The Hong Kong Investment Corporation is gradually moving from investing in large language models to downstream real-life applications, chief executive Clara Chan Ka-chai announced on Thursday.
Speaking at a forum, Chan explained that practical, real-world technologies serve as tangible touchpoints to deliver direct benefits to the public, support the transformation of traditional businesses, and create new economic momentum.
Furthermore, she pointed out that the HKIC favors the open-source paradigm, which substantially lowers costs while accelerating the speed and quality of innovation—helping younger generations and smaller companies, particularly startups, to grow, compete, and prosper.
Among the 250 companies HKIC supports, 11 have already listed in Hong Kong, with more than 30 others planning to go public or submit initial public offerings this year. Over 70 percent of its managed capital is deployed to early-stage and growth-stage enterprises, with investments already yielding results.
Aligning with this drive for practical technology adoption, Wang Jun, deputy chief executive of Bank of China Group Investment, stated that his firm is executing a strategic shift toward "investing early, investing small, and investing in hard tech."
Wang highlighted that BOCGI is actively exploring cross-border industrialization pathways that bridge Hong Kong’s research and development with validation and scaling across the Greater Bay Area, promoting an "research and development in Hong Kong, validation in the Mainland" model to help tech firms expand globally.
