Pudong joint incubator attracts transnational companies

Shanghai has been striving to build itself up as a science and innovation center since 2014. Now, after five years of development, the city is becoming more and more attractive to global science and innovation resource providers.

Zhangjiang International Innovation Harbor, or ZIIH, in Shanghai's Pudong New Area, for example, receives applications from about 15,000 projects worldwide every year, but the success rate is only four per thousand.

In ZIIH, many of the world's first-class technologies are on display for international investors to take in.

The joint incubation mode for transnational enterprises initiated in ZIIH has attracted more than 30 transnational companies, more than 40 domestic and overseas institutions and nearly 1,000 local entrepreneurs.

During its two-year operation, the platform has incubated and served a total of 65 scientific and innovative projects, with accumulated financing exceeding 400 million yuan ($57.69 million) and overall valuation exceeding 6.5 billion yuan.

The incubation platform plans to cooperate with IBM this year. The two sides will make full use of the advantages that IBM has in artificial intelligence, cognitive computing, data science and cloud computing, and integrate local channels and the market to develop an AI cloud platform for domestic companies.

"70 percent of the projects here are in the fields of AI and intelligent manufacturing," said Wu Jiaxiang, founder of the joint incubation platform. "We hope to form Shanghai into a hub of the AI industry."