China becomes second-largest source of 'unicorn companies'

China has become the world's second-largest source of "unicorn companies" according to the latest report on China unicorn companies by the Evergrande Research Institute.

With 88 in total, China is the world's second-largest source of unicorn companies following the US with 151. The report cited data from IC Insight gathered between 2013 and Dec 31, 2018.

Twenty-two companies worldwide were included as super unicorn companies in 2018 and China's Fintech company Ant Financial ranked first in value worth $150 billion, the report said.

The US and China had the greatest number of new super unicorns worth $10 billion last year with 12 and 7 respectively, accounting for 86.4 percent of the world's total. The UK, India and Singapore had one of these companies each in the same period.

New energy vehicles, artificial intelligence chips, robots, big data, computer vision and cloud computing are the main areas for these emerging unicorns.

A unicorn refers to a technology start-up that has been established for less than 10 years but has a valuation of more than $1 billion and has not been listed on the stock market.