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21st Century Business Herald reporter Zhang Min reports from Beijing

On August 15, the National Economic Research Institute of the Development Research Center of the State Council and Tianjiu Enterprise Service jointly released the "White Paper on the Growth Path of Chinese Unicorn Enterprises" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper"), which shows that there are currently 523 unicorn enterprises in China, second only to the United States, ranking second in the world. In addition, there are 924 potential unicorn enterprises in my country.

According to the statistics of the "Guide to the Classification of High-Growth Enterprises" published by the China National Institute of Standardization, unicorn enterprises must meet three conditions: they have been established for no more than 10 years; they have obtained private equity financing from professional institutions and have not yet been listed; the post-investment valuation of the last round of financing exceeds US$1 billion, and the cumulative financing amount exceeds (including) US$50 million.

The White Paper states that my country’s 523 unicorn companies are distributed in 61 cities in 22 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions (including the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region). Shanghai has the largest number of unicorn companies, with 94, followed by Jiangsu and Beijing with 85 and 82, respectively, and Guangdong and Zhejiang with 74 and 71, respectively.

In terms of industry, the software and information technology services industry has the largest number of unicorn companies, with 50 companies, accounting for 9.6%; followed by other science and technology promotion services, with 43 companies; and the computer, communications and other electronic equipment manufacturing industry has 28 companies, ranking third.

Among the 924 "potential unicorn companies" with a valuation of more than US$100 million but not yet reaching the unicorn standard, Jiangsu has 306, the largest number, while Shanghai and Beijing have 148 and 140, respectively.

The White Paper points out that China's unicorn companies are shifting from model innovation to technological innovation, and the proportion of cutting-edge technology unicorn companies continues to rise. Data shows that unicorn companies are leading the development of new fields and new tracks, with integrated circuits, clean energy, and artificial intelligence tracks becoming the new main battlefields. In hard-core technology segments such as GPU chips, semiconductor materials, hydrogen energy, new energy storage, controlled nuclear fusion, synthetic biology, and large models, unicorn companies have also made new breakthroughs.

In recent years, due to the sluggish global economy, the growth of China's unicorn companies has slowed down and their development has also faced bottlenecks.

The White Paper suggests that we should further streamline administration and delegate power, remove the institutional and mechanism barriers that restrict innovation and entrepreneurship, and create a market environment of fair competition. At the same time, we should strengthen intellectual property protection and improve the innovation incentive mechanism.

In addition, the government is encouraged to participate in industrial venture capital funds and set up special funds to support the innovative development of unicorn enterprises. The overseas investment management system will be improved, the overseas investment approval process will be simplified, and unicorn enterprises will be supported to actively explore the international market.