Harbin Institute of Technology

Harbin Institute of Technology (哈工大) is a Chinese university whose graduates appear in elsewhere's coverage as technical founders and investors in frontier technology ventures. The institution is cited as part of the core talent pipeline for Helium Starlink (氦星光联), a space laser communications startup that raised nearly RMB 200 million in Series A1 funding in early 2026, where the founding team drew from Tsinghua, Peking University, Beihang, CAS, and HIT . Zhou Zhifeng, a Qiming Venture Partners appointee profiled in 2024, earned his bachelor's degree in computer science and technology there before joining HP and eventually rising to lead the firm's investment practice . More recently, Huang Yi, founder of humanoid robotics startup RoboParty, was in his first year at HIT when he and roommates built their first bipedal robot AlexBot in a dormitory in late 2023 with RMB 15,000, going on to raise tens of millions of dollars from Xiaomi and Galaxy General by late 2025 .