Hangzhou Unveils AI Development Roadmap to Build Nation’s Top Innovation Hub

Hangzhou is accelerating its drive to establish China’s premier innovation hub for artificial intelligence, rolling out systematic plans for industrial upgrading and technological breakthroughs during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. Boasting a robust industrial foundation, the city’s core AI industry revenue has hit 460 billion yuan, cementing its status as a globally recognised powerhouse for intelligent technology development.

As a benchmark for national AI innovation, Hangzhou will prioritise three core strategic tasks to amplify its industrial advantages and lead high-quality intelligent economic growth. The city will continuously support the iterative upgrading of two leading open-source foundational large models, Alibaba’s Tongyi Qianwen and DeepSeek, and foster a third self-developed open-source foundational model to sustain its leading edge in the global open-source AI track.

To nurture vibrant industrial vitality, Hangzhou will implement a targeted cultivation mechanism featuring open-source community empowerment and one-person company incubation. The framework aims to support individual innovators and elite technical teams to grow from fledgling start-ups into mature industrial clusters. With backing from the National Development and Reform Commission, the city will host high-standard global AI open-source competitions to attract top-tier international talents and innovative projects, further enriching its open-source innovation ecosystem.

Full industrial chain layout for embodied intelligence stands as another key pillar of Hangzhou’s AI expansion. The city will build a collaborative innovation system centred on the national application pilot base for embodied intelligence, forming a complete industrial chain covering research and development, training, pilot testing, application and professional services. It will cultivate a comprehensive product matrix of intelligent terminals and embodied intelligent equipment, striving to build a world-class advanced manufacturing cluster in the embodied intelligence sector.

Hangzhou has taken the lead in institutional innovation to underpin sound AI development. In March this year, it introduced the country’s first local regulation specifically targeting embodied intelligent robots, filling the regulatory gap in the niche sector. Further policy improvements are underway, with a dedicated ordinance for AI industrial promotion under formulation to refine the city’s comprehensive policy support system for intelligent industries.

Beyond technological and industrial progress, Hangzhou is pressing ahead with the construction of a national comprehensive pilot zone for data factors and a national data industry cluster. The city is exploring effective mechanisms to realise the resource value of data elements, unblocking the whole industrial chain of data resource utilisation and value transformation. These efforts will continuously optimise the business environment for AI innovation, empower industrial intelligent upgrading across all sectors, and consolidate Hangzhou’s position as a core engine driving China’s intelligent economic transformation.