Guest Lineup Revealed | 2026 WAIC Qiming Venture Partners Entrepreneurship & Investment Forum: The Evolution from Computing Power Origin to Application Deployment
Decoding the Paradigm Shift in the Large Model Era: How the Industry Can Move Beyond Pure Parameter Chasing to Ruthless Exploration of Real-World Scenarios, Cost Efficiency, and Closed-Loop Business Models
Qiming Venture Partners · Entrepreneurship and Investment Forum: The Evolutionary Journey from Compute Origins to Application Deployment
Sunday afternoon, July 19 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC)
Room B, Silver Hall, 1F, Shanghai World Expo Center
This is a sub-forum showcasing and exploring AI's journey from underlying compute infrastructure to industrial deployment — through the lens of innovation and entrepreneurship.
We will be joined by leading scholars and pioneering entrepreneurs in this field to bring you:
3 keynote speeches
1 in-depth dialogue
1 roundtable discussion
3 major launches
Today, we unveil our lineup of distinguished guests.
We look forward to seeing you there for their insights!
01/
Alex Zhou, Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners
Session: Opening Speech and Qiming Venture Partners' Top 10 AI Outlooks for 2026 | Riding the Technology Wave: Finding the Business Inflection Point in the AI Era
Mr. Alex Zhou is a Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners.
He is one of the most active investors in frontier technology, with current focus areas including artificial intelligence, robotics, and other transformative technologies. More than 20 of Mr. Zhou's portfolio companies have grown into publicly listed companies or unicorns, including Zhipu AI (02513.HK), Biren Technology (06082.HK), UBTECH (09880.HK), Roborock (688169.SH), HyperStrong (688411.SH), Unisound (09678.HK), Yunyinggu Technology (03310.HK), Axera (00600.HK), Transwarp Technology (688031.SH), Yunji Technology (02670.HK), StepFun, Shengshu Technology, Mech-Mind, Galaxy Universal, Tashi Zhihang, Yuanli Lingji, Yuaiweiwu, DeepWay, Infinigence AI, and Polestones.
Prior to joining Qiming, Mr. Zhou worked at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a top-tier Silicon Valley venture capital firm. Before his investment career, he was at HP, where he was responsible for data storage business in China.
Mr. Zhou was named to the 2026 Forbes Midas List of the world's top venture capitalists, and has been repeatedly selected for the Forbes China Top 100 Venture Capitalists list.
Mr. Zhou holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Technology from Harbin Institute of Technology.
He currently serves on the Industry Advisory Committee of the Beijing Stock Exchange. Mr. Zhou is also a member of the Management Committee of the Qiming Venture Partners · Rural Revitalization Entrepreneurship Support Program, jointly initiated by Qiming Venture Partners and the China Foundation for Rural Development, dedicated to training and empowering rural industrial entrepreneurs and social enterprise entrepreneurs.
02/
Yihao Luo, Co-founder and CEO of Shengshu Technology
Session: Keynote Speech | General World Model: Bridging the Virtual and Physical, Building the Foundation for Physical Intelligence
Yihao Luo is the co-founder and CEO of Shengshu Technology. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University and has over a decade of experience in cloud computing and AI. He previously served as head of AI solutions and product lead for the AI applications product line at ByteDance's Volcano Engine, where he was fully responsible for strategic planning, product development, and business operations covering multiple traditional AI products and large model products.
03/
Yibo Zhu, Co-founder and CTO of StepFun
Session: Keynote Speech | The Convergence of AI Infrastructure and Model Capabilities
Dr. Yibo Zhu serves as Chief Technology Officer of StepFun, overseeing AI infrastructure construction and AI framework optimization to support efficient training and inference for the Step series of general-purpose large models. Under his leadership, StepFun has built industry-leading systems capabilities, enabling the training of foundation models with extremely high compute resource utilization while achieving industry-leading inference efficiency with optimal performance.
Dr. Zhu is a top expert in AI systems, with deep expertise in large-scale data processing and AI algorithm optimization, extensive practical experience in systems construction and management, and current research focus on cutting-edge training and inference systems for large models.
After completing his Ph.D., Dr. Zhu joined Microsoft Research Asia as a researcher, then became head of AI Infrastructure at ByteDance, where he built one of China's largest-scale AI infrastructures from scratch. After leaving ByteDance, he served as technical lead for Google Cloud's GPU products, directly supporting Anthropic, further enriching his practical experience.
04/
Wenbin Tang, Founder and CEO of Yuanli Lingji (Dexmal)
Session: Partnership Launch | Global Progress and Ecosystem Development of RoboChallenge
Wenbin Tang is the founder and CEO of Dexmal (Yuanli Lingji), and former co-founder and CTO of Megvii. A graduate of Tsinghua University's Yao Class, he was honored with Tsinghua's inaugural Yao Award and led his team to sixth place globally (first in Asia) at the ACM/ICPC World Finals. He served as head coach of China's International Olympiad in Informatics national team for seven years. In 2011, Tang co-founded Megvii — one of China's "Four AI Dragons" — alongside Qi Yin and Mu Yang. At Megvii, he led the development of the logistics robotics business and the robot network operating system "Hetu" from scratch, driving the company's transformation from a top research team to industrial deployment and enabling rapid growth across multiple business lines. He currently serves as chairman of Megvii logistics robotics unit Yuanli Juhe. In 2025, he founded Yuanli Lingji, introducing the breakthrough "embodied-native" concept and releasing the world's first embodied-native large model DM0. Yuanli Lingji is China's most representative company in embodied large model R&D, consistently ranking first in domestic real-machine evaluations while building a relatively complete infrastructure for embodied large models, including the development framework Dexbotic, the world's largest real-machine evaluation platform RoboChallenge, and an embodied scenario application platform. Tang is pioneering the integration of software and hardware barriers, continuously driving the full-chain deployment of embodied intelligence in the real physical world.
05/
Moderator: William Hu, Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners
Zhengtuo Zhao, Founder of Jieti Medical
Session: Dialogue | The Two-Way Journey of Brain-Computer Interfaces and AI: From Effortless Control to Seamless Extension of Cognition
William Hu, Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners
Mr. William Hu is a Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners, co-leading the firm's healthcare innovation investments.
Since joining Qiming in 2006, Mr. Hu has played an important role in building and developing the firm's healthcare innovation investment practice. He has been deeply involved in the investment and development of more than 60 startups, many of which have become publicly listed companies or multi-billion-dollar companies and grown into leaders in their respective fields. Mr. Hu's lead investments include Tigermed (300347.SZ, 03347.HK), MicroPort EP MedTech (688617.SH), Sanyou Medical (688085.SH), Tellgen Corporation (300642.SZ), Amoy Diagnostics (300685.SZ), MicroTech Medical (02235.HK), Abbisko Therapeutics (02256.HK), Antengene (06996.HK), Renhe Biology (688193.SH), Aohua Endoscopy (688212.SH), Arrail Group (06639.HK), Connect Biopharma (NASDAQ:CNTB), BBI Life Sciences (01035.HK), Ark Biosciences, OriCell Therapeutics, Eddingpharm, Transcripta, AusperBio, Cornerstone Robotics, Shenzhen Hongji Medical, Pulnovo Medical, Tongxuan Medical, VINNO Technology, Inntron, Stellaris Medical, WeDoctor, Yuanxin Technology, Boner Orthopaedics, Shulan Health, and others.
Mr. Hu has been named to the Forbes China Top 100 Venture Capitalists list for nine consecutive years.
Mr. Hu holds a medical degree from Shanghai Medical University and an MBA from ENPC (Shanghai campus).
Zhengtuo Zhao, Founder of Jieti Medical
Zhengtuo Zhao is a leading figure in China's brain-computer interface field, focusing on the fundamental R&D and clinical translation of long-term stable, high-bandwidth flexible neural interfaces. He is dedicated to breaking through application bottlenecks of invasive brain-computer interfaces and advancing the technology from laboratories to large-scale clinical applications.
In technology R&D, Zhao led the development of the high-throughput ultra-flexible neural interface system (uFINE), achieving globally leading high-density signal recording — the first system to achieve single-cell-level, large-scale neural activity recording in non-human primates and human brains.
Under his leadership, Jieti Medical developed China's first invasive brain-computer interface system compliant with medical device standards and completed the country's first prospective clinical trial. This breakthrough made China the second country globally, after the United States, to enter clinical trials in this field. To date, the system has entered large-scale clinical validation and received approval for the National Medical Products Administration's Innovative Medical Device Special Review Program.
Furthermore, he pioneeringly created the interventional ultra-flexible brain-computer interface approach, becoming the only technology globally capable of achieving craniotomy-free recording of single-neuron activity in large animals, significantly improving implantation safety and convenience.
He is not only a technology pioneer deeply engaged in frontier research but also a pragmatic entrepreneur driving the industrial deployment of brain-computer interfaces. Currently, he is leading Jieti Medical to accelerate the deep integration of brain-computer interfaces with AI and embodied intelligence, committed to opening vast application spaces for life health and technological innovation through high-speed, safe human-machine interaction.
06/
Dong Wang, Executive Director and Professor, Peking University Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding
Session: Report Launch | Release of The International Landscape of AI Governance Report
Professor of International Relations at Peking University (tenured), jointly appointed professor at the Institute for Artificial Intelligence, doctoral supervisor; concurrently serving as Deputy Director of the Social Sciences Division and Director of the Think Tank Center Management Office at Peking University, Executive Director of the Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding (Ministry of Education) at Peking University, and Vice President of the Chinese Association of American Studies, among other positions. Author or editor of 8 Chinese and English books. Has published papers and commentaries in top-tier domestic and international academic journals and newspapers including Qiushi, Foreign Affairs, People's Daily, and The New York Times. Has repeatedly set records for Chinese scholars publishing in top international academic journals. Principal investigator of major projects/special programs funded by the National Social Science Fund of China. Chief expert of the inaugural Ministry of Education Philosophy and Social Sciences Innovation Team. Selected for Beijing's first "Outstanding Young Scientist" program in 2018 (ranked first in humanities and social sciences). Selected as a Changjiang Young Scholar by the Ministry of Education in 2022. The Institute for Global Cooperation and Understanding at Peking University, which he directs, has won the CTTI Annual Think Tank Outstanding Achievement Grand Prize and "Benchmark Case" for Best Annual Think Tank Case for four consecutive years from 2022 to 2025; in 2025, it was selected for the CTTI Top 100 Chinese University Think Tanks A+ list. Has repeatedly represented Chinese scholars at important international forums including the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Munich Security Conference, and the Shangri-La Dialogue.
07/
Moderator: Nan Chen, Executive Director of Qiming Venture Partners
Zhijian Chen, Founder and CEO of SpacemiT
Dr. Qiang Wu, Founder and CEO of Houmo AI
Ruiju Liu, General Manager of Edge & Terminal Computing Product Line at Axera
Session: Roundtable Discussion | AI Compute Reconstruction: The Path of AI Chip Innovation from Cloud to Edge
Nan Chen, Executive Director of Qiming Venture Partners
Mr. Nan Chen joined Qiming Venture Partners in 2015 and is an Executive Director in the technology team, responsible for investments in high-tech sectors. Before joining Qiming and beginning his investment career, Mr. Chen spent ten years at Cisco Systems China, serving in pre-sales and consulting engineering, product management and sales, and business development roles. He holds a bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Beihang University, an MBA from Peking University's National School of Development, and a master's degree in International Finance from Fordham University in New York.
Zhijian Chen, Founder and CEO of SpacemiT
Dr. Zhijian Chen holds a Ph.D. in Circuit and System Design from Zhejiang University. He is the founder and CEO of SpacemiT (Hangzhou) Technology Co., Ltd., a national high-level talent, Hangzhou Class B provincial leading talent, and first prize winner of the Zhejiang Provincial Technical Invention Award. He previously worked at Hangzhou C-Sky Microsystems (later wholly acquired by Alibaba and reorganized into T-Head Semiconductor), where he led the development of the Xuantie series processors — a landmark achievement of China's national science and technology major projects for core electronic devices, high-end general chips, and foundation software during the 12th and 13th Five-Year Plans. He has successively undertaken multiple national key projects including core technology breakthroughs and major special projects, published over 20 academic papers, applied for more than 10 invention patents, and been selected for the ninth batch of the national high-level talent special support program (Technology Entrepreneurship Leading Talent). In November 2021, he founded SpacemiT, focusing on the R&D and industrialization of high-performance RISC-V AI processors — the startup with the largest financing scale in China's RISC-V track. Dr. Chen combines profound academic accumulation with rich industrial experience, representing an outstanding example of composite leading talent in China's processor chip field.
Dr. Qiang Wu, Founder and CEO of Houmo AI
Dr. Qiang Wu is the founder and CEO of Houmo AI. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Princeton University, where he received the sole Best Paper Award at MICRO-38 — a top conference in computer architecture — and was selected by IEEE Micro as one of the 12 most influential scientific and technological achievements of 2006.
Dr. Wu was a core founding member of AMD's first-generation GPGPU and OpenCL heterogeneous parallel computing framework, contributing to the establishment of GPGPU computing. He subsequently served as a senior technical specialist at Facebook for many years, accumulating a systems-level perspective on ultra-large-scale computing platforms. After returning to China in 2017, Dr. Wu served as CTO of Horizon Robotics, accumulating extensive local entrepreneurial experience and operational expertise in chip product development and commercialization.
Ruiju Liu, General Manager of Edge & Terminal Computing Product Line at Axera
Mr. Ruiju Liu joined Axera in 2025 and is responsible for the company's edge and terminal computing product line.
He has over 20 years of experience in chip industry marketing and management. He spent seven years at Cambricon, where as the company's first sales and service head, he built the sales and service team and "iron triangle" operational system from scratch, fully responsible for market strategy, marketing strategy, commercial negotiation, and key account management. He led his team to achieve breakthrough scale for AI chips in the smart IoT field and enabled the first large-volume shipment of domestic AI chips. Previously, he spent nearly 12 years at a leading domestic chip company, progressing from account manager to regional representative, participating in the full journey of the company's development from 0 to 1 and 1 to 10, and fully responsible for business expansion and operations in AI IoT, IP TV, TV, and other industries.
He possesses outstanding team empowerment and organizational coordination capabilities, excels at managing complex projects, and consistently drives performance growth through high self-motivation, goal orientation, and resource integration.
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P A S T H I G H L I G H T S
Qiming Weekly | Top 10 News from Qiming Venture Partners Portfolio Companies Vol. 22, 2026.6.30
Founded in 2006, Qiming Venture Partners currently manages 11 USD funds and 7 RMB funds, with total assets under management reaching $9.5 billion. Since its inception, the firm has focused on investing in outstanding early and growth-stage companies in Technology and Healthcare.
To date, Qiming Venture Partners has invested in over 580 high-growth innovative companies, of which more than 210 have listed on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ, Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Shenzhen Stock Exchange, or exited through mergers and acquisitions. Over 80 portfolio companies have become recognized unicorns or super-unicorns.
Many of Qiming Venture Partners' portfolio companies have grown into the most influential companies in their respective fields, including Xiaomi (01810.HK), Meituan (03690.HK), Bilibili (NASDAQ:BILI, 09626.HK), Zhihu (NYSE:ZH, 02390.HK), Roborock (688169.SH), Hesai Technology (NASDAQ:HSAI, 02525.HK), UBTECH (09880.HK), WeRide (NASDAQ:WRD, 0800.HK), HyperStrong (688411.SH), Insta360 (688775.SH), Unisound (09678.HK), Biren Technology (06082.HK), Zhipu AI (02513.HK), Gan & Lee Pharmaceuticals (603087.SH), Tigermed (300347.SZ, 03347.HK), Zai Lab (NASDAQ:ZLAB, 09688.HK), CanSino Biologics (688185.SH, 06185.HK), Schrödinger (NASDAQ:SDGR), MicroPort EP MedTech (688617.SH), Sanyou Medical (688085.SH), Amoy Diagnostics (300685.SZ), SinoCellTech (688520.SH), Insilico Medicine (03696.HK), AusperBio, Yuanxin Technology, MediLink Therapeutics, LaNova Medicines, StepFun, and others.