From a Single Investment to an Ecosystem: Pudong Venture Capital Brings AI Entrepreneurs into the “Circle”

A graduation ceremony illustrates a new path that Pudong Venture Capital is advancing: making an investment the entry point, then connecting courses, capital, industry scenarios and entrepreneurial partners. For young teams, entrepreneurship need not begin from scratch as lone actors; entering the camp also means joining a “circle of contacts” where they can continually seek resources, exchange ideas and expand cooperation.

Investment upon Admission: Patient Capital Supports the “First Mile”

AI entrepreneurship has a practical challenge: the moment when funding is most needed is often also the moment when it is hardest to prove oneself. The product is still being developed, customers have yet to emerge, and there is no revenue curve to speak of. Traditional investment institutions can hardly assess a company’s future based on a technical concept alone. Backed by an AI seed fund with a total size of RMB 2 billion, Pudong Venture Capital has moved the point of investment forward to the training camp: teams sign upon admission and receive a guaranteed RMB 300,000; after in-camp observation and graduation evaluation, high-quality projects may receive follow-on funding of up to RMB 1.5 million. The mechanism features no performance-based valuation-adjustment or share-repurchase clauses. Such support is aimed precisely at the startup stage when entrepreneurs most need a safety net.

Over the course of several months, two consecutive cohorts completed closed-loop incubation cycles. More than 350 projects applied in total, over 40 were selected for the camps, and every admitted team drew expressions of investment intent. More than one-third were extremely early-stage projects with neither funding nor products. For entrepreneurs, this means an opportunity to obtain their first support while their technology and products have not yet fully taken shape. For investment institutions, it means being able to continually observe teams through the camps, understand their technical approaches and identify projects worth supporting over the long term on the basis of more complete information.

This arrangement is not a stand-alone fund. In recent years, Pudong Venture Capital has continued to expand its angel fund-of-funds, established a market-oriented angel investment company, and promoted a relay among seed funds, linkage funds and higher-stage industrial funds in the leading zone. By linking capital instruments at different stages, the aim is to give scientists and young entrepreneurs the opportunity to find support for the next leg of their journey at key stages of technology transfer, product validation and market expansion.

Ecosystem Partners: Practical Training, Scenarios and an “Industry Circle of Contacts”

If entrepreneurship support is nothing more than a check, teams still have to find customers, partners and entry points into the industry on their own after receiving the money. The Pudong Venture Capital AI Training Camp aims to bridge precisely the gap between “getting the money” and “getting the job done.” The camp is positioned around “investment + services + the ecosystem,” with four dimensions: practical instruction, in-depth discussions, resource matching and ecosystem enablement. Its modules cover strategic direction, capital literacy, core-competency training and practical exercises, and mentors with frontline industry experience are invited to teach. Entrepreneurs gain not only information about financing, but also a deeper understanding of the industry, products, organizations and commercial pathways.

Beyond the classroom, the camp also takes participants to visit leading enterprises in local industrial chains and infrastructure partners, where they can seek opportunities to connect compute, customers and application scenarios. Public reports have cited visit routes involving companies such as MetaX, Huayuan Computing, Qiniu Cloud and SiliconFlow. For startup teams, entering industrial settings means having a more direct opportunity to understand real-world demand and infrastructure capabilities, while opening the door to future collaboration.

The Zhangjiang Artificial Intelligence Innovation Town provides low-rent workspace more closely suited to the day-to-day needs of startups, along with bundled resource-support arrangements such as compute vouchers, model vouchers and corpus vouchers, helping teams lower initial costs and improve access to key resources. Pudong Venture Capital has previously stated publicly that it would open an “industry circle of contacts” to admitted teams and help connect them with potential customers and partners. More than 100 representatives from investment institutions and leading companies attended the graduation open day, where projects and capital met face to face and follow-on investment intentions were registered on the spot. A team can thus meet investors and may also find potential customers, technology partners and the starting point for its next collaboration.

From Walking Together to Taking Root and Growing

Beyond a lack of money, early-stage entrepreneurship fears isolation and a lack of support above all else. This is especially true for AI startups, as the technology chain is becoming increasingly long and a single small team has difficulty independently covering models, software, hardware, data and use cases. The camp is trying to help entrepreneurs discover one another and fill complementary gaps, allowing capabilities that were once scattered to form new combinations through exchange.

At the second cohort’s open day, participants showcased the results of their collaborations through joint pitch presentations; cross-project collaboration also emerged during the camp.For example, teams developing smart meeting software partnered with AI hardware generation platforms to explore extending software capabilities into integrated software and hardware solutions; sports motion algorithm teams joined forces with smart hardware teams to advance fitness-related capabilities from algorithms to devices. For the participating teams, these connections were not merely exchanges at a single event; they enabled technical capabilities to find new product vehicles and application directions.

Partnerships are also extending into practical implementation. Through comprehensive incubation and coordination with Zhangjiang Artificial Intelligence Innovation Town, more than ten high-quality projects have settled in Pudong, over two-thirds of them newly established, while fostering a group of young, small-team OPC-style startups. Zhangjiang Artificial Intelligence Innovation Town has brought together more than 600 AI companies and a large number of industry professionals. Roadshows, Demo Days, policy briefings, training camps, and other events are held continuously, creating more opportunities for companies, technologies, capital, and application scenarios to come together.

He Dajun, Vice Chairman and General Manager of Pudong Venture Capital, said at the closing of the second training camp cohort that the program was exploring an early-stage empowerment path led by state-owned capital and supported by social capital, putting capital, industrial resources, and ecosystem partners in the hands of young entrepreneurs. His remarks point to more than an increase in investment scale; they also signal a change in how entrepreneurship is supported: even after securing funding, projects can still rely on assistance in finding resources, connecting with partners, and opening up markets. Entrepreneurs are gradually moving from “looking for opportunities alone” to “creating opportunities together as a group.”

A One-Inch Advance: Make the First Move and Await the Results

From the unveiling of the seed fund at the 2025 Artificial Intelligence Industry Ecosystem Promotion Event to the conclusion of two training camp cohorts in 2026 and global recruitment for the third, Pudong Venture Capital has continued to direct resources toward the earliest stages of AI entrepreneurship. This reflects Pudong’s emphasis on the front end of the innovation chain: directions such as foundation models, embodied intelligence, and AI for Science require both industrial depth and capital mechanisms, industrial resources, and room for growth capable of supporting scientists and young entrepreneurs.

The “network” is not a social slogan but a continuously operating, organized service system: capital provides initial support, courses help teams close capability gaps, industrial scenarios test the value of technology, and partners create possibilities for new combinations. Through integrated “competition, training, investment, and incubation,” each connection is transformed into a longer-lasting collaborative relationship.

The real test lies ahead in the journey from a single investment to a full ecosystem. Whether the training camp can continue to attract promising teams, whether ecosystem connections can translate into orders, products, and long-term cooperation, and whether projects can progress from clustering together to collaborative innovation will all take time to answer. But at least in the earliest stages of entrepreneurship, Pudong Venture Capital has sought to expand “having someone invest” into “having someone accompany you, someone build bridges, and someone seek opportunities with you.” For AI entrepreneurs, the value of this network lies in ensuring that no entrepreneurial journey has to face the unknown alone.