Y50 forum hears of innovation and entrepreneurship
zhu shenshen / SHINE
Y50 forum, a city-level forum to support young innovators and talent.
Young entrepreneurs and talented professionals are being welcomed to Shanghai as the city boosts innovation to fuel its digitization and smart transformation.
They will receive various city-level support covering the business environment and related services for the law and taxation, Shanghai Daily learnt on Saturday.
The 5th Shanghai Y50 Forum for Innovation and Entrepreneurship was held on Saturday, with academicians, young innovators, business executives and government officials attending.
Nobel Laureate Randy Schekman, Xiaohongshu’s founder and president Qu Fang and film star Hu Ge send online greetings to the forum. While Yang Zhilin, 33, founder of Moonshot AI (Kimi AI’s developer), delivered a keynote speech on innovation and trends of generative AI.
zhu shenshen / SHINE
Releases of the Y50 Forum
A group of Shanghai’s innovation achievements and results were released in the forum.
The newly published Shanghai’s top 10 innovation cases cover gene research, electric vertical take-off and landing or eVTOL, Beidou navigation, brain-computer interface, 5G and 6G. These will fit well with the city’s blueprint to develop three pioneering industries – AI, biomedicine and chip – and transform into a more innovation-oriented development track.
In 2023, the three industries’ output hit 1.6 trillion yuan (US$222.2 billion), compared with 1.27 trillion yuan in 2021. It accounted for 34 percent of the city’s total GDP last year, compared with 29.4 percent three years ago, according to a research report on Shanghai’s innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, which was published for the first time in Y50 forums.
At the forum, a youth innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem platform, offering mentorship, legal and other professional services, was also founded.
The teams of mentors giving guidance, support, and policy assistance to young innovators and entrepreneurs will include forum guests, experts, experienced entrepreneurs, financing consultants, and professionals from fields such as finance, law, accounting, taxation, and assessment.
zhu shenshen / SHINE
Yang Zhilin, the 33-year-old founder of Moonshot AI, delivered a speech at the forum.
Start-up innovation and AI
“(Business) environment is critical for start-ups, covering talent gathering, ecosystem and capital support,” Moonshot AI’s Yang said in a sideline interview.
Kimi AI, developed by Moonshot AI, is going viral online, making it potentially a ChatGPT-like AI tool in the Chinese language world.
During his keynote, Yang said he expected generative AI would deal with 90 percent of work flow in future, with the “Agentization” feature.
A batch of Shanghai Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Bases were also published, including Zhangjiang in the Pudong New Area, Model Speed Space or Mosu in Xuhui District and two tech zones in Minhang District.
Model Speed Space was founded to attract the world’s leading AI firms and start-ups to foster the most cutting-edge AI foundation models. More than 60 AI LLM (large language model) companies, along with more than 200 related firms in the AI industry chain, have settled in Mosu in Xuhui District, since its debut in September last year, industry officials said.
