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Asia · Country profile

China

Asia · Pop. 1409M · #2 startup ecosystem by EV

A public taster of the full China ecosystem on Dealroom — request a demo for live deal flow, founder pedigrees, AI-talent maps, and the full cap table for every company below.

$5.8T+26%
Combined startup EV
$33.4B
VC invested (last 12mo)
24.5K
Tracked startups
0.34
Unicorns per 1M people
🦄 Unicorns
479
479 live · +28 new in 2025 (incl. 4 new decacorns)
💎 Decacorns
46
$10B+ tier
🐎 Thoroughbreds
255
Top 1% growth · $500M+

Adjacent ecosystems by EV

Startup hubs

Inside China: top 12 startup hubs

Sub-national ecosystems ranked by combined enterprise value of all tracked startups headquartered there.

By enterprise value
1 Yangtze Delta Region $1.9T
2 Jingjinji Metropolitan Region $1.7T
3 Beijing Metropolitan Area $1.7T
4 Shenzhen $1T
5 Shanghai Metropolitan Area $924B
6 Hangzhou Metropolitan Area $607.7B
7 Guangzhou $167.3B
8 Nanjing City $125.9B
By unicorn count
1 Yangtze Delta Region 190
2 Jingjinji Metropolitan Region 175
3 Beijing Metropolitan Area 169
4 Shanghai Metropolitan Area 122
5 Shenzhen 45
6 Hangzhou Metropolitan Area 31
7 Guangzhou 15
8 Nanjing City 10

Startup funnel

China's power-law funnel

From every VC-backed startup down to the biggest scale-ups. Conversion rates show what fraction of one tier graduate into the next. Capital figures (where shown) are total VC deployed at that stage.

VC-backed startups
24.4K
Colts ($25M+ revenue) $5.8B deployed
168
0.69% of prior tier
Unicorns ($1B+ valuation) $14.1B deployed
474
282% of prior tier
Decacorns ($10B+ valuation)
46
9.7% of prior tier
Centacorns ($100B+ valuation)
7
15% of prior tier

Enterprise value · 2015–2025

China grew 6.7× since 2015

Combined enterprise value of every tracked startup headquartered in China that's still operating today, totalled by founding-year cohort.

0 $1.5T $3T $4.5T $6T China · $5.8T 2015 2018 2021 2024 2025

Vs. similarly-sized ecosystems

How China stacks up

Peers chosen from the same Asia cluster within ±70% of China's combined EV. The scatter plots growth × current size for the wider continent — outliers in the upper-right are ecosystems compounding fastest.

Combined enterprise value
China
$5.8T
$883.7B
$599.9B
$438.6B
$359.5B
$255.3B
$185.6B
EV growth (5-yr ×) vs current EV
peer median 9.0× 3.2× 172.9× 342.6× $12.3B $267B $5.8T EV growth (5yr ×) Combined enterprise value (log) China India Israel South Korea Singapore Japan Hong Kong United Arab Emirates Indonesia Taiwan Türkiye Vietnam Saudi Arabia

Top overview

Asia ecosystems — combined view

Top ecosystems in Asia ranked by combined EV. China's row is highlighted.

# Ecosystem Combined EV 5-yr EV growth Unicorns VC invested Tracked startups
1 China $5.8T 3.2× 479 $33.4B 24.5K
2 India $883.7B 7.1× 125 $13.9B 13.3K
3 Israel $599.9B 5.6× 128 $10.7B 4,762
4 South Korea $438.6B 15.6× 41 $8.2B 7,931
5 Singapore $359.5B 9.6× 38 $3.3B 3,900
6 Japan $255.3B 6.4× 19 $4.3B 7,794
7 Hong Kong $185.6B 13.0× 21 $3.6B 1,222
8 United Arab Emirates $79.1B 10.6× 21 $3.9B 1,553
9 Indonesia $64.8B 5.0× 12 $485.3M 1,208
10 Taiwan $59.4B 7.9× 5 $209.1M 621
11 Türkiye $55.7B 20.7× 8 $714.3M 2,031
12 Vietnam $34.3B 15.3× 4 $461.5M 616

Patent intelligence

China startup IP portfolio: 1.2M patent families

Granted patent families assigned to startups headquartered in China. Aggregated across the country's hub-level filings — Bay Area, Boston, etc. roll up under the United States row, the same way Tokyo and Osaka roll up under Japan.

Granted patent families
1.2M
Filed by tracked startups headquartered in the country.
871 patents per million residents · #20 globally
Top patenting hubs
1 Beijing 850.8K
2 Hangzhou 94K
3 Shanghai 71.8K
4 Nanjing 65.7K
5 Guangzhou 53.6K
6 Chongqing 33.8K

Sector concentration

Where China punches above its weight

Sectors in which China's share of the global unicorn pool is bigger than its overall share. A 5× over-index means China is 5× more represented in that sector than in the global average. Source: top-hub aggregation across the 18 simplified sectors.

🦾 Robotics
2.64×
9 unicorns · 32.1% of global sector
2.43×
26 unicorns · 29.5% of global sector
🎓 Edtech
1.30×
6 unicorns · 15.8% of global sector
0.95×
3 unicorns · 11.5% of global sector
Energy
0.90×
12 unicorns · 10.9% of global sector
🥗 Food
0.88×
6 unicorns · 10.7% of global sector
0.62×
12 unicorns · 7.6% of global sector
❤️‍🩹 Health Tech & Medtech
0.46×
8 unicorns · 5.6% of global sector

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 China dataset — or see a sample on the Dealroom app.

Sector breakdown
Where China's unicorns concentrate
Fintech
AI / Enterprise SW
Health Tech
Biotech
Cybersecurity
Consumer
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Founder origins
Where China's startup founders come from
By country of origin
Per capita
Top universities
Top alumni-factory companies
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AI talent
Top employers of AI talent in China
Core AI roles
Frontier AI roles
YoY hiring growth
Senior + lead engineers
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Deal flow
Live deal flow & funding rounds in China
New rounds last 30 days
Stage breakdown
Active investors
Round-size trends
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