Unicorn companies are privately-owned, venture-backed startups worth at least $1 billion, and are therefore not publicly traded on normal stock markets.

In this chart created by Trendline, Visual Capitalist's Ryan Bellafontaine looks at the world’s highest-valued unicorn companies, based on data from CB Insights as of June 1, 2024.

TikTok on Top

The Chinese media and entertainment company ByteDance, which owns the social media platform TikTok, is the world’s most valuable unicorn company at $225 billion.

However, as U.S. regulatory pressure grows for ByteDance to divest TikTok in the U.S., this leading valuation may be in doubt going forward.

Source: CB Insights.

Meanwhile, the largest unicorn company in the United States is SpaceX, led and founded by Elon Musk, valued at $150 billion. SpaceX is the only company on the list in the industrial category.

OpenAI, founded in 2015, is the world’s highest-valued artificial intelligence pure-play company. Best known for its groundbreaking program ChatGPT, it is worth $80 billion.

American Exceptionalism

The United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, and China appear only once in the top 10, while the United States takes six places.

Australia’s only appearance is its graphic design company, Canva, which is worth $25 billion. Canva was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Sydney.

Revolut, a fintech company, is the United Kingdom’s highest-valued unicorn. Founded in 2015 by Nikolay Storonsky and Vlad Yatsenko, it is valued at $33 billion.

Finally, home to fast fashion company Shein, Singapore is the only Asian entry besides ByteDance in the top 10. That said, Shein is the world’s largest retail unicorn, valued at $66 billion.