Highest_Valued_Startups_IBT
Startup companies worldwide by valuation ($ billion). Statista / IBT

According to analyst CB Insights, Chinese AI company Bytedance is the highest-valued startup – currently private, up-and-coming company – in the world. The venture which is valued at US$75 billion is running content platform Toutiao in China, which uses machine learning to tailor a newsfeed for each individual viewer out of traditional and new media sources.

The second highest-valued startup according to CB Insights is also from China – ride-hailing service Didi valued at US$56 billion – but U.S companies make up 50 percent of the top 10. Juul Labs, Stripe, Airbnb, Space X and Epic Games are all valued at US$15 billion or more. Compared to five months earlier, the company most notably absent from the top 10 is co-working company WeWork, which has hit rough patch. Some of the highest climbers compared to five months ago are U.S. fintech company Stripe, which grew its valuation from $22.5 billion to $35.3 billion, and Chinese video sharing platform Kuaishou, new to the top 10 at a valuation of $18 billion.

A total of 23 companies in the ranking were valued at US$10 billion, making them decacorns. According to CB Insights, there more than 400 unicorn startups (companies valued at US$1 billion or more) with a cumulative valuation of US$1.3 trillion in the world as of January 2020.

The top 10 list of decacorns also includes Indian E-commerce platform PayTM. Further down the decacorn list, Singaporean ride-hailing app Grab (rank 11), UK data center provider Global Switch (rank 17), Indonesia’s answer to WeChat, umbrella app Go-Jek (rank 19), Brazilian fintech provider Nubank (rank 21) and a second player from India, hotel startup Oyo (rank 22), make appearances.