SHENZHEN, 17 September 2026. The 2026 AI Hetao Cup finals wrapped up on 17 September at Hetao One, the landmark tower in the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone. The contest was organised by the zone’s development company and guided by the Futian district investment-promotion and science-and-industry bureaus, with academicians, leading venture funds and financial institutions brought in as judges and backers.
The competition ran across five frontier tracks: embodied intelligence, AI for Science, smart finance, smart healthcare and AI film. A multi-round selection process drew entries from more than 20 innovation cities including Shenzhen, Hong Kong, Beijing and Shanghai, as well as hundreds of projects from international hubs such as Zurich and Southeast Asia.
Wu Yinxiao, president of the zone development company, told the finalists that the contest is not an endpoint but the start of a technology-to-industry chain linking research, scenarios, capital and commercialisation. He invited global AI talent to root itself in Hetao and promised an open ecosystem, efficient services and full supporting facilities.
The final round was judged by a panel led by Cui Shuguang, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Sciences and head of the Shenzhen Future Intelligent Connected Networks Research Institute, joined by senior technical experts and state-industrial capital jurors from Shenzhen Capital Holdings and Futian Capital. Fifteen teams took the stage to pitch core technology, algorithmic breakthroughs, application scenarios and commercialisation paths.
Woshi Technology of Hong Kong won first prize for its AI Robot Chemist. Second place went to Moshi Intelligence, for an auditory world model and physical-perception infrastructure for embodied AI, and to Shengjing Technology, for an end-to-end spatial-computing generation system. Third place went to Huisheng Technology’s BioEcho wearable imaging platform, Aike Zhiying’s embodied-AI ultrasound, and Jinze Bio’s AI-driven protein de novo design platform.
Beyond trophies, winners received a full cultivation package: cash awards, million-class rent rebates inside the park, fund incubation, cross-border go-global services, dedicated entry channels and blanket brand exposure, building a complete chain from showcase to resource matching to industrial deployment.
The venue itself matters. Hetao One, designed by Pritzker laureate Richard Rogers around a “butterfly in the clouds” concept, is a roughly 200-metre, 44-floor headquarters complex and the only sellable and leasable commercial asset on the Shenzhen side of the zone. Under a city-level plan, the FinTech 3.0 ecosystem has landed there under the name Hetao One FinTech Hub, with dual certification as a digital-finance building and a Shenzhen-Hong Kong fintech incubator.
With core carriers like Hetao One, the cooperation zone is steadily advancing toward a world-class research hub, promising to hatch more frontier AI innovation that starts in Hetao, lands in the Greater Bay Area and reaches the world.
Editor’s note: This is an adapted translation of the original Shenzhen News report. It has been trimmed and restructured for readability for an international business audience.