Beijing unicorns galloping ahead in worldwide growth

With more than 100 unicorn businesses, Beijing is one of the most prominent forces to emerge in the global innovation landscape.

A unicorn business refers to a privately held startup company that was founded less than 10 years ago yet whose value is considered to surpass $1 billion. Such businesses are generally in sunrise industries and thus embrace significant growth potential, according to Beijing Daily.

The past decade has witnessed a surge of unicorns in Beijing. In 2022, the city was home to 102 unicorn companies, putting Beijing at the forefront of the world in terms of unicorn quantity and valuation, local media reported.

Behind the rise of unicorns is an influx of entrepreneurs running tech-driven businesses, who set their sights on frontier technologies.

Among the entrepreneurs are Zhao Yong, a core research and development member of the Google Glass project, who returned to China to establish DeepGlint, an artificial intelligence computer vision startup in Beijing; Chen Zhaopeng, former deputy director of the German Aerospace Center laboratory, who also returned to China to establish Agile Robots; and Xu Ming, a veteran executive in the internet industry for more than 10 years, who founded Galaxy Space, one of the leading businesses specializing in the space industry in China.

The new generation of unicorns is rising rapidly in Beijing and hardtech unicorns account for nearly half of the city’s total, said Xu Jian, an official at the Beijing Science and Technology Commission and the Administrative Commission of Zhongguancun Science Park.

In recent years, a group of young unicorns established no more than 5 years ago have emerged in Beijing in such fields as AI-assisted drug development, AI chips, industrial internet, and commercial space, Xu added.

In Beijing, an average of 6.5 companies receive investments every day. In 2022, early-stage investments, venture capital or private equity investments worth 161.6 billion yuan ($22.9 billion) went to Beijing-based unicorn enterprises, accounting for 17.8 percent of the country’s total and leading major Chinese cities for years.

To date, the 102 unicorns in Beijing have secured accumulative financing worth more than 400 billion yuan from 845 funds.

By establishing government-led funds such as the Science and Technology Innovation Fund, Beijing encourages nongovernmental capital to flow to early-stage and smallscale startups, strengthens the supply of patient capital, and supports the cultivation of unicorn companies.

A series of reform policies rolled out in Zhongguancun, a high-tech business hub in Beijing, which are characterized by the spirit of “pioneering new industries, encouraging innovation, and tolerating failure”, have stimulated innovation and entrepreneurship, promoted the industrialization of research achievements and helped a batch of unicorn businesses grow, said Zhang Yulei, deputy director of the Beijing Science & Technology Commission and the Administrative Commission of Zhongguancun Science Park.

Beijing will gather the strength to support unicorn companies in carrying out key technology research and development, while making full use of the advantages of the “government plus alliance” dual stewardship mechanism, in a bid to provide more accurate, high-quality and efficient “one-to-one” services, promoting unicorn businesses to become stronger, better and bigger, Zhang noted.