(Yicai) Oct. 25 -- Some 89 percent of Chinese technology innovation pre-unicorns, or privately held startups worth less than USD1 billion but likely to exceed the threshold within three to five years, have settled in three major clusters in China, according to a new report.

The Yangtze River Delta region homes the most tech pre-unicorns with 97, followed by the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area with 42 and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region with 39, according to a recent report by CCID Consulting. The high number of such firms in these economically developed areas highlights their leading future growth potential.

Regarding Chinese provincial-level regions, Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces have 42 pre-unicorns each to rank top. Beijing follows with 35, Shanghai with 33, and Zhejiang province rounds up the top five with 17. Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Nanjing, and Suzhou ranked top among cities, with 125 pre-unicors combined, or 63 percent of the nation's total.

The Yangtze River Delta has a complete supply chain and has established an enterprise-based "industry-university-research" innovation mechanism, according to the report. Shanghai, which leads the cluster, has attracted global capital, which is conducive to the rapid growth of companies and benefits the development of pre-unicors in the region.

Among the tech innovation firms shortlisted for pre-unicorns in the report, the number of those in the new-generation information technology industry reached 119, with 35 in new manufacturing, including 10 robotics companies, and 23 in the new energy and new materials sectors each.

The total valuation of the shortlisted companies in the new-generation information technology industry reached USD41.6 billion, the most among all industries. The higher technology barrier along with the capital-intensive nature of the sectors led to the average valuation of pre-unicorns in the new manufacturing and new energy sectors reaching USD450 million and USD430 million, respectively, surpassing that of firms from all other industries.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev