Shenzhen
Metro area · China · Pop. 23.3M · #11 city by EV
Adjacent cities by EV
Startup funnel
Shenzhen'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.
Notable companies
Top private companies in Shenzhen
Up to 20 names per tier from Dealroom's tracked dataset. Decacorns are valued $10B+, unicorns $1B+, thoroughbreds have crossed $100M in revenue.
Academia
Shenzhen's academic flywheel
Companies founded by university alumni or spun out of research, plus the institutions producing the most founders tied to Shenzhen.
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Notable alumni-founded: MeituanPinduoduoByteDance (co-founders)Zhipu AI
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Notable alumni-founded: Baidu (founder)MegviiLufax
Vs. similarly-sized ecosystems
How Shenzhen stacks up
Peers chosen from the same country (China), sized closest to Shenzhen by combined EV. The scatter plots growth × current size — outliers in the upper-right are ecosystems compounding fastest.
Top overview
China — top cities
Top cities in China ranked by combined EV. Shenzhen's row is highlighted.
| # | 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 |
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 Shenzhen dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.
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