When the term unicorn emerged back in 2013, there were no more than 40 private companies with a market valuation of $1 billion in the world. Over the last seven years, the number of these financial giants enlarged 15 times and jumped to nearly 600 in 2020, according to Learnbonds.com.
The 10 largest unicorn companies in the world hit a valuation of $546 billion this year. The highest valued unicorn globally is Ant Financial, the Chinese fintech company, spun off from mobile and online payment platform Alipay, which hit a $125 billion valuation last month.
China and the United States have the highest-valued unicorns
In the five years since it was founded Ant Financial has become one of the largest financial institutions in the world. The key to its incredible growth lies in a platform business model based on Alipay. As a platform for processing payments between two users, Alipay has more than 900 million annual active clients. In a cross-selling