BlueRun Ventures' "Explorer Day": We Talked to Hong Kong Entrepreneurs About a Thousand and One Futures for AI

On July 19, BlueRun Ventures held Explorer Day in Hong Kong, bringing together global entrepreneurs. This marked the third edition of Explorer Day, following events in Silicon Valley and Singapore. Themed "AI Returns to the Singularity Moment: Capturing the Next Trillion-Dollar Era," the event featured Jui Chan and Terry Zhu, managing partners at BlueRun Ventures, along with representatives from outstanding portfolio companies. They engaged with over 100 venture capital professionals from local enterprises, government associations, academia, and investment institutions, sharing insights on AI, robotics, biotechnology, fintech, and other fields.

In his opening address, Jui Chan, managing partner at BlueRun Ventures, highlighted Hong Kong's unique strategic position as an international financial center and commercial hub. He noted that the Greater Bay Area integration strategy has helped launch a new chapter for Hong Kong as an international innovation and technology center. At present, the most powerful driver of technological innovation is undoubtedly large AI models. BlueRun Ventures began investing in AI-related projects in cloud computing, big data, and databases back in 2012, and over the past decade has captured numerous standout companies. Standing at the starting point of a new trillion-dollar innovation cycle, BlueRun hopes to contribute to the development of Hong Kong's AI industry.

Terry Zhu, managing partner at BlueRun Ventures, stated that AI is the absolute theme of this year's tech venture capital landscape. But to talk about AI, one cannot talk about AI alone. As a powerful capability, AI must be organically integrated with vertical industries to produce transformative change. BlueRun will maintain its consistent investment logic, closely monitoring multimodal large models while also paying attention to the thousand and one possibilities of their application across various vertical industries.

Wong Wai Cheuk, head of innovation and technology at InvestHK, attended the event and delivered remarks. He emphasized that Hong Kong boasts exceptional academic strength, high-quality R&D and incubation environments, the most dynamic startup community, a world-leading IPO platform, strong government support for innovation and technology, and the boundless potential of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao collaborative development. In recent years, Hong Kong has placed greater emphasis on the new growth momentum brought by technological innovation, providing vast space and opportunities for the venture capital ecosystem. He welcomed more technology innovation companies to come to Hong Kong.

During the keynote presentations, He Wang, assistant professor at Peking University, director of the Embodied Intelligence Research Center at BAAI, and CTO of Galaxy Universal, shared his exploration of embodied intelligence for general-purpose robots with attending guests. He proposed that the path for embodied intelligence products to truly enter millions of households and usher in the next great era lies in infusing robots with 3D vision-driven generalized perception and manipulation capabilities. Leveraging China's manufacturing advantages, Galaxy Universal will produce low-cost, multi-functional dual-arm mobile robots, driving the formation of embodied multimodal big data and thereby exploring the brilliant new world brought by embodied large models.

Wei Liu, CEO of BioMap, noted in his keynote that inspired by GPT more than two years ago, the team chose to develop a large model deeply rooted in the biotechnology field because they saw the tremendous value that pretrained large models could unleash in the biotech industry: creating more possibilities through zero-shot approaches in scenarios lacking task-specific data. These possibilities help humanity discover the underlying laws of life and achieve breakthroughs in biotechnology — a cause that concerns human welfare.

The two panel discussions at this Explorer Day approached AI from the perspectives of infrastructure and application layers, exchanging cutting-edge insights and deep reflections. In one panel, Jui Chan was joined by Edmond Yim, fintech director at Cyberport; He Wang; Xin Yao, founder of PPIO; Yang You, founder of Luchen Tech; Yuan Shi, co-founder of Xinchen AI; and Yu Wang, CEO of iPollo AI, bringing the latest information from the front lines of domestic large model development. In the other, Terry Zhu discussed with Wei Liu, co-founder of BioMap; Chaohui Zhang, founder of Youibot; Zheng Wang, founder of Wanxun Technology; Liwei Zhuo, co-CEO of Wanwei Technology; and Haifeng Liang, regional director at Gaussian Robotics, exploring the current state of large model deployment in biomedicine, robotics, and fintech, as well as how to break through the challenges of AI implementation. During breaks, the more than 100 attending venture capital professionals engaged in lively discussions on these topics.

This event was co-organized with InvestHK, Greater Bay Area Homeland Investments Limited, and Cyberport, with support from HKAI Lab.

Building an AI entrepreneurship ecosystem requires not only strategic guidance from government and relevant organizations, but also the distinctive contributions of innovative companies, academic institutions, ecosystem organizations, and investment institutions. We look forward to using this event as an observation post to further collaborate with local entrepreneurs, scholars, and investors to build a robust innovation ecosystem. This is an era of ever-amplifying uncertainty, but also one in which a new wave of technological innovation is surging forth. We will join hands with Hong Kong entrepreneurs to immerse ourselves in the historic tide of technological innovation.

▶ More Exciting Content ◀

Originating in Silicon Valley, BlueRun Ventures was established in 2005 as a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups.

Currently, BlueRun Ventures manages multiple USD and RMB dual-currency funds in China, with assets under management exceeding RMB 15 billion, making it one of the largest early-stage funds in the country. The firm invests primarily at Pre-A and Series A stages, covering hard tech and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumer, and healthcare sectors. It has cumulatively invested in over 150 startup companies, including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi Used Cars, Qudian, Songguo Travel, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Yuntu Semiconductor, Machenike, Clouds Intelligence, Anxin Shield, BioMap, and others.

BlueRun Ventures has been ranked first in Zero2IPO's "Top 30 Early-Stage Investment Institutions in China" and ChinaVenture's "Top 30 Best Early-Stage Venture Capital Institutions in China," and was named among Preqin's Top 10 VC Fund Managers Globally for Sustained High Returns.

Additionally, BlueRun Ventures has repeatedly received honors from Forbes China, 36Kr, Cyzone, Caixin Media, CBNweekly, Jiemian, and other media organizations, including "China's Best Early-Stage Firm of the Year," "China's Top Venture Capital Institution," "Most Entrepreneur-Friendly Early-Stage Institution of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Institution of the Year."