Owner of short-video social media app TikTok, ByteDance, has overtaken Ant Group to take its place at the top of the list of world’s most valuable unicorns, with startups from both China and the US dominating the rest of the Hurun Global Unicorn Index, reports the South China Morning Post. Of the 1,058 unicorns—start-ups valued at more than $1 billion—globally as of November this year, China had 301 start-ups, the most after the 487 in the US, according to this year’s index released by Shanghai-based Hurun Research Institute on Monday.
Beijing-based ByteDance, whose flagship app TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users globally and is viewed as a serious challenger to Facebook, saw its valuation surge nearly 30% to $350 billion, from $270 billion last year.
Ant Group, an affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding and operator of online payment platform Alipay, was valued at $150 billion. Analysts behind Ant’s $39.5 billion initial public offering that was withdrawn at the last minute in November last year had pegged its then near-term valuation between $350 billion and $450 billion.
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