WeDoctor Ranked Among Top 3 Global Health Tech Unicorns in Hurun Report and Files for Hong Kong IPO

On April 9, the 2024 Global Unicorn CEO Conference was held in Guangzhou, where the Hurun Research Institute officially released the "2024 Global Unicorn List." As an internationally leading digital health platform, WeDoctor once again made the list, ranking among the top three in the health technology sector, thanks to its innovative practices of empowering healthcare services with medical AI and its high growth potential. Zhang Jun, President of WeDoctor Holdings, was invited to attend the conference and shared WeDoctor’s experience in leveraging digital intelligence capabilities to enhance the efficiency and upgrade of the healthcare service system with the attendees.

Figure 1. Zhang Jun, President of WeDoctor Holdings, Attends the 2024 Global Unicorn CEO Conference

The Global Unicorn Index aims to provide insights into the future economy by listing the world’s most successful startups. Rupert Hoogewerf, Founder and Chief Researcher of Hurun Report, stated, “The past five years have been a golden age for entrepreneurship. We have witnessed the largest-scale explosion of new technologies entering the market that the world has ever seen.” This year, there are 1,453 unicorn companies globally, a 7% year-on-year increase. These global unicorns are primarily concentrated in industries such as fintech, software services, artificial intelligence, and health tech.

“Fintech, software services, and AI are the three major sectors for unicorns.” A new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, particularly in artificial intelligence, is reshaping the global innovation landscape and restructuring the global economic order. In China, these changes have been further driven and reflected by the rise of relevant unicorn enterprises. For instance, China’s ByteDance has surpassed companies such as Telegram from the UAE, and Discord, X, and Red Ventures from the US, topping the global social media rankings. In the health tech sector, China’s WeDoctor has joined forces with Caris and Ro from the US to become the top three unicorn enterprises globally.

 Figure 2. Top 10 Industries for Global Unicorns in 2024 and the Top 3 Companies in Each Sector (Image source: Hurun Report’s official WeChat account)

Founded in 2010, WeDoctor has consistently led the industry’s development and transformation. In 2015, it established China’s first internet hospital—the Wuzhen Internet Hospital—pioneering reforms such as online consultations, electronic medical record sharing, and e-prescriptions. Since 2021, it has taken the lead in upgrading to “smart hospitals” based on AI capabilities, promoting the nationwide city-by-city implementation of the digital health community model. Currently, the platform connects more than 8,000 hospitals and over 300,000 doctors across China, having cumulatively served more than 300 million registered users with real-name verification.

In his remarks, Mr. Zhang pointed out that AI technology has brought profound changes to the medical field. This transformation is not only reflected in providing more personalized and precise treatment plans for patients through big data analysis and algorithm improvements, but more importantly, it lies in enhancing the efficiency and quality of medical services, truly realizing the shift from "treatment-centered" to "people's health-centered."

Leveraging AI and other digital-intelligence capabilities as its foundation, WeDoctor is fully committed to exploring and implementing the research, development, and application of AI in healthcare service scenarios. It is reported that WeDoctor is currently collaborating with Shanghai Ruijin Hospital to establish a full-lifecycle “Six-Disease Co-Management” Center in Sanming, Fujian—a national pioneer in healthcare reform—thereby supporting the implementation, construction, and upgrading of closely integrated county-level medical consortia across China. Meanwhile, in partnership with Tencent, WeDoctor is advancing the development of large healthcare models. By leveraging key digital technologies such as cloud computing, large language models, and digital humans, the companies are creating intelligent products for specific diseases and demonstrating AI applications in medicine within selected cities. They will also jointly build a unified digital-intelligence infrastructure to provide comprehensive, scenario-based joint solutions for the industry.

OpenAI Leads the Rally, with Its Value Surging by Nearly 570 Billion Yuan, Signaling That This Year Is Destined to Be the Year of AI. At China’s recent “Two Sessions,” “AI Plus” was regarded as a key lever for driving high-quality economic development in China. The healthcare sector is clearly one of the most promising and valuable application scenarios for artificial intelligence. “Over the years, WeDoctor has accumulated vast amounts of health data and established extensive application scenarios for medical services,” said Zhang Jun. “WeDoctor will continue to deepen its AI capabilities and empower the industry, helping millions of primary healthcare institutions in China achieve digital and intelligent upgrades, extending the benefits of improved health to more people, and comprehensively advancing the development of new quality productive forces in China’s healthcare sector.”