Xiaohai Note: In recent years, many hard technology science and technology companies have emerged. Among these companies are entrepreneurial teams with graduates from prestigious universities, master's and doctoral students, and a luxurious lineup. The founders not only have indu

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2025-07-26

Xiaohai Note:

In recent years, many hard technology science and technology companies have emerged. Among these companies are entrepreneurial teams with graduates from prestigious universities, master's and doctoral students, and a luxurious lineup. The founders not only have industry veterans who have been in the industry for more than 20 years, but also include professors and scientists from prestigious universities. It can be foreseeable that we will usher in a historic opportunity in hard technology.

Author | Wang Min

Source | Shenrancaijing

In the past 2021, hot money flowed into hard technology.

Hard technology refers to key core technologies that have a great support for economic and social development. They are currently mainly reflected in artificial intelligence, aerospace, biotechnology, optoelectronic chips, information technology, new materials, new energy, intelligent manufacturing and other fields.

According to data from Qingke Research Center, in the first three quarters of 2021, the top three industries with the largest investment amounts in the primary market were semiconductors and electronic equipment, biotechnology/medical health and IT, with corresponding investment amounts of 192.725 billion yuan, 184.759 billion yuan and 157.746 billion yuan respectively.

They have seen opportunities in the industry and also seen the benefits of the macro environment. With a glamorous resume, they have devoted themselves to the field of hard technology, which is on the rise.

On the one hand, the country's policy guidance and support have allowed them to see the favorable conditions of the macro environment. On the other hand, the traffic dividend in the mobile Internet era has disappeared, and the growth brought about by the innovation of the original model is stretched. In the context of industrial transformation and upgrading, they have seen opportunities in the technology industry.

capital has a keen sense of smell and has turned to hard technology one after another. Leading institutions have long regarded this as their main investment direction.

Among them, the competition in the two major fields of semiconductor and new energy is the most fierce. Some popular projects in the semiconductor field can obtain 1 billion yuan in angel round financing. The concept of "carbon neutrality" has brought the energy storage field to the hottest. In addition, the hot medical and health/biotechnology since the epidemic has not cooled down, and even the unpopular military industry sector in previous years has attracted much attention in 2021.

At the same time, the investment amount is large, the return cycle is long, the results are slow, and the business is difficult to implement. The valuations of some projects are inflated, and these characteristics of hard technology have long become the industry consensus. It’s just that the current market is very enthusiastic, and no one wants to miss the window period of opportunities in the next era.

01 Hard technology entrepreneurship trend

Industry veterans and scientists have all come to

entrepreneurs in the field of hard technology, which can be roughly divided into two categories: industry practitioners, scientists, university professors and other academic forces.

"Computing power has become the driving force of GDP in modern society, and the improvement of computing power cannot be separated from semiconductors. This time, the explosive growth cycle of the semiconductor industry will be very long, possibly as long as 20 years, or even 30 years." Xiao Qiyang said to Shenran.

At the end of 2020, Yunbao Intelligent, a chip company founded by Xiao Qiyang, received investment from leading investment institutions such as Tencent and Sequoia. In 2021, he accelerated the entrepreneurial process and in less than a year, he expanded the team size from 5 core founding members to 300.

Xiao Qiyang's judgment on the semiconductor industry comes from more than 20 years of industry experience. He received his PhD in electronic engineering from Stanford and served as an associate professor at MIT. The chip company RMI, founded in Silicon Valley, was acquired by NetLogic, a listed company in the United States in 2009. In 2011, he led to the world's chip manufacturer Broadcom's high-priced acquisition of NetLogic.

After leaving Broadcom in 2015, Xiao Qiyang has been thinking about the future development trends, customer needs and solutions in the chip field. Until the outbreak of the epidemic at the end of 2019 and early 2020, seeing the explosive growth of computing power requirements for global industrial digital transformation, he became more determined in the DPU (data processor) segmentation direction.

2020 is known as the first year of DPU. Nvidia released its DPU strategy in October 2020, listing DPU as the third most important chip beyond CPU (central processor) and GPU (graphics processor). After that, DPU instantly became a popular track in the semiconductor field. Xiao Qiyang, who started his business on this track, quickly received high financing. Yunbao Intelligence, founded by him, has also become one of the representative companies in the domestic DPU field.

Hard technology entrepreneurship is coming, and the industry-side practitioners represented by Xiao Qiyang are an important force.

Also in the semiconductor field, a large number of people have left Huawei HiSilicon, Nvidia, and AMD companies, choosing relatively mature security chips, WiFi chips and other fields to start their own businesses.

also has some industry-side practitioners who have reopened their businesses because they see opportunities in the hard technology segment. Bose Quantum founder Wen Kai received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in the United States and has long studied quantum computing. But when he returned to China to start a business in 2015, the field was still at the forefront and was not well-known, so he first chose the field of artificial intelligence to start a business. In 2020, promoting the development of quantum technology has been elevated to a national strategy, Guodun Quantum is listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and after the conditions for developing quantum computing are more mature, he returned to quantum computing and started a business again. By July 2021, his project has completed two rounds of financing for the Angel Round and Angel + Round.

In this tide of hard technology entrepreneurship, scientists and university professors are important forces that cannot be ignored.

Take the field of quantum computing as an example. The "Turing Quantum" Angel Round and Pre-A Round established by Professor Jin Xianmin of Shanghai Jiaotong University have reached hundreds of millions of yuan. Before this, Academician Guo Guangcan, Academician Du Jiangfeng and Academician Pan Jianwei, "Three Biggests of the University of Science and Technology of China" in the field of quantum computing, all had their own companies, and were already on the road to transforming technological achievements and were called "quantum GDP."

The medical and health field, which has accelerated since the epidemic, is inseparable from the participation of the academic community. The pharmaceutical preparation research and development company and technology platform Xunji Bio was initiated and established by Professor Qian Feng, Vice Dean of the School of Pharmacy of Tsinghua University. Kangmaidison, a platform company focusing on computing chemistry to drive new drug research and development, was initiated and founded by founder Dr. Wan Xiaobo and Dr. Huang Niu, a senior researcher at the Beijing Institute of Life Sciences.

In the field of high-end manufacturing, West Lake Future Intelligent Manufacturing, founded by Zhou Nanjia, a special researcher at Hangzhou West Lake University, received an angel round of financing less than half a year after its establishment in 2020, and completed a Pre-A round of financing of hundreds of millions of yuan in 2021.

In order to transform scientific research results, scientists will take the initiative to recruit partners who are willing to start a business, and even their own students, and start a business together. The consensus in the industry is that the R&D level of the academic force, the academic force and the accumulated achievements over the years, are very scarce in some sub-fields. If the technology is further industrialized, the success rate will be higher. Lin Jialiang, partner of Zhongke Chuangxing, told Shenran that hard technology projects can be divided into two categories, and the corresponding two sets of standards are also provided. For projects in the field of disruptive cutting-edge technology, we pay more attention to the technical accumulation of the founding team, that is, scientists will be more popular; as for technical projects that are mature abroad but are still "bottlenecked" in China, we pay more attention to industrial experience and engineering practice capabilities.

can be seen that entrepreneurs who "go into the sea" wave after wave. The background of a prestigious school is just the foundation, and with its bright resume, the entrepreneurs who jumped in have already spread across various hard technology sub-sectors such as semiconductors and high-end manufacturing.

02 Why is hard technology entrepreneurship popular?

Industry veterans and academic experts have set off a craze for hard technology entrepreneurship. In addition to the ripe time, there is also the promotion of capital by .

VCs have been "restless" since 2019, and by 2021, they rushed in unstoppablely. It is not uncommon to "grab projects" and "grab professors" in the field of hard technology.

Lin Jialiang clearly felt that in 2021, his peers were more aggressive in grabbing projects. Several internal investment decisions for several projects are coming to an end, but they are temporarily "robbed" by their peers.

In addition to the fierce competition among VCs, the founder's voice is also increasing.

The capital market has increased money and improved financing environment, and the willingness of practitioners in the technology field to start a business has increased. Moreover, among hard technology projects, talents are the most scarce. Therefore, in the hard technology investment and financing market, 's initiative is gradually tilting from investment institutions to founders .

The founders of some popular projects may have to meet twenty or thirty investment institutions before financing. In 2021, this number will double directly, reaching fifty or sixty starts.

Xiaohai Note:

In recent years, many hard technology science and technology companies have emerged. Among these companies are entrepreneurial teams with graduates from prestigious universities, master's and doctoral students, and a luxurious lineup. The founders not only have industry veterans who have been in the industry for more than 20 years, but also include professors and scientists from prestigious universities. It can be foreseeable that we will usher in a historic opportunity in hard technology.

Author | Wang Min

Source | Shenrancaijing

In the past 2021, hot money flowed into hard technology.

capital has a keen sense of smell and has turned to hard technology one after another. Leading institutions have long regarded this as their main investment direction.

01 Hard technology entrepreneurship trend

Industry veterans and scientists have all come to

entrepreneurs in the field of hard technology, which can be roughly divided into two categories: industry practitioners, scientists, university professors and other academic forces.

Hard technology entrepreneurship is coming, and the industry-side practitioners represented by Xiao Qiyang are an important force.

In this tide of hard technology entrepreneurship, scientists and university professors are important forces that cannot be ignored.

02 Why is hard technology entrepreneurship popular?

Industry veterans and academic experts have set off a craze for hard technology entrepreneurship. In addition to the ripe time, there is also the promotion of capital by .

VCs have been "restless" since 2019, and by 2021, they rushed in unstoppablely. It is not uncommon to "grab projects" and "grab professors" in the field of hard technology.

In addition to the fierce competition among VCs, the founder's voice is also increasing.

The founders of some popular projects may have to meet twenty or thirty investment institutions before financing. In 2021, this number will double directly, reaching fifty or sixty starts.Moreover, the founder must "examine" the brand power of investment institutions, whether investors truly understand the industry and technology, and whether they can introduce industrial resources to projects and help the business.

Take the hot DPU field as an example. Although Yunbao Intelligent has not announced the amount of financing, judging from the amount of financing announced by the industry, starting from the 100 million yuan is not an isolated case. Shenran learned from investors that the funds to invest in Yunbao Smart Angel Wheel have reached more than 1 billion yuan.

The core breakthrough in the field of cutting-edge technology is the final competition for scientists . Therefore, many VC investors will take the initiative to establish contact with scientists and university professors to understand their project progress, and even promote the commercial implementation of scientific research results. Nowadays, this situation is still increasing.

has also undergone some changes in the type of investment institutions. Among hard technology investments, government-guided funds are becoming more and more active in , and their participation in project investment is becoming increasingly high. From the Science and Technology Innovation Board in 2019 to the Beijing Stock Exchange in 2021, it actually encourages more hard technology companies to go public. Taking the commercial aerospace field as an example, practitioner Liu Dong told Shenran that military-civilian integration industry funds, local government funds, etc. are all increasing investment in commercial aerospace.

support and preferential policies are also important factors that promote hard technology. The "14th Five-Year Plan" released by

2021 takes scientific and technological innovation as a key task and increases policy support. The newly revised "Science and Technology Progress Law of the People's Republic of China" focuses on "increasing the reform of the ownership of scientific and technological achievements in official positions" and promotes scientific and technological personnel to commercially transform scientific and technological achievements.

Wenkai has received corresponding support for both office space, funds and talents.

Capital support and policy encouragement, hard technology is popular, making the hard technology entrepreneurship in 2021 unprecedentedly popular. The core reason for is that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is underway, and social development requires scientific and technological innovation as the underlying driving force.

Industry veterans, scientists, and university professors have all "got into the sea", and naturally they have seen the huge opportunity. Just like Xiao Qiyang chose to start a business in the DPU field, he also saw the importance of computing power to breakthrough in productivity. As a doctoral student in quantum computing, Wen Kai chose to start a business in quantum computing in 2020 because he saw that the domestic and foreign technology, policy environment and other entrepreneurial conditions in this field are relatively mature.

"The present is the golden age of hard technology entrepreneurship." Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Innovation Works, and Li Zexiang, professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology who incubated DJI and Yunjing, have expressed similar views in the past two years.

In the words of Meilin, founder of Taihe Capital, 2021 is a year of structural turning point, and hard technology is a historic opportunity in the next ten years.

03 Prosper on one side, bubble on the other?

If you talk about the coin of "hard technology investment", is the front of it, and the opposite is the "bubble". The most direct manifestation of

is that there are more and more projects with "sky-high" valuation. Lin Jialiang said that two years ago, we could see some projects with valuations of only tens of millions in the Angel Round, but now, "it is impossible to invest without a valuation of 100 million or 200 million." Even some companies are targeting sub-sectors, the market size may not be large, but they can also obtain high valuations.

For a moment, hard technology stood at the forefront, but this is not a good bone to chew.

For investors, the investment logic of hard technology investment is very different from those projects in the past Internet model. Investing in model innovation projects under the Internet can focus on commercial implementation, but the commercialization of hard technology projects is often long, and the iteration of technology research and development is the key to early investigation.

Liu Dong told Shenran that it has only begun to develop the commercial aerospace field around 2015. Many companies were in the technological research and development stage in the first three or four years of their establishment, and can only slowly carry out commercialization. Overall, it is far different from the international level.

Xiao Qiyang also mentioned that Yunbao Intelligent currently uses finished chips, and has been able to provide customers with solutions, but the first self-developed chip will take 1-2 years from the beginning to mass production. According to him, the investment cycle of semiconductors is very long, and high-end chips will take 3-5 years.

For hard technology entrepreneurs, technological breakthroughs are just one of the pressure sources in front of them. is a problem to find technical talents and implement technical business.

Hard technology has high requirements for talents, but not only is it difficult for scientists to find, but related talents are also very scarce. The semiconductor field in the

trend is particularly popular. Companies are all competing for people, the treatment of talents is rising, and the cost of entrepreneurship is rising. According to Xiao Qiyang, the salary and benefits of chip talents of the same level have increased by at least 20% compared with two years ago. Bose Quantum, which is in the cutting-edge technology field, also feels that talents engaged in quantum computing are very scarce.

and The biggest problem encountered by entrepreneurs who have transformed across industries is that it is okay to develop technology, but it is not easy to build a company.

Lin Jialiang explained that when scientists do laboratory research, they are good at making breakthrough innovations, but when starting a business and building a company and making products, they are stumped by measuring costs and grasping customer needs. Therefore, the founding teams need to have their own strengths and be able to make up for each other.

Xiao Qiyang mentioned that some entrepreneurs in the DPU field have done cloud computing but never made chips, some are from investment circles, and some are made chips themselves, but they do not necessarily understand customers and market needs, and do not understand software very well.

But one thing is certain: high-end chips cannot be made by crazy financing and high valuation. In addition to technical level, understanding customer needs, market needs, and relevant commercialization implementation experience are very important.

Many practitioners and investors told Shenran, "The bubble is inevitable, but the investment in hard technology is crazier and it is undeniable that it will promote the industry."

When resources are all tilted towards hard technology, it will surely accelerate the development of the industry. There is no doubt about the market space, but in the future, it may still be necessary to return to the "price-earnings ratio" from the "price-to-earnings ratio".

* title picture visual China, the accompanying pictures in the article are from pexels. At the request of the interviewee, Liu Dong is a pseudonym in the article.

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