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Global AI scientists and entrepreneurs are set to gather for AI Day, which is due to open on Friday during the ongoing Zhongguancun Forum, one of China's premier science and technology symposiums.
They will witness a demonstration of the open source AI achievements made by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence and the inauguration of an alliance gathering Beijing and global players in the field, according to a news conference on Wednesday.
An AI innovation corridor in Haidian district, Beijing, home to the country's AI giants, will be promoted during the event in a bid to vie for global investors.
Built by Haidian district on the site of the century-old Jingzhang Railway, the Jingzhang Heritage Park AI Innovation Belt stretches 9 kilometers as a green axis for AI innovation. It is positioned as a triple zone: a cultural corridor showcasing the century-old Jingzhang heritage, an AI integration and innovation hub, and an urban AI lifestyle experience area. It aims to create a full AI ecosystem covering research, commercialization, and real-world applications.
BEIJING - The 2026 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum) will spotlight the theme of "Full Integration Between Technological and Industrial Innovation," an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Wednesday.
This year's ZGC Forum will be held in Beijing from March 25 to 29. More than 1,000 guests from over 100 countries and regions are expected to participate in the forum, which features more than 100 events, Lin Xin, vice-minister of science and technology, said at a press conference.
Main events will include the opening ceremony and plenary session, parallel forums, achievement releases, the ZGC International Technology Trade Fair, and the Grand Final of the Zhongguancun International Advanced Technology Innovation Competition.
The 2026 forum will be characterized by four distinctive features. Firstly, it will emphasize the expansion of the capital city's efforts to become an international science and technology innovation center by holding forums and releasing relevant policies for deepening coordination among Beijing, Tianjin municipality and Hebei province, all located in North China, Lin said.
Lin also noted that it will stress the deep integration of technological innovation with industrial innovation by focusing on frontier fields such as 6G, brain-computer interfaces, and cell and gene therapy.
The integrated advancement of education, science and technology, and talent cultivation will also be a key characteristic of the 2026 forum, according to Lin.
Additionally, this year's forum will emphasize high-level scientific and technological openness and cooperation, she added.
"The promotion of extensive artificial intelligence (AI) applications will also be highlighted at this year's ZGC Forum," said Jin Wei, vice mayor of Beijing, at the press conference.
Jin added that participants at the forum will experience firsthand how the AI evolution is empowering diverse industries. For instance, AI "interpreters" will be on duty during the forum, expanding language services from the previous two languages of Chinese and English to eight languages, including French, Russian and Spanish.
"Thereby, they can sustain seamless communication among participants from around the world," he said.
Jin disclosed that a robot cafe will cater to forum participants. "Last year, robots at the forum could only prepare coffee individually. This year, they will collaborate to provide meal sets. Additionally, a robot band will deliver captivating performances at this year's forum."
The 2026 forum is jointly organized by several Chinese government agencies, including the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Founded in 2007, this forum in Beijing has evolved into a global, comprehensive, open and high-level international event for enhancing global innovation in science and technology.
What if we viewed the 2026 ZGC Forum through a lens of color? Here, colorful innovations thrive not just in the exhibition hall but in everyday life. As 2026 marks the inaugural year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, this gathering is painting a vivid picture of China's commitment to high-quality development.
The Chinese Academy of Engineering released a report on the 2025 Global Engineering Fronts at the opening ceremony of the ongoing 2026 Zhongguancun Annual Forum, which opened in Beijing on Wednesday, highlighting the importance of artificial intelligence in driving a leap forward in the field.
The report, published annually since 2017, aims to provide insights for academic research, industrial development and policymaking. Based on an analysis of multisource data, including high-impact papers, patents and science news, this year's report identified 94 engineering research fronts and 95 engineering development fronts. Among them, 74 are closely related to AI.
These include leaps in energy material performance and shortened research and development cycles, supported by big data analysis, intelligent design and high-throughput automated experiments. In addition, research on multi-agent construction and collaborative technologies is gaining traction, leading the transition of AI from single-agent to system intelligence.
The report underscored the growing integration of AI with engineering, advancing engineering practices into a new phase characterized by automation, systematization and intelligence. This development leads to fundamental improvements in engineering efficiency and quality, as well as an enhanced ability to address complex problems.
Yang Baofeng, a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a professor at Harbin Medical University in Heilongjiang province, described AI as "a powerful assistant" in engineering research, emphasizing its important roles in fields such as aerospace, bridge engineering and healthcare.
Yang noted that different AI large language models possess distinct strengths, such as information retrieval, chemical formula analysis and massive data processing, and that AI technology has significantly enhanced research efficiency.
However, he cautioned that AI still plays a supportive role — whether in clinical practice or cutting-edge medical research — emphasizing the importance of sustained laboratory experiments and interdisciplinary research teams.
Peter David Lund, a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and the Swedish Engineering Academy in Finland, pointed out that AI will play a key role in shaping the future of energy.
"Machine learning has helped solve highly complex problems, such as in smart grids and system sizing. More recently, we have also seen AI applied to plasma stabilization. In fact, AI has helped identify process parameters that keep plasma intact, supporting fusion power research," Lund said.
"These are just the first steps, yet AI has already enabled major achievements in energy. We believe AI will play an even more important role in the future," he added.
Lund expressed optimism about the development of better technologies in the future, highlighting the importance of transforming scientific and technological achievements.
"When we develop new technologies, let's keep in mind the application. The path to market is important already in the development phase," he added.
BEIJING -- The Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization (CSU) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) announced on Wednesday that the three-satellite constellation based on the Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO) in the Earth-moon space has been operating in orbit for two years, providing a foundation for future lunar exploration.
The announcement was made at the SciTech Forum on the Development and Utilization of Earth-Moon Space, a sub-forum of the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum), which kicked off in Beijing on Wednesday.
This constellation project successfully completed the world's first low-energy insertion into the DRO. DRO-A and DRO-B, two satellites developed by the CAS and deployed in the DRO, have established inter-satellite measurement and communication links with DRO-L, a previously launched near-Earth orbit satellite.
The DRO is a highly stable orbit located in the Earth-moon space, which refers to the region extending outward from near-Earth and near-lunar orbits to a distance of up to 2 million kilometers from Earth.
According to the CSU, the project has verified stable residency and low-energy maneuvering of spacecraft in the DRO. The project became the first to tour all Lagrange points in the Earth-moon space in a single flight, and its technologies are expected to play an important role in future lunar exploration.
The forum brought together more than 200 representatives from over 20 institutions. Discussions focused on key issues such as Earth-moon space infrastructure, low-cost access to the Earth-moon space, and sustainable resource utilization.
Ding Chibiao, vice-president of the CAS, said the Earth-moon space is a strategic hub connecting Earth to deep space and a new frontier for scientific and industrial transformation.
Ding added that the CAS will continue to strengthen cooperation with research institutions, universities and companies to support China's goal of becoming a space power.
Hou Junshu, deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress, said in his speech that global space activities are shifting from pure exploration to a balance of exploration and utilization.
Hou noted that Beijing is home to more than half of the country's core space research units and is building itself into a hub for commercial aerospace innovation. He called for stronger innovation, deeper integration between technology and industry, and more open international cooperation.
The 2026 ZGC Forum, running in Beijing through Sunday, is focused on the theme of "Full Integration Between Technological and Industrial Innovation." Since its founding in 2007, this forum has become a major international event for advancing science and technology innovation.
BEIJING -- China will provide global researchers with access to ten of its major scientific research facilities this year, as announced during the opening ceremony of the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum) Annual Conference held in Beijing on Wednesday.
These installations will include some of China's most advanced scientific research platforms, including the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST) located in Southwest China's Guizhou province, the Space Environment Simulation and Research Infrastructure in Northeast China's Heilongjiang province, and the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak in Anhui province in East China.
According to the announcement, this move aims to further advance the Action Plan for International Cooperation in Open Science, a project initiated by China and global partners in 2025 to foster an open, fair, equitable and non-discriminatory global environment for scientific and technological development.
China is driving its technological innovations through high-level international cooperation. The outline of its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) for national economic and social development, released earlier this month, proposes fostering an open and innovative ecosystem with global competitiveness, and supporting joint efforts by scientists from around the world to tackle fundamental and frontier scientific challenges.
China's push into artificial intelligence is entering a new phase, with leading developers seeking not just to compete globally but to reshape how the technology is built, shared and monetized, a prominent AI firm founder said in an interview with China Daily during the ongoing Zhongguancun Forum on Wednesday.
Yang Zhilin, the founder of Moonshot AI, an artificial intelligence company based in Beijing, also disclosed that Moonshot AI is exploring new ways to overhaul the core architecture of large models and suggest more "possibilities" in response to Elon Musk's praise of its attention residuals.
Yang said that Chinese firms are increasingly positioning themselves as drivers of structural change in the AI ecosystem — a shift he described as both an opportunity and a defining strategy for China.
"China's willingness to openly share models and technical breakthroughs could accelerate global innovation while giving it a distinct edge over more closed ecosystems."
Yang argued that as large models approach parity in performance, competitive advantage will shift from algorithms to infrastructure — particularly the ability to generate and process vast volumes of "tokens", the basic units of AI computation.
"In the long run, the bottleneck may no longer be model capability, but how quickly you can build large-scale 'token factories'," he said, pointing to energy costs and computing infrastructure as decisive factors.
Yang predicted that if open-source and proprietary models reach similar levels of capability, open systems could ultimately dominate by unlocking broader ecosystems of developers, applications and distribution channels.
Closed models currently retain a share of the market, he said, but open-source platforms may generate greater overall "token output" — and therefore greater economic value — by enabling more participants to build on top of them.
In one of his more striking assertions, Yang suggested that AI-generated tokens could become a proxy for economic activity, potentially redefining traditional measures such as GDP.
"As productivity increasingly comes from AI agents generating tokens, those tokens could, in effect, become equivalent to GDP," he said, adding that the technology could multiply economic output by several times — or even orders of magnitude — over the long term
Earlier this month, Elon Musk commented "impressive work from Kimi" on X, highlighting a major breakthrough by Moonshot AI, Kimi's developer, on "attention residuals", a novel improvement to the Transformer architecture that enhances training efficiency and model performance at scale.
In response, Yang said the new approach introduces a different way of organizing computation models from Transformer architecture, the dominant framework behind today's large language models.
The idea, he said, is to rethink how operations are distributed across a model's internal dimensions.
"Structures that can be applied along the time dimension can also be applied along the depth dimension," Yang said, describing the conceptual shift behind "attention residuals".
By reconfiguring how information flows through layers, the approach has delivered measurable improvements in training efficiency and model performance, according to Yang, though he did not disclose detailed benchmarks.
Despite the widespread adoption of Transformers and standard optimization techniques over the past decade, Yang argued that the field is still open to disruption.
"Standards have formed, but within those standards there is still a lot that can be overturned. I think there are still many possibilities," he said.
Yang also pointed to China's education system as a foundational strength, citing decades of investment from primary schooling to doctoral training that have produced a large pool of technically skilled workers.
The scale of that pipeline, he said, allows companies to access high-level talent at relatively competitive cost, creating a feedback loop in which human expertise accelerates the development of machine intelligence.
chengyu@chinadaily.com.cn
The National Natural Science Foundation of China?(NSFC) announced the country's top 10 scientific advancements for 2025 during the opening ceremony of the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing on Wednesday, recognizing the progress in basic research.
The advancements include the discovery of lunar farside basalts originating from an extremely depleted mantle source, revealing that giant impact events may have triggered melt extraction from the lunar mantle. Based on the first-ever lunar farside samples brought back by the Chang'e 6 mission, Chinese scientists have provided key evidence for understanding the moon's hemispheric dichotomy.
Last year, a Chinese research team reported the world's first case of transplanting a gene-edited pig liver into a human body, overcoming key barriers regarding immune rejection and functional compatibility in xenotransplantation. This breakthrough provided critical data and technology for clinical translation.
Other recognized advancements include progress in critical areas such as material sciences, controllable nuclear fusion, deep-sea exploration, chipmaking and solar cells.
Dou Xiankang, director of NSFC, said the selection, held annually since 2005, aims to encourage researchers to overcome bottlenecks and produce more original achievements in basic research, while fostering public understanding, attention, and support for the field.
The advancements for 2025 were selected from more than 600 basic research projects through expert screening, real-name online voting, and committee deliberation — a process that fully demonstrates transparency and broad participation.
Global collaboration and the increased openness of China's scientific facilities and research achievements will be key themes at the upcoming Zhongguancun Forum in Beijing, the country's premier science and technology event.
Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Lin Xin, vice-minister of science and technology, said the forum will highlight Beijing's evolving role — from serving as an international science and technology innovation center to anchoring a broader Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei innovation hub aimed at fostering deeper industrial collaboration across the region.
The forum, scheduled to take place from March 25 to 29, will feature specialized sessions on cutting-edge fields such as 6G, brain-computer interfaces and cell and gene therapy.
China will also release its list of 10 major scientific advancements, along with an international cooperation action plan. To further promote the commercialization and application of scientific achievements, a series of events, including frontier technology competitions and technology trade conferences, will be held.
"Beijing has increased its investment in science and technology, allocating over 6 percent of government spending to foster industrial clusters with industrial output above 1 trillion yuan ($145.4 billion) in next-generation information technology, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and scientific services, advancing regional innovation," Jin Wei, vice-mayor of Beijing, said at the news conference.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), technology contract transactions from Beijing to Tianjin and Hebei province surpassed 320 billion yuan, a 1.7-fold increase from the previous five years.
"This reflects the accelerated transfer of innovative achievements to the region, enhancing its role as a science and technology innovation hub. Greater efforts are being devoted to building the hub into an international center," Jin added.
To date, the Huairou National Comprehensive Science Center in Beijing has developed 37 scientific facility platforms, with 29 already operational.
These platforms have collectively provided 1.77 million hours of shared machine time for global use, leading to 439 major scientific breakthroughs.
Ahead of the forum, Luo Minmin, director of the Chinese Institute for Brain Research in Beijing, emphasized the importance of global collaboration.
The institute will unveil the new Beinao-2 model at the forum. Luo noted that while the United States has a longer history in BCI research, Europe is making significant strides and China is focusing on developing invasive BCI technologies.
"Europe, the US and China should work together to create better products for society," Luo said, highlighting the technology's potential to aid those who are paralyzed or have suffered a stroke.
Duncan Ivison, president of the University of Manchester, signed agreements with Peking University and Tsinghua University in Beijing on Monday.
"We are particularly interested in collaborating with our Chinese partners on major global challenges, including climate change, clean energy technology and healthcare — addressing some of the toughest issues facing the world today."
The 2026 Zhongguancun Forum will spotlight the theme of full integration between technological and industrial innovation, an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Wednesday.
This year's ZGC Forum will be held in Beijing from Wednesday to March 29. More than 1,000 guests from over 100 countries and regions are expected to participate in the forum, which features more than 100 events, Lin Xin, vice-minister of science and technology, said at a news conference.
The 2026 forum will be characterized by four distinctive features. First, it will emphasize the expansion of the capital city's efforts to become an international science and technology innovation center by holding forums and releasing relevant policies for deepening coordination among Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei province, all located in North China, Lin said.
Lin also noted that it will emphasize the deep integration of technological innovation with industrial innovation by focusing on frontier fields such as 6G, brain-computer interfaces, and cell and gene therapy.
The integrated advancement of education, science and technology, and talent cultivation will also be a key characteristic of the 2026 forum, according to Lin.
Additionally, this year's forum will emphasize high-level scientific and technological openness and cooperation, she added.
The 2026 forum is jointly organized by several Chinese government agencies, including the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Founded in 2007, the forum has evolved into a global, comprehensive, open and high-level international event for enhancing global innovation in science and technology.
Xinhua - China Daily
BEIJING -- The 2026 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum) will spotlight the theme of "Full Integration Between Technological and Industrial Innovation," an official with the Ministry of Science and Technology said on Wednesday.
This year's ZGC Forum will be held in Beijing from March 25 to 29. More than 1,000 guests from over 100 countries and regions are expected to participate in the forum, which features more than one hundred events, Lin Xin, vice-minister of science and technology, said at a press conference.
The 2026 forum will be characterized by four distinctive features. Firstly, it will emphasize the expansion of the capital city's efforts to become an international science and technology innovation center by holding forums and releasing relevant policies for deepening coordination among Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei, all located in North China, Lin said.
Lin also noted that it will emphasize the deep integration of technological innovation with industrial innovation by focusing on frontier fields such as 6G, brain-computer interfaces, and cell and gene therapy.
The integrated advancement of education, science and technology, and talent cultivation will also be a key characteristic of the 2026 forum, according to Lin.
Additionally, this year's forum will emphasize high-level scientific and technological openness and cooperation, she added.
The 2026 forum is jointly organized by several Chinese government agencies, including the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Founded in 2007, this forum in Beijing has evolved into a global, comprehensive, open and high-level international event for enhancing global innovation in science and technology.
Across China, a novel business model is rapidly emerging that removes headwinds for young entrepreneurs. AI has facilitated the rise of registered one-person companies (OPCs)—essentially allowing individuals to be the business themselves. Generative tools have made it easier than ever to launch a startup, and incubators are already seeing development potential.
According to a recent report by the Zhongguancun Talent Association in Beijing, metropolises such as the capital, Shanghai, and Shenzhen have increasingly become the top destinations for OPCs, particularly for their science and technology parks. Government support, a growing talent pool, and the popularization of AI are among the factors attracting one-person companies and helping them grow.
In Beijing's Haidian district, ZGC AI North Latitude Hub, an artificial intelligence industry community, is taking shape with the vision of building the world's top AI ecosystem.
Dong Bo, president of Kr Star Innovation, which operates the incubator, said the hub works closely with nearby universities to help graduates transition smoothly into the job market. He argues that the hub's resources and connections make it an ideal ecosystem for OPCs and scaling enterprises to develop their business models.
To empower them at various stages, the hub helps with company registration and legal consultation. Additionally, it organizes salons, industry exchanges, and technology-matching events with leading tech firms. Training courses on AI tool applications are open to internal and external participants, while regular events are held to bring businesses and investment institutions together. At present, over 20 OPCs reside in the hub.
According to the Zhongguancun Talent Association report, the number of one-person limited liability companies in China, primarily in the digital economy and service industries, exceeded 16 million nationwide as of June 2025. The number of newly registered OPCs reached 2.86 million in the prior six months, surging 47 percent year-on-year.
Wu Zhen is representative of the trend. As the founder of an intelligent virtual performance platform, he joined the hub in January. Introduced as a digital performance solution during the pandemic, the platform now supports a wide range of applications, including stage-based educational courses, motion capture, AI-generated short films, and AI virtual idols.
Wu said being an OPC allows him to retain creative control while outsourcing specialized and repetitive tasks to AI. It already helps him with copywriting and content generation, visual and video creation, basic software and web development, and other creative endeavors.
Wu said the core advantage of OPC lies in its speed and adaptability. Entrepreneurs must remain agile and iterative, especially in an era where AI makes any successful approach repeatable nearly instantly. "In the age of AI, what's truly scarce is not the ability to execute, but judgment, aesthetic sensibility, and long-term narrative vision," he said, adding that he believes the OPC model is here to stay.
Meanwhile, OPCs are prospering in other regions. In Y/OUR SPACE, a flagship offline developer hub and co-working community in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, a novel AI startup named Skillverse is quietly taking shape.
Founded by Mei Xiaodong, Skillverse is building an AI-powered app designed to solve the anxiety of not knowing one's true worth or potential in a market that threatens to make human labor obsolete. It acts as a diagnostic and growth platform that dissects a user's skills into a detailed, game-like "attribute panel", revealing latent talents and micro-competencies. "The ultimate goal is to help users understand their unique value and chart a path to enhance and monetize their abilities," said Mei.
AI is an invaluable partner for Mei, acting as CTO, designer, and engineer in the business operation so that the entrepreneur can focus on strategic decision-making. This synergy is embodied in Skillverse's development, where coding and user interface designs were co-created with AI.
"In an era where AI tools evolve faster than human learning, continuous skill development is the key to maintaining relevance," said Mei.
With a clear market vision, Skillverse is setting its sights on an international launch, targeting an annual recurring revenue of $1.5 million as its first milestone to validate the business model.
Yang Cheng and Chen Ye contributed to this story.
Across China, the rapid rise of one-person companies, or OPCs, empowered by artificial intelligence tools and strong ecosystem support, is reshaping entrepreneurship, as innovators leverage AI as a virtual team to drive business creation and growth.
According to a recent report by the Zhongguancun Talent Association in Beijing, metropolises such as Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in Guangdong province have increasingly become the top choices for OPCs, particularly in local science and technology parks. The popularization of AI technology, government support and a talent pool are among the major factors attracting one-person companies and helping them grow.
Dong Bo, president of Kr Star Innovation, operator of the ZGC AI North Latitude Hub, which is an AI development hub in Beijing's Haidian district, described the hub as an enterprise cluster providing a supportive ecology for high-tech businesses. Its mission is to help integrate AI-driven companies, tech media, developers and tool-chain providers — entities that offer comprehensive suites of tools for building and managing AI applications.
The hub currently hosts 20 OPCs, whose entrepreneurs mainly come from domestic and foreign universities and technology enterprises.
One of the hub's members is Wu Zhen, a 44-year-old entrepreneur. He joined in January as the founder of an intelligent virtual performance platform.
Initially serving as a cross-city, cross-cultural digital performance solution during the pandemic, the platform now supports a wide range of applications, including stage-based educational courses, motion capture, AI-generated short films and AI virtual idols.
According to Wu, AI acts as a round-the-clock virtual team that plays a significant role in copywriting, content generation, visual and video creation, and basic software and web development. AI also adapts content for cultural tourism scenarios, such as AI-generated content light shows.
"In the age of AI, what's truly scarce is judgment, aesthetic sensibility and long-term narrative vision. OPCs are not a transitional form. They may well remain a vital and dynamic organizational model for a long time," he said.
Wu himself exemplifies the rapid development of OPCs. The report also found that as of June 2025, the number of one-person limited liability companies, primarily in the digital economy and service industries, exceeded 16 million nationwide. The number of newly registered OPCs reached 2.86 million in the first half of 2025, surging 47 percent year-on-year.
As with cross-border e-commerce, the use of AI digital humans helped OPCs reduce labor costs by 70 percent and increase sales by 300 percent.
However, Wu said that one-person companies, including his own, struggle with the lack of stable order pipelines and revenue.
Li Xiaolei, head of the Institute of Regional and Industrial Research at the Guangdong Provincial Investigation and Research Center, suggested that the government adopt open competition to enable OPCs to undertake targeted projects and give them inclusive access to computing power and shared data.
In January, Shenzhen issued vouchers providing substantial financial support to OPCs and reducing entrepreneurial costs. The city is also addressing workspace and accommodation needs.
Yang Cheng contributed to this story.
wangsongsong@chinadaily.com.cn
The Zhongguancun Forum, one of China's key platforms for international technology exchange, will take place in Beijing from March 25 to 29, according to organizers.
This year's forum will center around the integration between technological and industrial innovation. It will feature conference discussions, releases of new tech achievements, trade fairs, frontier competitions, and a range of supporting activities.
Supporting events will also be staged during the annual conference, including sci-tech cultural activities, science popularization programs, and enterprise-specific sessions, according to the organizing committee.
The ZGC Forum was founded in 2007 with the permanent theme of "Innovation and Development". It has been committed to providing countries with a platform to discuss cutting-edge technologies and future industrial development trends, engaging in dialogue on global innovation rules and governance, and sharing innovative ideas and development concepts.
BEIJING -- Media registration started Wednesday for the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum (ZGC Forum), which is scheduled to take place in Beijing from March 25 to 29.
Registration will be open for global media reporters until March 13 on the ZGC Forum website (https://reg.zgcforum.com.cn/ma).
With the annual theme of "Full Integration Between Technological and Industrial Innovation," this year's forum will include forum conferences, achievement releases, technology trade fairs, frontier competitions and supporting events.
Founded in 2007 with the permanent theme of "Innovation and Development," the forum has evolved into a global, comprehensive, open and high-level international event for enhancing global innovation in science and technology.
A wave of initial public offerings is sweeping China's graphics processing unit, or GPU sector, marking a critical phase in the nation's push for self-reliance in advanced computing power.
On Jan 22, Shanghai-based Enflame Technology's application to list on Shanghai's Nasdaq-style STAR Market was accepted by the exchange. This move paves the way for "The Four Dragons" — Enflame, Moore Threads, MetaX and Biren Technology — to complete their convergence in the capital markets.
This follows the successful listing of another Shanghai GPU firm, Iluvatar CoreX, on the main board of the Hong Kong stock exchange on Jan 8. It became the second homegrown GPU company to go public in Hong Kong after Biren. Earlier, industry leaders Moore Threads and MetaX had already debuted on the STAR Market to significant investor interest.
The listing momentum which started from late 2025 extends beyond dedicated chip designers. Baidu Inc has announced plans to spin off its non-wholly owned subsidiary Kunlunxin for an independent listing. Informed sources told China Daily that Alibaba Group is also considering a similar spin-off plan for its chip design arm T-Head.
This IPO rush unfolds against a backdrop of stringent US semiconductor export controls and an explosive growth in domestic artificial intelligence applications, thus driving demand for alternative computing solutions.
At a recent news conference, Li Chao, a spokeswoman for the National Development and Reform Commission, highlighted China's deepening "AI+" initiative, which "provides extensive application scenarios for AI computing chips". Li pointed to "rapidly growing demand and vibrant innovation across all types of computing chips", adding that "domestic chip products are accelerating their adaptation across different scenarios with very good results".
The comments acknowledge the sector's vitality while setting higher expectations for its future development. Computing power forms the bedrock of the digital economy, a strategic resource underpinning data flow, algorithm training and intelligent application deployment.
If AI is a lush crop, computing infrastructure is the "fertile black soil" it depends on. As the global computing industry shifts from scale expansion to qualitative leaps, building a secure ecosystem — from underlying chips to applications — has become imperative for China to secure its developmental sovereignty, experts said.
Dong Peng, a senior economist and member of the assets committee of the China Enterprise Confederation, described this listing wave as "a collective breakthrough for domestic computing power during a strategic window of opportunity".
"Beneath the surface heat in capital markets lie two fundamental drivers," Dong said.
"First, the national demand for autonomy and controllability in AI and high-end manufacturing has created an unprecedented dual engine of policy and market support. Second, Washington's export restrictions on US leaders like Nvidia have opened a precious market window for domestic firms."
He emphasized that listing is not merely about fundraising, but a crucial step to establish industry standards and ecosystem influence. "The race to go public is about seizing the advantage in technology iteration, customer lock-in and brand recognition while the competition landscape is still taking shape. This is a battle for survival and, more importantly, for future power."
The Hong Kong stock exchange and the STAR Market, as preferred boards for "hard tech" firms, have provided a streamlined pathway for these companies. Driven by continuous investment in AI infrastructure and the escalating strategic priority of technological self-reliance, China's domestic AI chip sector is poised for substantial market expansion, experts said.
Zhou Di, a senior engineer and expert with the National Science and Technology Expert Database of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said China's AI computing market is likely to evolve toward a "dual-track, domestically led" new market landscape.
"Nvidia is likely to retain a share in the high-end AI training market, represented by the demand of hyper-scale internet companies and cutting-edge research institutes, by virtue of its technical advantages. Domestic GPUs, leveraging cost-performance ratios, customized services, policy support and security advantages, are positioned to dominate vertical sectors like government affairs, finance, industry and healthcare, as well as broader cost-performance-sensitive markets,"Zhou said.
The wave of listings also comes as China's push for self-sufficiency in AI processors is gaining remarkable momentum, with at least nine domestic chip companies having surpassed a significant threshold of 10,000 units in terms of order shipments.
This 10,000-chip club signals that domestic AI chips are gaining tangible market traction based on their performance, stability and cost. It heralds a shift from mere scale competition to a more comprehensive battle encompassing software ecosystems, commercial services and sustained reliability, experts said.
The cohort includes the in-house chip divisions of tech heavyweights such as Huawei's Ascend, Baidu's Kunlunxin and Alibaba's T-head, alongside listed or soon-to-be-listed AI chip specialists such as Cambricon, Moore Threads, Enflame and Iluvatar CoreX. Even some startups, including Sunrise and Tsingmicro, have crossed this volume threshold.
Companies with the largest scale of shipments, such as Huawei, Baidu and Alibaba, have reached several hundred thousand.
He Hui, semiconductor research director at the United Kingdom-based tech research firm Omdia, said, "Alibaba's T-head is at the forefront in terms of AI chip shipments, benefiting from its early start and massive internal demand."
According to US market research company International Data Corp, in the first half of 2025, the size of China's server market powered by AI chips reached $16 billion, with over 1.9 million units shipped. Nvidia held about 62 percent of the market share, while Chinese chips captured about 35 percent.
IDC ranked Huawei's Ascend series first in market share among domestic chips in the first half of 2025. Backed by its parent company's vast ecosystem, Ascend enjoys stable demand, whose chips are used in large-scale clusters by telecom operators and tech firms.
Omdia's He said Chinese internet companies are adopting a two-way approach. On the one hand, they are making efforts to buy Nvidia's advanced chips within regulatory frameworks. On the other hand, they are supporting the development of domestic AI processors as much as possible. For instance, ByteDance is testing and using chips from Baidu's Kunlunxin and Cambricon, while Tencent is using processors from Enflame.
The growing demand for Chinese AI chips is also reflected in the documents filed by listed enterprises. Prospectuses submitted between late 2025 and early 2026 by companies such as Moore Threads, Iluvatar CoreX and Enflame show accumulated shipments surpassing 10,000 chips. Iluvatar CoreX, for example, reported delivering 52,000 AI chips to 290 clients across finance, healthcare and transportation sectors by June 30.
Industry insiders said they view the emergence of multiple 10,000-chip vendors as a critical transition. Roger Sheng, vice-president of research at US market research company Gartner, said it marks the entry into a "large-scale verification" phase for this round of industrial trial and error, as Chinese AI chip companies make progress.
But challenges exist. Sheng outlined critical areas for improvement, including adopting advanced packaging technologies and optimizing computer algorithms through cooperation with Chinese large language model providers.
Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Zhongguancun Modern Information Consumer Application Industry Technology Alliance, a telecom industry association, said that Nvidia's dominance in the global AI chip market relies not only on chip performance, but also on its entrenched CUDA ecosystem — a 20-year-old framework for AI compatibility.
While Chinese chips, such as Huawei's Ascend series, can technically rival certain Nvidia chips, they lack CUDA's universal adaptability for AI large language models, Xiang said. "However, geopolitical uncertainty is driving users toward Chinese chips, and developers are now shifting their focus to compatibility layers for domestic alternatives, eroding Nvidia's ecosystem advantage," Xiang added.
Omdia's He said that with domestic manufacturing capacity for AI chips expected to be ramped up in 2026, the industry anticipates "another wave of explosive growth".
Zhang Wen, founder, chairman and CEO of AI chipmaker Beijing Biren Tech, said, "The production capacity of advanced domestic AI chips will be crucial for the future of China's AI industry."
masi@chinadaily.com.cn
The industrial output of Beijing's AI sector is expected to top 450 billion yuan ($63.6 billion) by the end of this year, a new white paper on the industry revealed on Saturday.
In the first half of 2025, the figure reached 215.22 billion yuan, marking a year-on-year increase of 25.3 percent.
To date, Beijing is home to over 2,500 AI enterprises and has seen 183 registered large models, maintaining its leading national position.
The industry chain is becoming increasingly complete, forming a globally competitive industrial ecosystem, the white paper said.
The AI for Science Institute in Beijing launched Bohrium this year, which self-proclaims to be the world's first AI research platform that covers the entire process from literature review to computation, experimentation, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
Meanwhile, commercialization paths are becoming clearer in the capital, with companies like Baidu and Douyin reaching record highs in revenue and active user numbers.
The Beijing Science & Technology Commission and the Administrative Commission of Zhongguancun Science Park jointly released the white paper.
