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Today, the Shanghai Top 50 Young Innovators and Entrepreneurs Forum “AI+” Science and Technology Innovation Carnival Comes to SJTU!

May 13, 2026 Page views: 1241

Today, May 10, the 7th Shanghai Top 50 Young Innovators and Entrepreneurs Forum (Y50) opened grandly at Shanghai Tower.

For the first time, the forum also featured a Science and Technology Innovation Carnival. That afternoon, the Shanghai Jiao Tong University sub-venue event — “Siyuan Zhiyuan · Innovating for the Future” “AI+” Science and Technology Innovation Carnival — was held at the Student Center on SJTU’s Minhang Campus.

Chen Tong, Member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and Head of the United Front Work Department; Ding Kuiling, President of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Zhang Feng, Deputy Head of the United Front Work Department of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee and Secretary of the Party Leadership Group of the Shanghai Federation of Industry and Commerce; Qi Shi, Chairman of the Shanghai Y50 Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute and Chairman of East Money Information Co., Ltd.; together with more than 400 guests attended the event. The guests included representatives from the Shanghai Municipal Education and Health Work Party Committee, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, peer universities, alumni enterprises, investment institutions, and Shanghai youth innovation and entrepreneurship bases. Also in attendance were SJTU leaders including Vice President Zhang Zhaoguo; Hu Weiwei, Deputy Secretary of the SJTU Party Committee; Wang Houji, Member of the Standing Committee of the SJTU Party Committee and Head of the United Front Work Department; Yu Chaoyang, Member of the Standing Committee of the SJTU Party Committee and Head of the Publicity Department; as well as heads of SJTU schools and departments, alumni, faculty members, and student representatives. The event was hosted by Wang Qiaochu, a presenter from Yicai and a member of the SJTU Class of 2022.

Ding Kuiling noted in his remarks that this year marks the 130th anniversary of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. General Secretary Xi Jinping’s reply letter to the faculty and students of the four Jiao Tong universities has greatly encouraged and inspired the entire SJTU community. Over the past 130 years, SJTU has continued to deepen its engagement in innovation and entrepreneurship, staying committed to empowering young people through innovation and serving national development through concrete action. In doing so, the university has forged a distinctive path for the development of innovation and entrepreneurship. Looking ahead, SJTU will continue to advance the reform of innovation and entrepreneurship education in the AI era, and build a multi-level, full-pathway, and highly collaborative education system for innovation and entrepreneurship. The university will also remain committed to open education, fostering a vibrant and mutually beneficial youth science and technology innovation ecosystem through open resources, shared platforms, and jointly developed projects. He encouraged young entrepreneurs to seize the opportunities of the times, dare to explore and experiment, and have the courage to make breakthroughs. Through dedicated action, he said, they can realize their entrepreneurial dreams and contribute their youthful endeavors to the great cause of building a strong nation and advancing national rejuvenation.

Qi Shi noted in his remarks that Shanghai has always made its best platforms and high-quality resources available to young people and to the future, providing targeted industrial policies and efficient entrepreneurial services to support youth innovation and entrepreneurship. The forum’s first-ever university sub-venue, held at SJTU, marks a further extension of the forum’s support system to the very source of campus-based innovation. Looking ahead, the Y50 Institute will continue to connect resources from industry, capital, and universities, further activating universities’ dual role as both “sources of innovation” and “incubators,” and empowering faculty members and students in their innovation and entrepreneurship endeavors. He encouraged young people to seize the opportunities of the AI era, pursue innovation and breakthroughs with courage, and integrate their personal aspirations into the broader mission of building China into a strong nation in science and technology and developing Shanghai into an international center for scientific and technological innovation.

Innovation Sharing Session: Bringing Together Diverse Forces to Empower Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Shanghai Pudong Development Bank officially launched the “Shanghai University Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Seed Program.” Focusing on four core areas — financial empowerment, venue-based services, industry connection, and full-cycle support — the program will provide two major forms of targeted support: the “5+50” Seed Fund and the “1-on-1” Sci-Tech Innovation Camp, empowering young entrepreneurial talent from universities across Shanghai.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s “Dream X Workshop” was officially unveiled. As a one-stop intelligent manufacturing platform, Dream X Workshop connects the full process from proof of concept to pre-production, integrates industrial ecosystem resources, and lowers the cost of trial and error. Through an open and shared model, it helps bridge the “last mile” in the commercialization of innovation outcomes, enabling young innovators to transform their ideas into real-world results more efficiently.

The Shanghai University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Community was officially established. Led by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, the community brings together Fudan University, Tongji University, East China Normal University, East China University of Science and Technology, Donghua University, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Shanghai University, University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai Ocean University, Shanghai University of Engineering Science, and other universities. By breaking down inter-university barriers and integrating resources from science parks, enterprises, capital institutions, and government bodies, the community aims to build a full-chain youth innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem featuring interconnected education, sustained financial support, collaborative incubation, and commercialization of research outcomes. It will help cultivate more young talents who dare to explore, innovate, and create.

Building on Dream X Workshop, the Shanghai University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Community will work together with the Shanghai University Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Seed Program to create an open and collaborative youth science and technology innovation ecosystem among universities. This initiative will inject youthful momentum into Shanghai’s efforts to build itself into a science and technology innovation center with global influence.

Innovation Forum: Industry Leaders Share Insights and Inspire New Thinking on AI

Chen Ning, Chairman and CEO of Intellifusion and an SJTU alumnus of the Class of 1997, delivered a keynote speech titled “AI Ushers in a New Journey, and Sci-Tech Innovation Belongs to the Youth.” He noted that artificial intelligence is accelerating its transition toward the reasoning stage, as evidenced by the exponential growth in token usage, and announced Intellifusion’s large-scale computing chip roadmap for the next three years, which aims to achieve continued double-digit annual reductions in the cost of million-token inference. He emphasized that young people are the main force driving AI-powered scientific and technological innovation, and encouraged them to develop three key capabilities — problem definition, AI-oriented thinking, and continuous learning — while seizing the opportunities of the times with the spirit of daring to imagine, explore, and experiment.

Subsequently, Chen Ning was joined on stage by Wang Jialiang, founder of CooTek and the Superbrain AI Incubator; Ren Wei, Secretary of the Party Committee and Chairman of Shanghai Grand NeoBay Investment Development (Group) Co., Ltd.; Ma Linjie, Vice President of Shanghai Titan Scientific Co., Ltd.; and Hou Haoxiang, founding partner of Housnow Capital and co-initiator of the SJTU Super Jiaozi Student Entrepreneurship Seed Fund. Together, they held a roundtable discussion on “Opportunities and Challenges in AI+ Entrepreneurship,” engaging in in-depth exchanges with young students on site and offering valuable practical experience and strategic guidance.

Innovation Showcase: Youth Talent Takes the Stage as Projects Connect with Opportunities

Seven young entrepreneurial teams from Tsinghua University, Zhejiang University, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Southwest Jiaotong University, Beijing Jiaotong University, Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University delivered project roadshows in turn, focusing on strategic emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, intelligent equipment, high-end testing, and integrated circuits. A judging panel composed of representatives from investment institutions, industry experts, and leading enterprises provided on-site comments, helping promote precise connections between projects, capital, and industry resources.

Innovation Marketplace: Exhibition Highlights Showcase the Momentum of Sci-Tech Innovation

The outdoor “Innovation Marketplace” was also full of highlights, featuring four major exhibition zones: youth-founded enterprises, sci-tech innovation achievements by young students, Shanghai youth innovation and entrepreneurship bases, and a venture capital acceleration station. Among them, 13 AI+ enterprises founded by SJTU faculty, students, and alumni made a concentrated appearance, focusing on cutting-edge fields such as large language models, embodied intelligence, high-end intelligent manufacturing, healthcare, and integrated circuits. These included Meidele and Delijia, two companies that have recently gone public through IPOs, demonstrating the strong capabilities of SJTU-affiliated sci-tech enterprises. In addition, nine student projects vividly showcased the innovative vitality of young students; eight innovation and entrepreneurship bases, including the Grand NeoBay Sci-Tech Innovation Source Area, presented their achievements on the same stage; and the newly established Super Jiaozi Seed Fund made a major debut, joining hands with eight venture capital institutions, including Hanyuan Asset, to provide strong financial support for student entrepreneurship projects.

This carnival not only provided a high-quality platform for young entrepreneurs to showcase their projects and engage in exchanges, but also vividly demonstrated the “Shanghai model” of university-local collaboration and multi-party synergy in cultivating young sci-tech innovation talent. With the solid support of DreamX Workshop, the open collaboration enabled by the Shanghai University Innovation and Entrepreneurship Community, and the targeted empowerment of the Shanghai University Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Seed Program, Shanghai is making every effort to build a broad pathway for young talents to move from creative ideas to industrial application.

With science and technology innovation setting sail and AI empowering dreams, young people are coming together and moving forward with the times. Looking ahead, the new generation standing at the forefront of the AI wave will surely ignite their dreams through dedicated action, inject youthful strength into high-quality development, and write a brilliant chapter in the journey of national rejuvenation.