicorn refers to a technology start-up that has been established for less than 10 years but has a valuation of more than $1 billion and has not been listed on the stock market.

Currently, China has become the world's second largest source of unicorn companies. The huge domestic market has spawned a number of internet service companies that have changed their business models.

Unicorn start-ups, represented by Zhongguancun enterprises like Jinri Toutiao (a mobile news aggregator) and Didi, are already leading the world in terms of market value.

Various recently emerging unicorn lists indicates that unicorn companies are receiving wide attention.

The Great Wall Enterprise Institute (GEI) first released the "China Unicorn Enterprise Development Report" in China.

In 2017, Hurun Research Institute began to issue the "Hurun Greater China Unicorn Index", and Deloitte and the CVINFO also jointly released the "Research Report on Sino-American Unicorns."

Internationally, some commercial medias also publish the list of unicorns every year. Authoritative ones are reports made by Fortune, Visual Capitalist, CB Insights and TechCrunch.

Let's take a look at this year's list released by CB Insights:

CB Insights divides unicorns into 13 categories, including automotive technology, e-commerce, real estate, education, renewable energy, and aerospace.

1.Market trends by category

The largest category in the infographic is internet software and services (25 percent), followed by others (14 percent), e-commerce (13 percent) and financial technology (10 percent).

The most valuable company in internet software and services is Infor, a software company valued at $1 billion, while the online hotel market Airbnb ($29.3 billion) is the most valuable e-commerce unicorn. Payment start-up Stripe ($2.25 billion) is the most valuable private company in the financial technology sector.

On-demand customization is another noteworthy category, with a comprehensive valuation of 23 unicorns exceeding $21 billion. The second and third most valuable companies are Uber ($7.2 billion) and Didi Travel ($5.6 billion).

2.The most valuable company

The world's most valuable private company is China's Bytebeat (or Jinri Toutiao). After receiving investment from the Softbank Group in November 2018, the company's valuation reached $75 billion.

Behind Bytedance are Uber ($72 billion), Didi Travel ($56 billion), WeWork ($47 billion) and e-cigarette manufacturer JUUL Labs ($38 billion).

3.Valuation distribution

Twenty private companies (6 percent of the total number of unicorns) are worth more than $1 billion. But about 30 percent of the companies in the Global Unicorn Club are worth less than $1 billion.

4.Geographical distribution

Comparing this report with the analysis of CB insights on August 2018, the proportion of unicorns in the United States has increased from 47 percent to 48 percent. China still ranks second, but its share has dropped from 30 percent to 28 percent. The third and fourth positions are occupied by the United Kingdom (5 percent) and India (4 percent), respectively.