Focusing on the national strategic emerging industries and serving the global early-stage scientific and technological innovation enterprises, on November 12, the grand final of the 2024 Jinji Lake Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition came to an end in Suzhou Industrial Park. After a fierce competition among 20 final projects from home and abroad, Lingxing Guangtong finally stood out and was awarded the first prize of the competition.

Shen Mi, a member of the Standing Committee of the Suzhou Municipal Party Committee and the Secretary of the Party Working Committee of the Industrial Park, attended the event and delivered a speech. Shen Mi welcomed and thanked the entrepreneurial elites, investors and entrepreneurs from home and abroad for gathering together. He pointed out that based on the new starting point of the 30th anniversary of the development and construction of the industrial park, the park is accelerating the construction of an open and innovative world-class high-tech park in accordance with the grand blueprint drawn by General Secretary Xi Jinping. This will surely provide the best stage for more talents to expand their careers, display their talents and achieve their dreams in the park. There are fertile soils, platforms, support and a bright future for development in the park. He eagerly hopes that more innovators and entrepreneurs will choose the park, empower it, develop it, and have a two-way interaction with the park, walk hand in hand, share the development opportunities and create a beautiful future together.

Zhu Xiaohu, a managing partner of GSR Ventures, shared his views on the topic of The Ideal and Reality of Scientific and Technological Innovation Enterprises. He believes that technology is very important for scientific and technological innovation enterprises, but sometimes it is more important to identify where the customers and the market are than technology. Scientific and technological innovation enterprises should define their products and markets well. At the same time, scientific and technological innovation enterprises should also think about their competitive barriers. In the context of AI landing, discovering industry know-how and even sales management are all very important barriers. He reminded entrepreneurs not to think about opportunities worth billions or even tens of billions of US dollars first. Today, all large companies are eyeing new opportunities eagerly. Only when others look down upon these opportunities can start-ups have a chance. The tough, dirty and tiring work is the moat of start-up companies.

Serving the national strategy and stimulating the innovation momentum, the Jinji Lake Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition is sponsored by the China Venture Talent Investment Center and the Overseas High-level Talent Association. It was launched globally in 2012 and has become an industrial science and technology innovation platform serving high-level talents at home and abroad.
Based in Suzhou, serving the whole country and radiating globally, since the competition was held 13 times, it has continuously held semi-finals in places such as Silicon Valley in the United States, Japan and Singapore for many years. Its footprint has spread across 13 countries and 30 cities around the world, and has successfully attracted more than 14,000 projects to sign up. The industries mainly focus on strategic emerging industries such as integrated circuits, biomedicine, advanced manufacturing, electronic communications and new materials.

In order to deeply promote the cooperation and exchanges between Chinese and foreign enterprises, the competition specially set up an overseas project exhibition area at the final site. Eight projects from the North American, European and Singaporean competition areas brought cutting-edge technologies and innovative products such as AI large models, in-memory computing chips and soft magnetic thin film materials, attracting many investment institutions and upstream and downstream enterprises to stop and communicate, and exploring potential market cooperation opportunities. At present, the Singaporean enterprise, the artificial intelligence Internet of Things platform Willowmore, has carried out cooperation with many domestic smart lock manufacturers and customers.

Promoting industrial innovation with scientific and technological innovation and accelerating the cultivation of new quality productive forces. Relying on the resources of the China Venture Talent Investment Center, Dongsha Lake Fund Town and Shenghe Innovation Center managed and operated by Yuanhe Holdings, the competition has continuously expanded the new space for open cooperation. In 2024, the competition joined hands with the innovation consortium to carry out more in-depth industrial cooperation with leading enterprises such as Ascentage Pharma and Navigate Biotech, and built a full-chain internal cycle from technological research and development to achievement transformation, and from project incubation to industrial cultivation.

Gathering global patient capital, the competition effectively guides capital to early-stage enterprises. Among the final projects of previous years, 150 projects have received financing of more than 18.9 billion yuan, such as enterprises like Tongfudun, Nuofei Nano, Soth Medical, Shize Bio and Dongsheng Intelligent. The grand final of the 2024 competition was chaired by Mi Lei, the founding partner of Zhongke Chuangxing, and Zhu Xiaohu, the managing partner of GSR Ventures. Investors from venture capital institutions such as Qiming Venture Partners, Softbank China and Lilly Asia Ventures, and industrial capitals such as BGI and Sinopharm Group served as judges and mentors. From the dual perspectives of "capital + industry", they helped early entrepreneurs clarify their strategic directions, solve financing problems and link up and down stream resources.

Embarking on a new journey, the launching ceremony of the new session of the competition was held at the same time. Taking the 30th anniversary of the development and construction of the Sino-Singapore Suzhou Industrial Park as an opportunity, in the future, the competition will continue to innovate services, continuously promote higher-level scientific and technological innovation and open cooperation, and promote the deep integration of technology, talent, capital and industry, contributing to the acceleration of high-level scientific and technological self-reliance and strength.

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