A head-to-head comparison of Chinese and American companies hitting the "financing ceiling". They can amass hundreds of billions without going public.

In the wave of the global technological revolution and innovation-driven economy, it has become a prominent trend in the global capital market for non-listed enterprises to achieve leapfrog development through huge amounts of financing. These enterprises have not yet had their initial public offerings (IPOs), but they can attract intensive injections of global capital and rapidly expand into industry giants by virtue of their cutting-edge technology reserves and broad market potential.

Based on the latest data from IT Juzi as of September 10, 2025, we systematically sorted out the top 20 cases of non-listed enterprises in China and the United States in terms of financing scale. (The financing amount of Chinese enterprises is in units of 100 million RMB, and that of American enterprises is in units of 100 million US dollars. The financing amount is a comprehensive estimate by the system based on historically publicly disclosed financing amounts and does not represent the actual financing amount of the enterprises. The data is for reference only.)

These companies basically represent the "ceiling" of corporate financing and can be called "kings." Their financing trajectories not only reflect the differences in the economic structures of the two countries but also reveal the strategic bets of global investors on the future growth directions of industries.

China's Financing Kings: Honor Terminal Leads, with Synergistic Efforts from Technology Manufacturing and Finance

The financing strength of non-listed enterprises in China should not be underestimated. Data shows that the cumulative total financing of the top 20 enterprises in terms of financing amount has exceeded 1 trillion RMB. These enterprises include both industry giants deeply rooted in the domestic market and rapidly rising emerging unicorns. Their rankings in terms of total financing amount (in units of 100 million RMB) are as follows:

1. Honor Terminal (Financing exceeding 250 billion RMB): In November 2020, Honor Terminal was independently spun off from the Huawei system, and the transfer transaction amount at that time was as high as 40 billion US dollars. Since then, the company has also received nearly 10 billion RMB in additional financing. Now, Honor has grown into a trendy technology brand targeting young consumer groups. Its core business covers the R & D of mobile phones and Internet of Things (IoT) devices and the construction of an ecological circle, and it occupies an important position in the 3C electronics field.

2. Ant Group (Financing of 137.05 billion RMB): As a leading domestic fintech open platform, Ant Group is the parent company of Alipay. Its business covers multiple fields such as payment and settlement, wealth management, and consumer credit, and it is deeply integrated into the daily lives of the public and commercial transaction scenarios.

3. Hengfeng Bank (Financing of 100 billion RMB): As a national joint-stock commercial bank, Hengfeng Bank plays an important role in serving the real economy, supporting the development of small and medium-sized enterprises, and promoting financial innovation.

4. Dalian Xindameng (Financing of 60 billion RMB): Focused on the operation and management of commercial center real estate, it is actually the new operating entity of Wanda Commercial Management, inheriting Wanda's core resources and operating experience in the commercial real estate field.

5. ByteDance (Financing of 48.85 billion RMB): As the parent company of Douyin, ByteDance's main business includes the development of news aggregation applications and the operation of entertainment video platforms. Its product matrix covers multiple fields such as social media, information, entertainment, and education, and its user scale and market influence continue to expand.

6. Wanda Commercial Management (Financing of 39.1 billion RMB): A benchmark enterprise in the domestic commercial property operation and management field, it has rich experience in operating commercial real estate projects and provides full-chain services from planning, investment promotion to operation for commercial complexes.

7. Cainiao Network (Financing of 38.9 billion RMB): An integrated e-commerce logistics service platform under the Alibaba Group, it integrates logistics resources and optimizes the supply chain system to provide efficient and convenient logistics solutions for e-commerce enterprises and consumers.

8. State Grid Xinyuan (Financing of 36.5 billion RMB): Focused on pumped-storage energy storage power supply business, it is an important force in promoting the transformation of China's energy structure and ensuring the safe and stable operation of the power system. It has profound technical accumulation and project experience in the energy storage field.

9. SMIC South (Financing of 36.01 billion RMB): Focused on integrated circuit chip manufacturing, it has continuously made breakthroughs in the R & D and mass production of advanced processes, providing key support for the independent and controllable development of China's semiconductor industry.

10. Xing Sheng You Xuan (Financing of 33.255 billion RMB): An operator of a chain of community supermarket brands, it innovatively adopts the community e-commerce model of "pre-sale + self-pickup," rapidly covering multiple communities across the country and serving hundreds of millions of consumers. It has rapidly emerged in the community retail track.

11. ChangXin Memory Technologies (Financing of 29.75 billion RMB): An integrated memory manufacturing enterprise committed to the R & D and production of DRAM chips, it has broken the monopoly pattern of foreign enterprises in the memory field and promoted the independent development of China's memory industry.

12. Yuanfudao (Financing of 26.283 billion RMB): A leading enterprise in the domestic K12 online subject tutoring field. In addition to subject tutoring, it also has Yuanli Technology business, mainly providing personalized online education services based on AI technology for primary and secondary school students.

13. Huahong Semiconductor Manufacturing Wuxi Co., Ltd. (Financing of 26.13 billion RMB): A professional 12-inch wafer manufacturing company, it focuses on providing wafer manufacturing services with special processes for customers and has core competitiveness in fields such as power devices and embedded flash memory.

14. Tenglong Data (Financing of 26 billion RMB): A deep customization service provider for data centers (IDC), it can provide customized services for the whole process from data center planning, construction to operation and maintenance according to customer needs, meeting the computing power storage needs of customers in different industries.

15. Chehaoduo Group (Financing of 24.86 billion RMB): A leading domestic second-hand car trading platform service provider, it integrates online and offline resources to build a complete automobile service ecosystem covering second-hand car trading, automobile finance, after-sales guarantee, etc.

16. Nezha Automobile (Financing of 24.075 billion RMB): A new energy vehicle enterprise focused on the R & D and manufacturing of pure electric intelligent vehicles. With its cost-effective products and intelligent user experience, it has occupied a place in the fierce competition in the new energy vehicle market.

17. Zuoyebang (Financing of 22.46 billion RMB): A leading enterprise in the K12 online subject tutoring field, it empowers education through technology to provide students with diversified learning solutions. In addition to online education products, it has also developed educational hardware businesses such as learning machines.

18. IM Motors (Financing of 22.43 billion RMB): A high-end intelligent pure electric vehicle company jointly created by SAIC Group, Zhangjiang Hi-Tech, and Alibaba, it brings together the advantageous resources of automobile manufacturing, technology R & D, and the Internet ecosystem and is committed to creating benchmark products for high-end intelligent electric vehicles.

19. Suning Finance (Financing of 22.352 billion RMB): A comprehensive financial service provider under the Suning Group, its business covers multiple fields such as consumer finance, supply chain finance, and payment and settlement, providing comprehensive financial services for individual and corporate customers.

20. JD Technology (Financing of 21.73 billion RMB): A technology enterprise spun off from the JD Group, it focuses on becoming a partner for industrial digital transformation and provides digital solutions for multiple industries such as finance, retail, and logistics.

Core Characteristics of China's "Financing Kings"

1. Clear Industry Focus and In - depth Ecological Layout

Enterprises in the fields of fintech, new energy vehicles, and technology manufacturing such as semiconductors dominate, which fully reflects China's national strategic priorities in the development of the digital economy and the independent and controllable development of the semiconductor industry. Some enterprises are also actively expanding cross - industry ecosystems. For example, ByteDance, with Douyin as its core, has built a diversified business matrix covering entertainment, education, and games, further enhancing the enterprise's risk - resistance ability and market competitiveness.

However, it is worth noting that none of the Chinese AI large - model unicorn enterprises that have attracted significant capital attention in recent years have made it onto this top 20 list. Although the single - round financing scale of these enterprises is relatively large, their cumulative total financing is only around 10 billion RMB, showing an obvious gap compared with the leading enterprises on the list. There is still broad financing space and growth potential in the future.

2. Based on the Domestic Market for Scale Expansion

Most of the enterprises on the list are deeply rooted in the domestic market, fully relying on China's large population base and consumer market advantages to achieve rapid growth in user scale and business volume. For example, Cainiao Network benefits from Alibaba's e - commerce ecosystem and the development of China's e - commerce and ranks among the top in China's e - commerce logistics market.

In contrast, unicorn enterprises such as SHEIN, which mainly focus on overseas retail business and are deeply involved in the global market, currently have a financing amount of about 20 billion RMB and have not yet reached the threshold for the top 20. This reflects that in the financing landscape of non - listed enterprises in China, domestic market - oriented enterprises still dominate.

3. High Proportion of Incubation by Giants and Significant Resource Concentration Advantages

Nearly half of the top 20 enterprises are incubated by industry giants. For example, Ant Group, Cainiao Network, JD Technology, and Suning Finance rely on the resource support of large enterprise groups such as Alibaba, JD, and Suning respectively; Honor Terminal was spun off from Huawei, IM Motors was jointly initiated by giants such as SAIC Group, and SMIC South also benefits from the resource integration of leading enterprises in the semiconductor industry.

These "well - born" enterprises, with the advantages of their parent companies in terms of capital, technology, channels, and brand, are more likely to attract capital during the financing process and have significantly better financing capabilities than other independent start - up enterprises.

4. Dual Support from Policy - driven Capital and Market - driven Capital

In terms of financing sources, there are many strategic investments in the financing rounds of these enterprises. The investors include not only national industrial funds such as the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund but also large state - owned enterprises such as China Telecom, fully reflecting the Chinese - characteristic financing model of "integration of industry and finance."

Currently, China is vigorously promoting economic transformation, and "new high - quality productivity" has become an important direction for economic development. The enterprises on the list have also attracted dual investments from policy - driven funds and market - driven capital, providing sufficient capital guarantee for enterprise development.

US Financing Landscape: OpenAI Takes the Lead, with AI Innovation and Globalization Leading the Trend

The financing scale of non - listed enterprises in the United States is also remarkable. The cumulative total financing of the top 20 enterprises has exceeded 290 billion US dollars. These enterprises are mostly technology stars from Silicon Valley, showing strong innovation vitality and market competitiveness in the global technology field. Their rankings in terms of total financing amount (in units of 100 million US dollars) are as follows:

1. OpenAI (Total financing of 69.08 billion US dollars): Founded in December 2015, OpenAI is a leading enterprise in the global AI field. Its core business covers cutting - edge fields such as natural language processing, image generation, and speech recognition. Representative products include the ChatGPT chatbot launched in 2022 and subsequent multimodal models. The company actively promotes the global popularization and development of AI technology through open - source code and dataset sharing. It currently serves hundreds of millions of users and is widely adopted in enterprise - level application scenarios. Its huge financing mainly comes from global well - known investment institutions and technology giants such as Blackstone Group, SoftBank, Microsoft, and Tiger Global Management.

2. Anthropic (Financing close to 40 billion US dollars): Focused on the R & D of large - scale AI models, its core product is the Claude large - scale model, which has excellent performance in natural language understanding, logical reasoning, etc., and has become one of the main competitors of OpenAI in the field of large - scale AI models.

3. xAI (Financing of about 18.25 billion US dollars): An artificial intelligence company founded by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, it mainly focuses on the R & D of large - scale model products. With Musk's personal influence and the technical strength of the team, it quickly attracted capital attention and huge financing after its establishment.

4. Cruise Automation (Financing of about 17.38 billion US dollars): A benchmark enterprise in the field of autonomous driving vehicles, it is committed to the R & D of high - performance autonomous driving technologies and driverless vehicle systems and has made significant progress in autonomous driving testing and commercialization.

5. Scale AI (Financing of about 16.633 billion US dollars): A leader in the field of AI data annotation platforms, it provides high - quality, large - scale data annotation services for AI model training through advanced technical means, helping AI enterprises improve model performance and R & D efficiency.

6. JUUL (Financing of 15.662 billion US dollars): A well - known e - cigarette manufacturer in the United States, with its innovative product design and marketing model, it once occupied a large share in the global e - cigarette market and attracted a large amount of capital investment.

7. Databricks (Financing of 14.897 billion US dollars): A Spark big - data software company based on cloud computing, it provides enterprises with an integrated platform for big - data processing, analysis, and artificial intelligence development, helping enterprises fully tap the value of data and promote digital transformation.

8. Infor (Financing of 14.6 billion US dollars, has been acquired by Koch Industries): Focused on application software services, it has launched customized software solutions for multiple industries such as manufacturing, retail, and healthcare, helping enterprises improve operational efficiency and management levels.

9. Vantage Data Centers (Financing of 14.247 billion US dollars): A professional data center service provider, it has deployed data centers in multiple regions around the world, providing customers with high - reliability, high - security, and high - performance computing power storage services to meet the computing power needs of enterprises in the digital economy era.

10. SpaceX (Financing of 13.012 billion US dollars): An American space exploration technology company founded by Elon Musk, it is committed to reducing the cost of space exploration and realizing the vision of human migration to Mars and has made breakthroughs in reusable rocket technology, commercial space launches, etc.

11. Collective Health (Financing of 11.3 billion US dollars): An American enterprise service company for medical insurance, it integrates medical resources and optimizes the insurance service process to provide employees of enterprises with personalized medical insurance solutions, improving the efficiency and experience of medical security.

12. The We Company (Financing of 11.126 billion US dollars): A well - known provider in the co - working service field, it creates shared office spaces to provide flexible office solutions for start - ups, small and medium - sized enterprises, and branches of large enterprises, promoting innovation in the office model.

13. Waymo (Financing of 11.1 billion US dollars): An automobile autonomous driving technology R & D company originating from Google, it is in a leading position globally in the R & D and commercial application of autonomous driving technologies and has carried out autonomous driving taxi testing services in multiple cities.

14. Epic Games (Financing of 8.86 billion US dollars): A well - known American VR game developer, it has not only launched globally popular game products such as "Fortnite" but also developed the Unreal Engine, which is widely used in multiple fields such as games, film and television, and architecture and has become an important tool for digital content creation.

15. Stripe (Financing of 8.685 billion US dollars): A globally leading payment solution service provider, it provides enterprises with convenient and secure online payment interfaces and payment management services, supporting settlement in multiple global currencies and helping enterprises expand into the global market.

16. UFC (Financing of about 5.75 billion US dollars): The operator of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, it attracts a large