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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

16,515 Pool of Funded Startups

New Startups

1,477 Annual Startups FoundedAll new ventures

1,568 Annual Startups FundedReceived investment

get funded 106%

11,740Startups

2,963 Pre-Seed Startups$100K–1M

4,816 Seed Startups$1–4M

Pre-Seed to Seed 21%

3,961 Series A Startups$4–15M

Seed to Series A 25%

3,491Breakouts

2,220 Series B Breakouts$15–40M

A to Series B 38%

1,271 Series C Breakouts$40–100M

B to Series C 28%

1,284Scaleups

785 Mega Scaleups$100–250M

reach Mega 4.8%

499 Mega+ Scaleups$250M+

reach Mega+ 3.0%

519Valuation Outcomes

459 Unicorns($1–10B valuation)

reach Unicorn 2.8%

55 Decacorns($10–100B valuation)

reach Decacorn 0.33%

5 Centicorns($100B–1T valuation)

reach Centicorn 0.030%

Pre-Seed

2,963

Seed

4,816

Series A

3,961

Series B

2,220

Series C

1,271

Unicorn

459

Decacorn

* 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 company headquartered in China, grouped by Dealroom sector.

Largest rounds in China - 2024–2026

Every $100M+ VC round into China-headquartered companies in 2024–2026, grouped by Dealroom sector.

- rounds · - raised

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3 Startup hubs

Inside China: 12 startup hubs, 567 universities

Hubs are sized by combined enterprise value; universities and research institutes by the startup founders they produced. Hover any point for its numbers; the lists rank hubs by EV and universities by founders.

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By enterprise value · 5-yr growth

1 Yangtze Delta Region $2T 2.7× 5-yr

2 Jingjinji Metropolitan Region $1.7T 3.6× 5-yr

3 Beijing $1.6T 3.6× 5-yr

4 Shenzhen $1T 1.9× 5-yr

5 Shanghai $1T 5.2× 5-yr

6 Hangzhou $623B 1.2× 5-yr

7 Guangzhou $182B 15× 5-yr

8 Nanjing $108B 6.2× 5-yr

Universities · founders produced · 567 tracked

1 Tsinghua University 746

2 Fudan University 679

3 Peking University 529

4 Zhejiang University 328

5 Tongji University 302

6 Beijing Language and Culture University 214

7 Shanghai Jiaotong University 200

8 China Europe International Business School 195

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 Founder origins

Where China's unicorn founders build

1,152 founders born in China are behind 565 unicorns; 15% of those were built in the US. Origins are resolved from biography and education history, not current address. Compare with the other origin countries in Asia, ranked by founders or per 1M inhabitants.

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6 Location comparison

Unicorns, decacorns and centicorns — China in a global comparison

Companies count where they were founded or are headquartered. Values are per 1M people or totals, as a share of the US (US = 100%) or absolute; bars scale to the largest value in each column. Hover any value for the per-1M rate and absolute count.

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

2.68×

9 unicorns · 32.1% of global sector

🚗 Transportation

2.46×

26 unicorns · 29.5% of global sector

🎓 Edtech

1.31×

6 unicorns · 15.8% of global sector

🧠 Semiconductors

0.96×

3 unicorns · 11.5% of global sector

⚡ Energy

0.91×

12 unicorns · 10.9% of global sector

🥗 Food

0.89×

6 unicorns · 10.7% of global sector

🧬 Biotech & Life Sciences

0.63×

12 unicorns · 7.6% of global sector

❤️‍🩹 Health Tech & Medtech

0.47×

8 unicorns · 5.6% of global sector

More data

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