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In recent years, "Science and Technology Blue" has become the main color of Anhui. One after another, science and technology enterprises have settled in Anhui, and one after another, science and technology products have been born in Anhui. In the Jianghuai region, innovation has become a "daily routine" for entrepreneurship.

As the capital of Anhui Province and the "innovation highland" Hefei, a name that cannot be avoided in the past two years is "USTC Silicon Valley". It is called "valley" but it actually means "high". In the eyes of "scientific drifters" who pursue their dreams of scientific innovation, "USTC Silicon Valley" is an entrepreneurial paradise on the innovation highland of Hefei.

On June 13, 2022, the Anhui Provincial Government officially issued the "Implementation Plan for the Construction of "USTC Silicon Valley". From then on, an innovation valley built by global forces - "USTC Silicon Valley" came into being.

Now, "USTC Silicon Valley" links the resources of major universities and research institutes. High-level talents gather here to form a strong "scientific and technological innovation force" for high-quality development. High-tech achievements are accelerated here for transformation, and high-tech enterprises are thriving in the "valley".

By transforming the "high" into the "valley", "USTC Silicon Valley" is attracting talents and scientific and technological resources with the momentum of a "strong magnetic field", cultivating fertile soil for innovation, and rising to a new peak of scientific and technological innovation.

"As a high-tech enterprise established with the empowerment of USTC, we are proud to be located in the Silicon Valley area of ​​USTC." Li Liangbin, founder of China Science and Technology Youcai Technology Co., Ltd., said in an interview that the company received high-level talent subsidies in 2023, which will play a very supporting role in the incubation of early-stage entrepreneurial companies.

What is empowerment? In 2020, the Ministry of Science and Technology and nine other departments issued the "Pilot Implementation Plan for Granting Researchers Ownership or Long-term Use Rights of Scientific and Technological Achievements". USTC was selected as a national pilot unit, pioneering the "empowerment + transfer + agreed benefits" model. In 2023, Hefei Zhongke Youcai Technology Co., Ltd. was established through the empowerment and transformation of intellectual property rights. The industrialized enterprise is used as a platform to deliver talents to the industry, and the talent chain is used to connect the "innovation chain, industrial chain, and capital chain." With the support of the school, Li Liangbin successfully provided a convenient way for the transformation of scientific and technological achievements through the empowerment reform.

By establishing and improving transformation mechanisms such as the empowerment of scientific research results, including intellectual property protection, technology transfer, results evaluation and incentive mechanisms, we can eliminate the worries of scientific researchers about starting their own businesses and allow them to innovate and start businesses with confidence.

The upstream raw materials of polarizers are almost all monopolized by foreign countries, and related companies have complete pricing power over their products. Li Liangbin said that from the perspective of the entire industrial chain, foreign companies have mastered the value chain and supply security of the domestic new display industry chain.

Since its establishment, Zhongkeyoucai has been committed to breaking the "film curse" of new display and leading high-end optical innovation. It took only half a year to complete project planning, equipment installation and trial operation. The next step will be to optimize the process and equipment and send samples to downstream customers for verification.

With the help of the link of the "USTC Silicon Valley" service platform company, Zhongke Youcai successfully completed an angel round of financing of tens of millions of RMB, allowing the company to quickly recruit and form a complete industrialization team, and the production line and factory construction work proceeded as scheduled.

At the same time, HKUST Silicon Valley actively builds bridges among enterprises in the industrial chain, helping enterprises to quickly integrate into the industrial chain and make the research and development direction of enterprises more focused; in addition, thanks to HKUST Silicon Valley's policy interpretation and one-to-one empowerment, companies can keep up with policy directions and help enterprises develop rapidly.

"USTC Silicon Valley has a complete service system in terms of scientific and technological talents, project implementation and corporate financing. I hope that in the future, with the support of USTC Silicon Valley, companies will be able to connect global resources, gather scientific and technological talents, attract financial capital, and solve important issues such as partners, funds and scenarios." Li Liangbin said.

Yang Qing, a new Shanghainese, graduated with a Ph.D. in fine chemistry from the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. When he came to Hefei in 2021, he had already fulfilled his entrepreneurial dream - he had established a complete R&D team in Shanghai and achieved certain market benefits in the field of chemical medicine.

According to the planned development trajectory, his team will be based in Shanghai, radiating to the Yangtze River Delta and even the whole country, but fate is wonderful. Due to research and development needs, Yang Qing came to Hefei Pioneer Functional Molecular Research Institute. Here, he found a new direction: synthetic biology.

At that time, synthetic biology was a hot topic for the industrialization of science and technology, and it happened to be Yang Qing's research topic at the Hefei Pilot Institute. Anhui, as a "test field" for the reform of science and technology systems and mechanisms, is making every effort to promote the construction of "USTC Silicon Valley" to transform high-tech achievements on the "bookshelf" into products displayed on the "shelf", thereby realizing industrialization and empowering regional development.

With the right time, right place and right people, Yang Qing immediately started to work and brought in three partners to establish Hechen Bio. In half a year, two rounds of financing were completed - the angel round in September 2022 was exclusively invested by Wage Capital; the angel + round in December was jointly invested by Hongbo Capital and Guoyuan Innovation, and Wage Capital continued to increase its investment.

In this way, a story of capital promoting production happened to a start-up company. Yang Qing told reporters that being a "scientific drifter" in Anhui is a happy and lucky thing.

He said that Anhui not only has strong policy support, efficient government and financial services, and pragmatic scientific and technological innovation concepts, but also has appropriate practices for the scenarios, which makes the transformation of scientific and technological achievements more concrete in the eyes of scientific researchers.

At present, Hechen Bio has become one of the first companies in China to realize the biomanufacturing of "ergothioneine", a star product in the beauty industry. Here, 1 ton of glucose can produce 12 kilograms of ergothioneine, "the value is magnified more than 100 times, but the cost is less than one-tenth of traditional production."

From a "Shanghai migrant" to a "science migrant" starting a business in Hefei, Yang Qing said that it was the right decision to come to Anhui!

Xu Weiwei, who works in Silicon Valley, moved his family to USTC Silicon Valley; Li Ji, a native of Anhui who has a "space dream", "drifted" around four places with his projects and settled in his hometown; Lv Chuan, a graduate of the "Junior Class", once again "fell in love" with Anhui with his scientific and technological achievements...

Not only Yang Qing, but also others have explored the reform of the science and technology system, built an industry-university-research platform, and enabled the transformation of scientific and technological achievements in "USTC Silicon Valley". As of the end of June 2024, 1,520 new technology-based enterprises have settled in the entire USTC Silicon Valley area.

Today, “USTC Silicon Valley” has become a new dream destination and a new paradise for “science drifters”.

In addition to directly connecting with university resources, "USTC Silicon Valley" has also selected Haier Haichuanghui (an innovation and entrepreneurship platform for large enterprises), Puyue China (a globally renowned science and technology innovation ecosystem platform), Beichuangying (an innovation incubation platform for first-class universities), Yunxiu Capital (China's leading boutique investment bank in the technology industry) and others as global partners from more than 300 teams around the world.

Relying on the resources of global partners to build 36 innovation units, "USTC Silicon Valley" strives to achieve "one building is an innovation consortium, one building is the cradle of an emerging industry."

What does it feel like for a building to be an innovative industrial chain?

"Just by 'visiting' upstairs and downstairs, R&D and the market will be 'in line'." Xu Fei, general manager of Bafang Didong Technology Co., Ltd., expressed his feelings.

At the beginning of 2023, the company officially settled in Hefei and moved into the Silicon Valley Building. It is committed to integrating artificial intelligence big models with seismic signal technology to enable AI to learn to accurately and efficiently "interpret" physical parameters such as sound and vibration. The technology can be applied to traffic control, accident prediction, urban defense monitoring and other fields.

In April this year, Xu Fei met the person in charge of Anhui Yihe Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd., a "neighbor" downstairs from his company. This is also an artificial intelligence company that focuses on the power industry. During the chat, the two companies "hit it off" on the need for "artificial intelligence safety monitoring of transmission towers."

Things that used to require a lot of effort can now be done upstairs or downstairs in USTC Silicon Valley, greatly reducing the cost of communication. "It's efficient and direct. Making 10 phone calls is not as good as meeting once," said Xu Fei.

At present, there are more than 40 artificial intelligence companies settled in this Silicon Valley building, some of which focus on research and development, some are biased towards the market, some are positioned at the front end of the industry, and some are at the back end.

Now, when enterprises have technical needs, they can "go upstairs" to ask, and when they want application scenarios for their results, they can "go downstairs" to look for them.

The high wall between scientific research and industry has been directly broken down in physical space, and the building innovation consortium model of efficient collaboration and symbiotic complementarity is attracting many talents to come.

In the "USTC Silicon Valley" area, the upper and lower floors of the buildings have become the upstream and downstream of the industry.

Reasonable "deployment" is broken down here into units of floors, so a large number of scientific and technological innovation companies can find their best "position" without much worry.

The high-rise buildings that have sprung up have become the "scientific and technological innovation force" that has gathered momentum. "USTC Silicon Valley" continues to deepen institutional reforms, improve top-level design, create a new innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, and depict a better future for scientific and technological innovation. (Reporter Zhang Yipu)