Binance Valuation Revealed; Bags 6th Spot On Global Unicorn Index

The Hurun Research Institute has released the Global Unicorn Index 2022 Half-Year Report today (30 August 2022). The report positioned Binance, which operates in the blockchain sector at number sixth position with a valuation of US$45 billion. The news has come as a big positive for the company.

Binance was founded in 2017 by CZ Zhao and He Yi and brags about its crypto coin, BNB. The company is headquartered in Malta and its key investors include Vertex Ventures, Funcity Capital and Black Hole Capital.

Beijing-based Douyin topped the list, thus becoming the world’s most valuable unicorn with a valuation of US$200 billion. Noticeably, Elon Musk’s company SpaceX was ranked second in the list, with a valuation of US$125 billion. Meanwhile, the five new faces on the list include fast fashion platform Shein, cryptocurrency exchange Binance, digital bank WeBank, digital technology start-up JDT and financial technology company Checkout.com. 

China holds most number of unicorns in top 10

It is to be noted that the Global Unicorn Index 2022 Half-Year Report, provides a ranking of the world’s start-ups founded in the 2000s, having a valuation of not less than one billion dollars and not yet listed on any public exchange. The cut-off date was 30 June this year. The institute has been tracking unicorns since 2017.

This year’s top ten unicorns constitute 17.6% of the overall value of the world’s unicorns. Of these five are from China, three from the USA, and one each from the UK and Malta.  

Average age of Unicorn founders is 44 years 

Hurun Research discovered 1,312 unicorns in the world which were on average set up eight years ago, i.e. in 2014. As per the report, the total value of all known unicorns in the world is US$4.2tn, higher than the GDP of Germany. Besides, Unicorn founders are 44 years-old on average, which means they founded their unicorns when they were 36.

Hurun Report Chairman and Chief Researcher Rupert Hoogewerf said that the Global Unicorn Index 2022 Half-Year Report is designed to highlight the world’s most successful start-ups.

The current start-up trends in US and China show that US unicorns are more in SaaS, fintech and health tech, whilst China unicorns are in health tech, AI and e-commerce.