A total of 17 companies based in Hefei – located in East China's Anhui province – have been listed in the 2022 China Potential Unicorn Enterprise Research Report, which ranked it as the seventh city in the country for potential unicorns.

The report was released on Dec 23 by the Great Wall Enterprise Institute, an influential private think tank.

Potential unicorn companies are leaders in new business fields, reshaping the value chain with new technologies and models and opening up new markets and creating new formats with scenario innovations.

To meet the criteria for potential unicorn enterprises in China, companies should first be registered, with a legal status.

Second, they need to meet one of the following conditions: the post-investment valuation from the last round of financing within five years of their establishment should reach $100 million, or their post-investment valuation from the last round of financing should reach $500 million in five to nine years. Third, they have received private equity investment and have not yet been listed on the stock market.

The 17 potential unicorn companies on the list in Hefei are mainly distributed in 10 fields: integrated circuits, artificial intelligence, innovative drugs, new energy vehicles, robots, the industrial internet, digital enterprise operations, new retail, financial technology and 5G communications.

Of these, integrated circuits and artificial intelligence are the two areas of endeavor that occupy half of the list of potential unicorn enterprises put together by the think tank in Hefei.