Ten companies from Suzhou have made it to the Global Unicorn Index 2023 released by the Hurun Research Institute recently, doubling the number from last year.

The Global Unicorn Index 2023 is a ranking of the world's start-ups founded in the 2000s that are worth at least a billion US dollars and not yet listed on a public exchange.

The 10 companies belong to a wide range of industries, including new energy, biotechnology, consumer goods, artificial intelligence, Saas, health technology and enterprise services.

The achievement puts Suzhou for the first time on the Hurun world's top 30 start-up cities, whose baseline is at least 9 unicorns, and makes it one of the fastest-growing cities in China by number of unicorns only second to Guangzhou.

Among the Suzhou-based companies, CSI Solartronics (Suzhou) Co Ltd, a provider of solar photovoltaic products and solutions, has the highest ranking of 207th with a wealth of $4 billion.

Suzhou Abogen Biosciences, an innovative biopharmaceutical company focusing on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) drug development, ranks 239th.

Other unicorns on the list from Suzhou include Dreame (Consumer Goods), Ai Speech (AI), MEGAROBO (AI), Belief BioMed (Biotech), CalmCar (AI), Patsnap (Saas), Scivita (Health Tech) and Yunxuetang (Enterprise Services).