HKIC Joins Forces with BAAI to Host "AI Global Talent Summit," BlueRun Ventures Powers Global Chinese Talent in Tech Innovation
Talents of the Era, an Era of Talents
On August 26, Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC) and Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (BAAI) co-hosted the inaugural "AI International Talent Summit." The summit brought together over 350 top experts and scholars in artificial intelligence from Hong Kong, mainland China, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and Singapore, as well as representatives from AI startups and investment institutions across various industries. Participants exchanged ideas on frontier AI technology development, industrial practice, investment, and ecosystem building, and actively discussed how to deeply promote "talent attracting talent" on the international level.
As patient capital, HKIC joined hands with BAAI to showcase at the summit how HKIC's ecosystem can transform Hong Kong into an international hub for AI talent by connecting technology, talent, industry, and capital — establishing a permanent platform that guides AI venture investment, innovation, and entrepreneurship from technology transfer and cross-border talent mobility to industrial landing and global capital flows. The summit was supported by multiple HKIC ecosystem partners, including BlueRun Ventures, BioMap, Galaxy Universal, and PPIO. They shared their perspectives as beneficiaries of patient capital and as startups on how AI assists technological breakthroughs and industrialization, and demonstrated AI applications in biotechnology, embodied intelligence, cloud computing, and other industries.
Distinguished guests at the summit included Mr. Paul Chan Mo-po, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government; Ms. Clara Chan Ka-kei, CEO of HKIC; and Professor Huang Tiejun, Chairman of BAAI. The guests and attendees jointly witnessed the official establishment of the "Hong Kong Youth AI Society," marking the launch of a top-tier AI young scholars community with Hong Kong as its international base, connecting global resources to support the full development from scientific research breakthroughs to commercialization and related investments, accelerating the flywheel effect of "talent, technology, and capital." The Hong Kong Youth AI Society held its first international exchange event in Hong Kong that same afternoon.
Mr. Paul Chan Mo-po, Financial Secretary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, said in his address: "Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping industrial structures, economic systems, and social formations, and changing the competitive landscape of the global economy. Indeed, AI technology is developing rapidly and bringing transformative opportunities to all industries. For Hong Kong, building an open, collaborative, and inclusive AI community is crucial for attracting and retaining global talent — the very core force driving innovation in AI. I am very pleased to witness the 'AI International Talent Summit' today, a project jointly promoted by Hong Kong Investment Corporation and Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence. Their cooperation, including the establishment of the 'Hong Kong Youth AI Society,' fully embodies the spirit of openness and cross-disciplinary collaboration. By bringing together international capital, connecting young AI talent, and introducing frontier technologies, this marks an important step for Hong Kong in building a global AI leading hub."
Ms. Clara Chan Ka-kei, CEO of HKIC, noted: "As patient capital, HKIC is positioned in Hong Kong, backed by the motherland, and facing the world. In terms of investment, we must deploy ahead of time to seize opportunities for Hong Kong. AI is a key focus area in our investment layout. Our goal is to gather international talent, and continuously put talent first, nurture enterprises, incubate technology, leverage Hong Kong's advantages as a 'super connector' and 'super value-adder,' as well as its capital market strengths, to channel international capital into these enterprises and create win-win outcomes for multiple parties. This collaboration with BAAI to demonstrate Hong Kong's appeal in 'attracting talent through talent' is an important step in HKIC's long-term and strategic investment layout for AI."
Professor Huang Tiejun, Chairman of BAAI, said: "The core of BAAI's success lies in three things: first, profound prediction of technology trends — BAAI released the 'Wudao' series of large models in 2021, foreseeing that large models would become 'infrastructure for the intelligent era'; second, insisting on 'young talent taking the lead,' earning BAAI the reputation as 'the Whampoa Military Academy of China's large models'; third, practicing 'open source and openness to build a global ecosystem,' emphasizing that open source and openness are the inevitable path for AI innovation and development. Like the internet, AI research, industry, and applications are all global. This cooperation with HKIC combines BAAI's technological core with Hong Kong's international hub status, with talent at the center, to help Hong Kong become a leader in the intelligent era."
At the summit, Jui Chan, Managing Partner of BlueRun Ventures, delivered a keynote address titled Forging the Future Together: A New Era of Global AI Talent, exploring in depth the critical value of Chinese talent in the global technology innovation landscape, and how to support Chinese tech entrepreneurs with global vision and world-leading technological innovation.
Jui Chan pointed out that AI is driving a new round of productivity revolution that will reshape the global technology landscape, and Chinese talent is continuously exporting China's technological influence to the global market. According to MacroPolo's Global AI Talent Tracker 2.0, Chinese talent accounts for 47% of the world's top AI researchers. In recent years, the global mobility of Chinese talent has been accelerating — overseas Chinese talent is returning, while local Chinese talent is also going global. China has advanced from following innovations to making original breakthroughs, with enormous future potential. Chinese companies and entrepreneurs now face opportunities in the global market, which means they need to build world-class products and compete globally.
Through ongoing in-depth exchanges with entrepreneurs, BlueRun Ventures has found that these talents share several notable characteristics: young, highly educated, strongly entrepreneurial, and globally minded. Wang He, co-founder and CTO of Galaxy Universal, studied under Professor Leonidas J. Guibas, a member of three U.S. national academies, and earned his PhD at Stanford University. Today, 10% of Galaxy Universal's revenue comes from overseas, including the Middle East and other Asian countries. Zhilin Yang, founder of Moonshot AI, holds a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University and studied under Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Apple's head of AI. Moonshot AI's recently released new model "Kimi K2" caused a global sensation and was praised by Nature magazine as "another DeepSeek moment." Dr. Luo Jianlan, who joined AgiBot this year, was previously a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley's BAIR Lab and now leads AgiBot's deep technical cooperation with Physical Intelligence, a top international embodied intelligence company. AgiBot has also gained recognition from international strategic investors such as LG Electronics, Charoen Pokphand Group, and Mirae Asset Group.
Jui Chan stated that as an active investment institution in the AI field, BlueRun Ventures sees AI catalyzing a productivity revolution that will unleash era-defining opportunities. Faced with such opportunities, and to support high-quality global tech talent and enterprises while accelerating the global development of Chinese technology, BlueRun Ventures continues to build an international ecosystem, establishing teams and developing deep partnerships in Silicon Valley, Hong Kong, Singapore, and other locations. Additionally, BlueRun Ventures launched its entrepreneur ecosystem brand "Booming" in 2023, expanding coverage of high-quality global talent through ecosystem approaches, and has gradually built mindshare among top AI talent.
Three representatives from BlueRun portfolio companies also shared their perspectives from the startup technology enterprise viewpoint.
Dr. Xu Ziyao, Strategic General Manager of BioMap, stated that the cross-disciplinary field of AI and biological computing requires talent with expertise in both computer science and life sciences, and such interdisciplinary talent is scarce. A key question is how to effectively connect resources at different levels — top scientific research talent, SME needs, and young talent cultivation — to form a sustainable "flywheel effect." BioMap hopes to leverage the capital and resource networks of patient capital ecosystems including HKIC to form a positive cycle of attracting talent through talent. At the same time, by focusing on vertical domain cooperation, tools such as the BioMap large model can narrow the gap between academia and industry, and through an open technology ecosystem, empower SMEs and attract diverse talent to join innovation.
Wang He, Assistant Professor at Peking University, founder and CTO of Galaxy Universal, and BAAI scholar, stated that embodied intelligence is the ultimate vehicle connecting AI to the physical world. Compared with traditional AI, it naturally has characteristics of being interdisciplinary, multimodal, and more concrete. In the process of expanding overseas, Galaxy Universal has always attached great importance to accumulating international talent. Leveraging Hong Kong's international advantages and HKIC's ecosystem resources, Galaxy Universal will enhance its international brand and attract top global talent to join. Hong Kong is the starting point for Galaxy Universal's active overseas market expansion and a window to the international stage. Galaxy Universal attaches great importance to the landing and application of innovative products and technologies in the Hong Kong market and the tremendous value this brings.
Yao Xin, co-founder and CEO of PPIO, stated that entrepreneurial talent in the AI era needs "PDA" thinking: Problem-Native, Data Flywheel, and Agentic Execution. "Truly successful AI entrepreneurs are those who genuinely discover industry pain points, not those who possess the biggest and most complete models." Yao Xin emphasized that AI talent and entrepreneurs must first follow the "Problem-Native" principle, starting from industry pain points — "first find the right nail, then choose the hammer." Facing "real problems," AI entrepreneurial talent must also build their own moats and develop true core competitiveness, a goal that cannot be achieved without the support of the "Data Flywheel." And efficient execution capability is precisely the core value of "Agentic Execution."
For many years, BlueRun Ventures has continued to support young entrepreneurs in redefining future technology and life from 0 to 1. We are very pleased to work with partners like HKIC and BAAI to support Chinese tech entrepreneurs with global vision and world-leading technological innovation.
