Shanghai
Metro area · China · Pop. 29.9M · #12 city by EV
Largest rounds
Largest funding rounds in Shanghai
A live treemap of $100M+ rounds from the Dealroom API. Each cell is one round into Shanghai-headquartered companies, grouped by Dealroom sector.
Largest rounds in Shanghai - 2026
Startup funnel
Shanghai's power-law funnel
From the first cheque written to a $10B+ outcome. Each arrow shows what fraction of companies at one stage graduate to the next, tracked by founding cohort.
* C→Unicorn and Unicorn→Decacorn rates are derived from current counts (no founding-cohort data); the four mid-funnel rates use Dealroom's cohort tracking.
VC investment
How much venture capital flows into Shanghai
VC investment into Shanghai-headquartered, VC-backed companies, broken down by round size, company location, sector and funding stage. Live from the Dealroom Next Gen API.
Notable companies
Top private companies in Shanghai
Up to 20 names per tier from Dealroom's tracked dataset. Decacorns are valued $10B+, unicorns $1B+, thoroughbreds have crossed $100M in revenue.
Academia
Shanghai's academic flywheel
Companies founded by university alumni or spun out of research, plus the institutions producing the most founders tied to Shanghai.
| # | University | City | Based here | Companies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 🇨🇳Tsinghua University | Beijing | 36 | 785 |
| 2 | 🇨🇳Peking University | Beijing | 28 | 542 |
Location comparison
How Shanghai stacks up
Compare Shanghai with peers from the same country (China) — switch between combined EV, 5-year EV growth, and a growth × size view. Expand the table for the full ranking.
Combined enterprise value of each ecosystem.
Top cities in China ranked by combined EV. Shanghai's row is highlighted (#5).
| # | Ecosystem | Combined EV | 5-yr EV growth | Unicorns | VC invested | Tracked startups |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yangtze Delta Region | $1.9T | 2.6× | 190 | $9B | 6,728 |
| 2 | Jingjinji Metropolitan Region | $1.7T | 3.7× | 175 | $6.4B | 4,437 |
| 3 | Beijing | $1.7T | 3.6× | 169 | $6.3B | 4,257 |
| 4 | Shenzhen | $1T | 1.9× | 45 | $2B | 2,115 |
| 5 | Shanghai | $924B | 4.9× | 122 | $3.8B | 3,462 |
| 6 | Hangzhou | $608B | 1.2× | 31 | $1.7B | 1,372 |
| 7 | Guangzhou | $167B | 13.6× | 15 | $713.3M | 1,522 |
| 8 | Nanjing | $126B | 9.3× | 10 | $338.4M | 474 |
| 9 | Wuhan | $27.4B | 4.0× | 8 | $379.6M | 333 |
| 10 | Chongqing | $25.8B | 11.9× | 6 | $1B | 177 |
| 11 | Chengdu | $24.2B | 21.3× | 5 | $355.2M | 385 |
| 12 | Changzhou | $18.9B | 4.2× | 2 | $3.8M | 106 |
Sector concentration
Where Shanghai punches above its weight
Sectors in which Shanghai's share of the global unicorn pool is bigger than its overall share. A 5× over-index means Shanghai is 5× more represented in that sector than in the global average. Source: top-hub aggregation across the 18 simplified sectors.
Premium analytics
What we don't show on this page (yet)
Sector breakdowns, founder origins, AI-talent leaderboards and live deal flow are gated to logged-in Dealroom users. Book a demo to access the full Shanghai dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.
Get the full Shanghai ecosystem on Dealroom
Live company-by-company deal flow, full cap tables, founder pedigrees, hiring signals and revenue trajectories.