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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.

1 Overview

16,307 Pool of Funded Startups
1,439 Annual Startups FoundedAll new ventures
1,561 Annual Startups FundedReceived investment
get funded 108%
2,961 Pre-Seed Startups$100K–1M
4,787 Seed Startups$1–4M
Pre-Seed to Seed 18%
3,930 Series A Startups$4–15M
Seed to Series A 25%
2,153 Series B Breakouts$15–40M
A to Series B 39%
1,228 Series C Breakouts$40–100M
B to Series C 28%
764 Mega Scaleups$100–250M
reach Mega 4.7%
484 Mega+ Scaleups$250M+
reach Mega+ 3.0%
455 Unicorns($1–10B valuation)
reach Unicorn 2.8%
48 Decacorns($10–100B valuation)
reach Decacorn 0.29%
8 Centicorns($100B–1T valuation)
reach Centicorn 0.049%
Pre-Seed
2,961
Seed
4,787
Series A
3,930
Series B
2,153
Series C
1,228
Unicorn
455
Decacorn
48

* 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.

2 Largest rounds

Largest funding rounds in China

A live treemap of $100M+ rounds from the Dealroom API. Each cell is one round into a China-headquartered company, grouped by Dealroom sector.

Largest rounds in China - 2026

Every $100M+ VC round into China-headquartered companies in 2026, grouped by Dealroom sector.
- rounds · - raised
Live from Dealroom API Open full VC dashboard

3 Startup hubs

Inside China: top 12 startup hubs

Sub-national ecosystems ranked by combined enterprise value, paired with their 5-year growth multiplier.

By enterprise value
3 Beijing $1.6T
4 Shenzhen $1T
5 Shanghai $1T
6 Hangzhou $622B
7 Guangzhou $179B
8 Nanjing $109B
By 5-yr EV growth
1 Guangzhou 14×
2 Nanjing 6.2×
3 Shanghai 5.3×
5 Beijing 3.6×
7 Shenzhen 1.9×
8 Hangzhou 1.2×

4 VC investment

How much venture capital flows into China

VC investment into China-headquartered, VC-backed companies, broken down by round size, company location, sector and funding stage.

5 Academia

China's academic flywheel

Companies founded by university alumni or spun out of research, plus the institutions producing the most founders tied to China.

University-linked startup formation
551
University spinouts
2,512
Total alumni-founded companies
1,271
Of which startups (<$15M raised)
727
Breakouts ($15M-100M)
514
Scaleups ($100M+)
University ranking By alumni who went on to found startups · 567 tracked
# University City Founders Companies
1 Tsinghua University Dongcheng District 656 820
2 Fudan University Huangpu 622 751
3 Peking University Haidian 449 577
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6 Location comparison

How China stacks up

Compare China with similarly sized ecosystems in Asia — switch between combined EV, 5-year EV growth, and a growth × size view. Expand the table for the full ranking.

China
$5.8T
$925B
$598B
$431B
$321B
$227B
$179B

Combined enterprise value of each ecosystem.

7 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.
824 patents per million residents · #18 globally
Top patenting hubs
1 Beijing Metropolitan Area 850.8K
2 Hangzhou Metropolitan Area 94K
3 Shanghai Metropolitan Area 71.8K
4 Guangzhou 53.6K
5 Chongqing 33.8K
6 Shenzhen 27.9K

8 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
2.69×
9 unicorns · 32.1% of global sector
2.47×
26 unicorns · 29.5% of global sector
🎓 Edtech
1.32×
6 unicorns · 15.8% of global sector
0.97×
3 unicorns · 11.5% of global sector
Energy
0.91×
12 unicorns · 10.9% of global sector
🥗 Food
0.90×
6 unicorns · 10.7% of global sector
0.64×
12 unicorns · 7.6% of global sector
❤️‍🩹 Health Tech & Medtech
0.47×
8 unicorns · 5.6% of global sector

9 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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Capital autonomy
China's domestic vs foreign capital mix
% domestic VC by stage
Cross-border lead investors
Sovereign-fund participation
Foreign-LP exposure
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Recent momentum
China's VC investment trajectory by stage
2024 vs 2025 by stage
Round-size trends
Stage-conversion deltas
Quarterly velocity
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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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Get the full China ecosystem on Dealroom

Live company-by-company deal flow, full cap tables, founder pedigrees, hiring signals and revenue trajectories.