Where to find Unicorns: Cities with the most number of privately held companies valued at $1bn revealed

In 2024, there are 1,241 unicorn startups worldwide, with the US accounting for 662, or more than half of the total. Among these, San Francisco hosts 175 unicorns, representing 26.44 percent of the US total and an increase from 171 in 2023. New York follows with 118 unicorns, while Beijing has 65, London 42, and Shanghai 38, a report from stock market specialists BestBrokers said.

San Francisco-based unicorn companies make up just 14.10 percent of the global total, yet they collectively contribute an impressive $781.31 billion to the world’s entire unicorn valuation, which stands at $3.899 trillion. This represents a 12.92 percent increase from 2023, when the combined valuation of San Francisco unicorns was $691.89 billion.

OpenAI is San Francisco’s most valuable unicorn in 2024, currently worth $80 billion. It is also the world’s third-largest unicorn startup by market valuation, after the Chinese social media giant ByteDance, valued at $225 billion, and the US-based spacecraft maker SpaceX, worth $150 billion.

Financial services company Stripe ranks as the second-largest unicorn in San Francisco by valuation, at $65 billion, followed by global data, analytics, and artificial intelligence company Databricks, worth $43 billion.

Out of all San Francisco-based unicorns in 2024, 86 (49.14 percent) are in enterprise tech, 33 (18.86 percent) operate in financial services, and 21 (12.00 percent) in healthcare and life sciences. Another 12 companies are in media and entertainment (6.86 percent), 11 are in consumer and retail (6.29 percent), and 4 are insurance companies (2.29 percent).

The peak year for new San Francisco-based unicorns was 2021, with 85 companies achieving unicorn status. In 2022, another 34 companies joined the unicorn ranks. Notably, out of the 28 new companies that reached unicorn status this year, 5 or nearly 20 percent are San Francisco-based startups, including Cognition AI and Sigma Computing, each currently worth $2 billion.