The world’s biggest startups: Most valuable unicorn tech startups in the world 2021

Last year, we compiled a list of the world’s unicorn startups, private tech companies with valuations of $1 billion or more. A lot has changed since then. At the end of 2020, there were 500 unicorn startup companies. Fast forward a year later, the number has almost doubled to over 900 unicorns globally with a combined valuation of over$3 trillion. A unicorn company, or unicorn startup, is a private company with a valuation of at least $1 billion or more.

During the period, some of the unicorn startup companies went public. For example, Amazon-backed electric truck startup Rivian went public in November. The company now has a market cap of over $100 billion, compared to a valuation of  $3.5 billion just two years ago. Other former popular unicorns include Airbnb, Facebook, Google, and Uber. There are also new unicorn members.

As of December 2021, there are now 943 unicorn startup companies around the world with a combined valuation of approximately $3.053 trillion, according to data from CB Insights, a tech market intelligence platform that analyzes millions of data points on venture capital, private companies, and investors activities.

Variants of unicrons also include a decacorn, valued at over $10 billion, and a hectocorn, valued at over $100 billion. A unicorn startup or unicorn company is a private company with a valuation of over $1 billion. These unicorns include industry leaders such as ByteDance, Stripe, and SpaceX.

Speaking of decacorn, for the first time, we have 35 decacorn startups with a valuation above $10 billion, spread out across different countries and industries. Using the same data from CB Insights, Raul Amoros from Visual Capitalist did an excellent job in creating a visualization specifically for the 35 decacorn startup companies as of December 2021.

That being said, below is a complete list of 943 unicorn startup companies of 2021 sorted by their valuations. You can also sort the list by valuation date and country.