Since the establishment of the BEYOND Expo in 2020 until now, we have often been asked why we decided to create BEYOND and why we chose Macao. In the past 10 years, global technological innovation has increasingly focused on Asia, not only due to the rapid development of China’s technology industry but also because of the immense market potential in Asia. According to research published in 2020 by McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), Over the last decade, the region has accounted for 52% of global growth in tech-company revenues, 43% of startup funding, 51% of spending on research and development, and 87% of patents filed. Moreover, Asia is leading not only in consumer technology but also investing significant resources in technology-driven innovation in the fields of life sciences and sustainable development, from governments to industries. However, due to language and cultural barriers, the innovative forces in Asian countries have not received as much attention as those in Europe and America, and limited communication between Asian countries and the global innovation ecosystem. Therefore, we believe that Asia needs a platform that can bring together the innovation ecosystems of different countries and regions each year, to share and showcase the latest innovative ideas, products, and technologies, and to propel Asian innovation onto a larger global stage.  These innovations extend beyond consumer technology to include life sciences and sustainable development. Although Macao has a small geographical area and local market, it is backed by the vast market of the Greater Bay Area, which includes Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao. With its international and neutral positioning, world-class hotel facilities and exhibition services, and vibrant open city culture, Macao serves as a gateway not only between China and the world but also between Asia and the world. Therefore, we strongly believe that BEYOND Expo will become a unique world-class technology innovation platform in Asia.

Over the past three years, despite the uncertainties brought by the pandemic, we have steadfastly pursued our goals to become an international technology innovation platform . A few days ago, BEYOND Expo 2023 had total number of attendees 15000+, with over 600 companies mostly from the world participating in the exhibition. We curated more than 150 exciting panels, invited in excess of  200 media outlets to cover the event, and received over 11,000 coverage. BEYOND Expo has reached a new level in terms of scale and international influence. Here, we would also like to express our gratitude to all our partners for their support. When we saw so many entrepreneurs, experts, government representatives, venture capitalists, and media from around the world at BEYOND Expo for the first time, whether in the exhibition area, on stage, or at various banquets and parties, your full three-day itinerary is the greatest value that we hope BEYOND Expo can bring.

The pandemic is over, and the world is in urgent need of restarting cross-regional technological cooperation. Artificial intelligence is causing unprecedented transformations in various industries, and technological advancements are leading humanity into new realms such as virtual worlds, quantum fields, and outer space, among others. In this rapidly evolving technological landscape, where new trends and disruptions are constantly emerging, coupled with unnecessary factors such as geopolitical economics. It becomes crucial for individuals or organizations to have the courage to explore the unknown and embrace innovation and change. Therefore, looking ahead to BEYOND Expo 2024, we have chosen the theme for next year: “Embracing the Uncertainties”. We anticipate a more grand and diverse BEYOND Expo and boldly expect over 1000 exhibitors and more than 30,000 attendees, among which you will find a greater number of innovative forces from Asian countries and regions. BEYOND Expo will not only be a showcase platform for innovative technologies but also a gathering of global innovation leaders. We will make every effort to promote BEYOND Week, centered around technology and incorporating various elements such as music festivals, making it an international carnival. BEYOND Expo in 2024, “Embracing the Uncertainties“, will truly be exceptional!

We extend our most sincere invitation to you and your organization. Save the date – May 23-25, 2024, and we look forward to gathering with each and every one of you in Macao.

Jason Ho & Gang Lu

Co-founders of BEYOND Expo

Deep integration of cutting-edge technology and industry, continued focus on three major sub-brands

BEYOND Expo 2024 will continue to focus on its three sub-brands: Sustainability, Healthcare, and ConsumerTech. The expo aims to promote deep integration of cutting-edge technologies and industries through exhibitions and summits. BEYOND Expo 2024 will continue to expand the scale of its exhibition area, with 100,000 square meters of dedicated expo space in Macao. Next year’s exhibition plans to attract 1,000+ domestic and international technology companies, with overseas firms expected to account for 40% of total exhibitors. BEYOND will continue to serve as a stage for technology innovation, which will connect innovators with the market and explore technological boundaries.

BEYOND Expo 2024 will have an exclusive Sustainability Pavilion that will showcase solutions based on environmental friendliness, social responsibility, and economic sustainability. We will focus on innovations in renewable energy, food technologies, sustainable agriculture and precision farming, new materials, green logistics, energy and waste management, and green city/building property technologies to achieve sustainable development goals. China Construction International Group Limited was present at BEYOND Expo 2023 as the exclusive strategic partner of the BEYOND Sustainability sub-brand. The Sustainability Pavilion at BEYOND Expo 2023 attracted Deloitte, Fujifilm, Guangdong Hengjian Investment Holding Co., Ltd., Nam Kwong Group, China Water Environment Group, China Civil Engineering, XAG, among other enterprises exhibiting low-carbon development and creating a greener and more sustainable future. We will also host relevant summits to bring together industry leaders and experts to promote communication and cooperation, facilitating the achievement of sustainable development goals.

BEYOND Healthcare will have a separate exhibition area focusing on new discoveries in the fields of medical science and health, stem cells, clinical research, traditional Chinese medicine, drug development, digital health, and medical devices, among others. China Taiping was present at BEYOND Expo 2023 as the exclusive strategic partner of the BEYOND Healthcare sub-brand. The Healthcare Pavilion at BEYOND Expo 2023 attracted including AstraZeneca, Eduard, Fosun Pharma, UniTrust, Merck, Abbott, Zaiding Pharma, and others. The companies shared cutting-edge research and contributed to accelerating the improvement of people’s healthcare needs. In 2024, we will showcase the latest research results and technology applications to contribute to improving human health and quality of life. Meanwhile, we will organize professional industry summits to discuss cutting-edge topics in life sciences to help drive innovation.

The ConsumerTech Pavilion will be an eye-catcher, showcasing the latest technology products and innovative solutions. It will include autonomous driving/electric vehicles, robotics, wearables, e-sports and sports technology, enterprise services, chips and semiconductors, travel technology/retail technology, space technology/drones, financial technology, AI/IoT Smart Life technology, and metaverse/Web3. ICBC Macao was present at BEYOND Expo 2023 as the exclusive strategic partner of the BEYOND ConsumerTech sub-brand. The ConsumerTech Pavilion attracted Alibaba Group, Macao Pass, CTM, Huawei Lenovo, NBA, Ctrip, Shangtang Technology, Xiaopeng Huitian, EVA, Bank of China Macao Branch and other exhibitors to drive industry change and meet the growing demand. We will bring together the latest achievements in consumer technology and organize professional industry summits. Industry experts and business representatives will attend the summit to discuss development trends and business opportunities in consumer technology.

For business cooperation, please contact: BD@beyondexpo.com

To learn more about BEYOND Expo 2024, please check the details on our official website: https://www.beyondexpo.com/

Opening and closing ceremony, along with industry summits to explore the frontiers of innovation

BEYOND Expo 2024 will continue the theme of “What’s Next.” The world’s leading experts, scholars, and business leaders will share their latest research results and vision of the future of technology at next year’s Expo. Renowned industry leaders will also participate to analyze the development trend of technology, share the importance of innovation, lead industry change through innovation, witness the power of technology, and explore the infinite possibilities of the future together.

Guests of Honor at BEYOND 2021-2023 Opening

The Industry Summit is the core component of BEYOND Expo. We will host high-level keynote speeches, roundtable forums, and seminars. They will be attended by global industry leaders, experts, scholars, and innovators. Together, they will discuss the development trend and future direction of the industry and explore potential opportunities and challenges. By sharing insights, participants will gain insight into industry dynamics and have the opportunity to network with industry leaders. In BEYOND Expo 2023, we joined hands with China Construction International to organize Sustainability Summit, collaborated with China Taiping to host Life Sciences Summit, and partnered with ICBC Macao for Consumer Technology Summit.

BEYOND Expo 2024 will also host four industry summits — Sustainability Summit, Healthcare Summit, ConsumerTech Summit, and Investment Summit. The Sustainability Summit will explore climate change, renewable energy, clean technology, water management, green building, green transportation, agri-food technology and other environmental issues, aiming to continuously improve people’s wellbeing. The Healthcare Summit will promote global cooperation and innovation in the life science field, explore cutting-edge scientific discoveries and technological advances, and share forward-looking thinking and ideas in this field with the global audience. Topics include but are not limited to new drug development, biotechnology, synthetic biology, gene editing technology, ecological and environmental life sciences, etc. The Consumer Technology Summit will focus on cutting-edge thinking and practical experience in the fields of smart home, Internet of Things, virtual reality, artificial intelligence technology, and financial technology, among others. The summit will promote deep integration of technology and consumer industry and leading the innovation of business models. The Investment Summit will promote global investment and financing. It will promote cooperation and exchange in the field of global investment and financing, explore innovative financing models and investment opportunities. Guests will share success stories in the field of investment, promote rapid growth of entrepreneurial projects and startups, help the sustainable development of the global economy, and provide a broad communication and cooperation platform for entrepreneurs, investors and enterprises. At BEYOND 2024, we look forward to exchanging ideas, showcasing innovation and developing the future with experts from various industries.

Showcase new products, gathering of domestic and international media

BEYOND Expo has been committed to focusing on the world’s most innovative and high-quality technology products. The special venue for New Product Launch event has become an excellent stage for companies to showcase their latest technology and design achievements. The 2023 launch event was hosted in a brightly lit venue with high-hanging LED screens, creating a luxurious top-of-the-line theater experience. Well-known companies such as China Construction International, Wofei Changkong Technology, Jiefei Technology, Shanghai Changjin Biotechnology, and KDDI presented their latest products at the BEYOND Expo 2023. Companies showed the audience their innovative ideas and strengths, allowing users to experience the superior performance of new products and technological innovation first hand. More than 200 domestic and overseas media outlets actively reported about the events in different formats, helping new products gain more exposure. The media attention enhanced the companies’ brand awareness and influence, allowing more people to understand and pay attention to these innovative products.

BEYOND 2024 will continue to set up special sessions for new product launches, creating a unique platform for companies to showcase their latest technological achievements and attract attention from industry experts and potential users. The extensive media coverage will further provide more exposure to products, bringing more business and market opportunities for enterprises. These activities not only enhance the brand image and visibility of enterprises but also promote the development of technological innovation and advance the progress of the industry.

Innovation leads, technology for good, BEYOND Awards

The BEYOND Awards, an integral part of the expo, focuses on BEYOND’s three sub-brands. The honors are awarded for innovation in Healthcare, Sustainability, and ConsumerTech, along with the BEYOND Impact Awards. These awards are judged by the BEYOND Awards Selection Committee after carefully evaluating their technology, business value, and innovation. The awards aim to honor outstanding individuals and teams that have integrated innovative thinking and practice to make breakthrough technologies and industry-leading solutions for social progress, while promoting innovation in various fields.

The BEYOND Impact Awards are based on the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals and recognize outstanding companies that have made significant contributions and changes in nature, environment, society, economy, and technology. These companies address important issues such as carbon emissions, health, ecological protection, and poverty alleviation through technological innovation while achieving carbon neutrality. Ten winners are selected after four rounds of nomination, preliminary selection, re-election, and final selection. The final winners will be announced at a grand award ceremony in Macao. The winning companies will enjoy special benefits provided by the BEYOND organizing committee to further enhance their potential.

Unleashing the passion for innovation, gathering of vibrant Asian technology in Macao

BEYOND is committed to creating a comprehensive innovation platform that provides valuable interactive opportunities for entrepreneurs, investors, and industry leaders. The Innovation Roadshow session will serve as a unique platform for global technology entrepreneurs to showcase cutting-edge products and services, attract investors, and enhance visibility and market exposure. The International Capital Matchmaking Sessions will provide an in-person platform for entrepreneurs and investors to introduce and promote their projects, as well as explore business collaboration opportunities. The multiple media roadshows will showcase the most cutting-edge technology products and corporate concepts, helping to expose the brand widely. BEYOND will also host a series of nighttime events including dinners and various parties to create a networking environment for participants in a casual setting.

Macao provides unique regional character as a host to BEYOND Expo. It blends Eastern and Western cultures, tradition and modernity, providing attendees with the opportunity to explore the unlimited potential of Asia’s technology and innovation. BEYOND will be a key driver in helping flourish Asian technology innovation, promoting win-win cooperation between regions, and opening up a broader international stage for innovators.

Technology lights up the future and innovation drives development. We look forward to using technology to ignite your inner passion for technology and lead you into a future full of infinite possibilities!

BEYOND Expo 2023 Review Report Download

To learn more about BEYOND Expo 2024, please check the details on our official website: https://www.beyondexpo.com/

At the BEYOND Expo 2023 in Macao, experts from the autonomous driving sector gathered on Friday to discuss the implementation phase of autonomous driving. Liu Nianqiu, technology partner and vice president of DeepRoute.ai, Mark Xu, co-partner and general manager of the Intelligent Driving Industry at RoboSense, Xu Hu, chief scientist, CiDi, and Wei Lei, founder and CEO of BUS ME, shared their insights on the journey from the demo phase to the productization phase of intelligent vehicles. 

Sui JianFeng, executive vice director at ADIRC, executive deputy general manager at Tusstar, and CEO of Tusholdings (GBA) moderated the panel. 

The four speakers divided intelligent driving scenarios into two main categories: those involving robotaxis and robobuses. Xu expressed confidence in RoboSense’s ability to implement both types of automated driving technology and reduce automated driving takeover in urban areas through safe technology. Wei Lei pointed out that the technology for robotaxis in cities will be more complex and require higher technology standards.

Mark Xu also predicted that the concept of automated driving will gain momentum either this year or the next year. He said he thought that full self-driving solutions will experience large-scale growth, though admitted that consumer acceptance is an important factor.

Liu Nianqiu suggested that one path toward the technology becoming more widely accepted lay in pursuing opportunities for hardware and software collaborations. He cited the example of RoboSense’s strategic partnership with DeepRoute.ai, which aims to promote the mass production of L4-level autonomous driving solutions. The two companies will focus on developing an L4 autonomous driving solution that integrates RoboSense’s intelligent solid-state lidar system with precise, comprehensive 3D environmental perception capabilities. By leveraging their respective technological advantages and industry resources, they aim to empower robotaxis with more advanced and intelligent autonomous driving solutions, enabling more consumers to enjoy safer and more intelligent travel experiences, Liu said.

According to Xu Hu and Wei Lei, there is great potential for the application of autonomous driving in various industries and scenarios, including low-speed logistics, commercial logistics, mining sites, and other closed-road industries such as industrial parks. In these closed environments, the structured description of autonomous driving is relatively clear and there is less potential interference, particularly from human factors.

Xu Hu mentioned that CiDi has integrated BeiDou high-precision positioning technology into innovative applications in digital transportation and autonomous driving fields, achieving unmanned transportation in mining areas and industrial parks. In addition, Dongfeng Liuqi and CiDi have jointly developed the Liuqi H5 intelligent logistics vehicle, an intelligent electric truck designed for mass production and used in scenarios such as factory logistics and park transportation, meeting the demands of multi-scene applications. The vehicle has multiple functions such as V2X vehicle-road coordination, 5G remote parallel driving, and cloud intelligent scheduling, which effectively reduce traffic safety risks and improve logistics transportation efficiency.

According to Wei Lei, the current challenges related to technology, policy, and cost, make it difficult for robotaxis to land, and it will still take a long time for the vehicles to become scalable. He argued that the landing of robobuses can be much faster. Baishimei, an important promoter of robobuses, is a private travel company that provides automated driving solutions for short-distance travel needs from urban subways to communities, universities, and parks, emphasizing operational capabilities using intelligent sightseeing vehicles rather than standard buses. Baishimei plans to launch L4 autonomous driving in the future. As early as September 27, 2021, Baishimei announced the completion of its first commercial order and completed 25,000 paid orders in just two months.

Sui Jianfeng also highlighted a long road ahead, saying that, “the path from demo to mass production of autonomous driving not only involves the technology itself, but also essential factors such as cost, safety, application scenarios, and consumer experience. Therefore, it is important for all entrepreneurs to jointly promote the development of this industry.”

Cutting-edge technologies are disrupting the healthcare and life science field. While recent headlines have largely focused on its content creation abilities, AI technology can also be used in drug development, anti-aging, and neuroscience.

At the BEYOND Expo 2023 in Macao, Dalong Hu, SVP at XtalPi, co-founder of iCarbonX Yingrui Li, and Phoenix Peng, co-founder and CEO of NeuroXess, on Thursday discussed the cutting-edge technology now available in the fields of drug development, anti-aging, and brain science. The discussion has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dalong Hu, SVP, XtalPi

Currently, the implementation of AI in drug development is still relatively elementary. It can largely assist human thinking but cannot completely replace human work as in the fields of autonomous driving, security, and smart transportation. XtalPi has built a “trinity” drug development innovation model: the first step is to quickly generate molecules in large quantities through intelligent computing; the second step is to have experts manually evaluate the molecules; and the third step is XtalPi’s latest automated laboratory.

There’s a four-stage cycle in drug development: Design, Make, Test, and Analysis. If the Design stage can improve efficiency and throughput through AI, the Make stage, which is the synthesis characterization stage of the compound, still uses traditional experimental methods — it’s still low in efficiency and throughput. XtalPi hopes to improve the efficiency and throughput of traditional drug experiments through an automated laboratory system, and with the help of intelligent automation technology, connect the cycles in the drug discovery process, ultimately achieving cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

Unlike many light-asset AI companies in the market that only employ software engineers and basic drug development staff, XtalPi has now become a substantial heavy-asset company with a workforce of over 1,000 people. It’s possibly the largest AI drug development company globally, including more than 700 staff in research and development. The research and development team is diverse, including algorithm development, software development, drug development, digitization, and automation equipment departments. So far, XtalPi has participated in over 200 new drug development projects, with a real-time laboratory area of over 10,000 square meters, and more than 60 pipelines under development, including emerging models such as macromolecules, small molecules, ADC, and others. Some leading pipelines have obtained INDs in China and the United States and are about to enter clinical trials.

XtalPi’s small-molecule drug discovery system is a drug discovery platform that integrates the three essential elements of XtalPi’s smart computing, expert experience, and automated experiments. Smart computing includes two sub-platforms, the AI drug discovery platform, ID4Idea, and the high-precision computational chemistry platform, ID4Gibbs. ID4Idea has a technical advantage in molecule generation, evaluation, and screening, while leading the industry in precision, flexibility docking, and throughput.

Yingrui Li, co-founder of iCarbonX

Aging is not just about wrinkles or slower wound healing. In fact, aging has 10-20 different dimensions, each with its own causes and effects. To age better, one key technology is the quantification of human health. This means collecting enough data about a person to accurately determine their stage in life and whether each of their body systems — such as the immune, skin, and cardiovascular systems — are at the correct age, younger or older.

To achieve this, scientists need a way to gather all possible data from the body and use AI to measure the different dimensions of aging. They also need models to integrate different types of data, including lifestyle, genetics, and molecular biology, to create what’s called a “digital twin” of the body, allowing individuals to understand where they are in their life journey. This personalized approach is very different from the generalized data provided by the current healthcare system. Finally, researchers need to use various types of technology to analyze the data and identify problems, as well as provide solutions.

iCarbonX is combining healthcare services with other types of subscription or property-based businesses. In a building in Shenzhen, we are installing all possible healthcare monitoring and devices. Each apartment will have a terminal to measure people’s lifestyles and ultimately, their type. We will also try to collect health data from all residents in community healthcare centers to provide proactive medical care. Different from the past, where doctors passively waited for patients to come to them, we will enable doctors and community health services to actively interact with community residents to keep them as healthy as possible.

Aging itself is not the problem — it is the diseases that come with aging that are the problem. Our ultimate goal should be to age healthily. The key to anti-aging is to actively pursue a life beyond one’s fate, rather than passively aging and becoming ill.

Phoenix Peng, co-founder and CEO of NeuroXess

The essence of human cognitive thinking lies in the firing signals of the 86 billion neurons in the brain. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) seek to study the firing patterns of neurons at the cellular level, decode the thoughts and signals of the brain and ultimately establish a pathway between AI and the brain.

Elon Musk once said there is a significant information gap between the carbon-based and silicon-based forms of the human body, and the current pathways are highly inefficient. All BCI companies aim to expand the bandwidth of human thoughts, expressions, and receptions as much as possible after establishing a pathway. This is a long-term goal that requires a 15 to 25 year collaborative exploration.

China’s ambitious Brain Project, which has been dubbed the fourth great scientific endeavor after the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program and the Genome Project, aims to unlock the mysteries of the brain. Like the previous three initiatives, the success of the Brain Project will depend heavily on technological tools, such as the centrifuge for the Manhattan Project, the Saturn V rocket for the Apollo Program and the DNA sequencer for the Genome Project. In the case of the Brain Project, experts believe that brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) will be the key to unlocking the secrets of the brain, as they enable stable long-term reading and writing of dynamic networks of neurons on a large scale.

Launched in 2021, China’s Brain Project is a 10-year, 50 billion yuan ($7.8 billion) scientific initiative. China is driven to spearhead the Brain Project and hopes to surpass the rest of the world in the field.

BCIs are a typical interdisciplinary field that covers semiconductors, chips, materials, algorithms, robots, medicine, ethics, neuroscience, psychology and other cross-cutting domains. The core issue that NeuroXess, a Chinese BCI company, needs to address is how to use the brain to its maximum potential while minimizing damage to it. Achieving a balance between the two is a constant challenge. To bring BCI technology to commercial applications, high-throughput neural read/write capabilities, low-trauma approaches and long-term carriers are the three main technical obstacles that need to be overcome.

Executives from China’s leading pharmaceutical companies on Wednesday shared their perspectives on globalization strategies, the need for diversified industrial groups, and biotech innovations during the Healthcare Summit at the BEYOND Expo 2023 in Macao.

Li Haifeng, executive vice president of Fosun International and Zhang Wenze, CFO of Livzon, attended the session on “International Market Opportunities for Chinese Healthcare Companies” during the first day of the three-day expo that started on May 10. The discussion was moderated by Liu Chang, CEO and founder of ASK Health Asia.

Li Haifeng, executive vice president, Fosun International

Li Haifeng presented Fosun Pharma’s four flagship products during the summit: Artesun, a malaria drug discovered by Nobel Prize-winner Tu Youyou; the Comirnaty mRNA vaccine, produced in partnership with German company BioNTech, for COVID-19; Axicabtagene Ciloleucel Injection, the CAR-T cell therapy product developed by Fosun Kite for the treatment of late-stage lymphoma; and Azvudine, an antiviral drug used to treat COVID.

China, as the world’s second-largest economy with 1.4 billion people, offers a huge market for the pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, the country’s central and local governments have continuously emphasized on improving the livelihood and life expectancy of the Chinese people, Li said. Chinese companies are likely to get a larger market if they adopt a global approach by infusing the world’s top technology with Chinese work ethics, as well as research and development, he added, arguing that this will allow companies to explore greater market growth and also expand market opportunities.

Zhang Wenze, CFO, Livzon

Livzon focuses on two main areas: the exploration of mature and new targets in tumor immunology; and new technology in immune cell therapy.

According to Zhang, Livzon is set to advance at least two products into key clinical trials or new drug registration stages this year. One of the products is a dual-target antibody drug for interleukin-17 A+F, which showed promising efficacy in early clinical trials and is expected to move into a crucial clinical stage this year. In the field of cancer immunotherapy, Livzon’s PD-1 therapy is targeting thymic carcinoma, a rare cancer that has shown poor response to immunotherapy in the past. In exploratory phase II clinical trials, the therapy achieved an objective response rate (ORR) of 20%. The company plans to submit a breakthrough therapy designation application for market approval later this year.

Over the last decade, Zhang has been working with the pharmaceutical capital market and gained a deep understanding of the overall market changes.

“More than 20 years ago, we thought that industries such as manufacturing, food and agriculture were all cyclical, yet the pharmaceutical industry can transcend market cycles,” he said. “However, during the three-year pandemic, we have observed some new changes. The law of biopharmaceuticals transcending market cycles seems to have failed, and biopharmaceuticals have entered a strange cycle: clearly, it takes a very long time and a lot of capital investment to commercialize new technologies, such as small molecule drugs, cell therapy and immunotherapy.

“Today, the capital market is focusing more on niche tracks, and trends change every year: from devices to mRNA to AI manufacturing, and each tends to attract a wave of funding.”

This has led to the emergence of several projects just catering to VC and PE investors in the market today, though many of them are unable to explain their basic business models and rely solely on the concept to secure financing, according to Zhang. There is a trend of impatience in the medical field, with both entrepreneurs and investors demanding returns that exceed the industry’s natural development trajectory, resulting in a phenomenon of trying to get quick results and stunting long-term growth.

Although domestic biopharmaceutical financing has been getting traction this year, Zhang said he felt it was all bark and no bite. Industry summits are packed with attendees discussing the sector, but there are not many medical projects that have successfully landed their products, while both investment institutions and CVCs are cutting investment budgets, he stated.

Zhang also pointed out that AI is likely to become a significant force in disrupting the healthcare system and will be a heavyweight influencing factor in the development of biopharmaceuticals over the next 10 years. Many technologies are still in a stage where they have yet to be verified or falsified, so investors and industry players need to be vigilant and focus on technologies that can truly be implemented and help patients solve immediate problems, rather than just promising gimmicks, he argued.

Liu Chang, CEO and the Founder of ASK Health Asia and the moderator of the forum, also said that he believed that capital and resources from pharmaceutical innovation companies should be invested less in storytelling and more in creating long-term value. Only by continuously funneling resources toward projects that are truly feasible can the industry create more opportunities for success, he argued.

Two top academic leaders on Wednesday expressed their support for the ongoing shift towards electrified transportation, with one of them highlighting the importance of having a comprehensive picture of the carbon footprint when making electric vehicles.

It should be calculated how much energy has been used to assemble an electric car, including the emissions generated from the materials used by the manufacturers, Saifur Rahman, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), told the audience at the BEYOND Expo 2023 tech conference, held in Macao from May 10 – 12.

Rahman, along with Song Yonghua, president of the University of Macau, added that there is big potential in the adoption of clean energy sources such as solar and wind. 

This panel discussion took place on Wednesday at the BEYOND Expo 2023 tech conference, held at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center. The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Prof. Saifur Rahman, president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers 

Today I would like to talk about how technology can help address climate change problems and how scientists and engineers can play a role in the global climate change debate. I come from the IEEE, a professional association made up of scientists, engineers, technologists, and physicists, and we’ve been working on clean tech solutions for climate sustainability for a long time.

For now, carbon dioxide accounts for 75% of the total greenhouse gas emissions globally, and there has been an idea called “decarbonization through electrification” to deal with the issues, which means the adoption of electric vehicles and the phase-out of gasoline cars, for example. The problem is: where is the power of making EVs coming from? If that is from coal-fired plants, then it doesn’t help. It has to come from clean sources.

When you look at the total carbon dioxide emissions globally, around one third of them come from power stations, another third from transportation, and the remaining from factories and so on. I am focusing on the transportation part and would like to share some of my points to reduce carbon emissions.

Firstly, energy efficiency, which means you use less electricity to do the same job. For example, if you raise the temperature by two degrees with an air-conditioner, you use 10% less energy. Secondly, renewables. Our goal is to replace traditional fossil fuel energy with solar, wind, and hydrogen power. China is the biggest country in the application of renewable energy in the world.

Thirdly, we can’t shut down all the coal-fired plants overnight, and therefore have to build highly efficient coal plants that install carbon capture technologies. Then, hydrogen power and storage batteries. If you have excess power at night due to low demand, you can store the extra electricity your system produced at night and use it to generate hydrogen power during the daytime.

Next, cross-border power transfer. Not every country can survive using domestic resources. The US buys energy from Canada, and China sells to Vietnam, for instance. Finally, nuclear power. Many of us are still concerned about the safety issues of nuclear power because of the Fukushima accident, and yet new technologies are emerging, such as small nuclear reactors, which are much safer and less expensive.

Those are the things I am pushing very hard. I should point out one thing: that there is no unified solution for all and therefore we need to be inclusive. Asia is very diverse. The challenge is how to make electricity widely available to poor regions such as villages. Populations from those areas use much less electricity than those in the cities, but they need to get reliable power.

Prof. Song Yonghua, rector of the University of Macau

My first key point is that we must focus on cities if we want to tackle the climate change issues. Cities are usually a major source of carbon emission. When you look around the world, 70% of the carbon emissions are generated by cities, because half of the global population live in cities and consume around 70% of the energy.

In China, due to its great success in urbanization, we see more than 65% of the population living in cities, consuming at least 75% of the energy, and generating around 85% of the country’s carbon emissions. We have to strike a balance between economic development and the effort in dealing with climate change. Also we can’t simply repeat what Western countries have done, which could incur a hard cost.

Macau is a city of tourism, exhibition, and education. There is great potential for Macau in the application of renewable energy as well as transport electrification. We have large amounts of roofs and walls that can be effective in generating electricity locally, while upgrading grid infrastructure for EVs and electrifying our ferries and boats.

There is also a lot of work we can do to improve energy efficiency with air-conditioners, which is the largest source of energy consumption in Macau, as well as other nighttime facilities. Sometimes the temperature is too cold and the lights are too bright.

Sustainability is a big topic. It goes beyond disciplines such as finance and technology, and we have to move across the barriers of those disciplines and among different ideologies. Thus, education is a key as we expect our younger generation to work together in fighting against climate change.

As the only comprehensive public university in Macau, we take a responsibility to educate young talents for the city. We have an institute for applied physics and material engineering where our research fellows are working on various energy materials, such as new photovoltaic materials for hydrogen production. We also have a program to cultivate young talents for the purpose of making smart cities.

With the support from the central government and the Macau SAR government, our university has a very beautiful campus and an advanced management structure, which have attracted top professors from around the world. Macau is part of China under the One Country, Two Systems policy and now as we have the Greater Bay Area initiative, we need to deepen our collaborations with the rest of the Greater Bay area.

Investing in the crypto market carries inherent risks, even as the traditional banking system increasingly recognizes the significance of blockchain technology. Establishing a sandbox environment for this emerging industry to thrive and creating the necessary conditions for mass adoption of Web3 is crucial for its future growth and development.

At the BEYOND Expo 2023 tech conference held in Macao, Leo Li, the Web3 Ecosystem Development lead at Alibaba Cloud, and Zheng Bin, the deputy CEO of ICBC (Macao), discussed the development potential of Web3, and the role of the digital yuan in striking a balance between innovation and regulation.

Their comments have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Leo Li, Web3 Ecosystem Development Lead, Alibaba Cloud

Those of you who have a crypto wallet, please raise your hand. Okay, it appears to be around 5%. What does this indicate? It suggests that most people are not yet using crypto wallets, which serve as the basic entry point for Web3. But is the trend towards adoption inevitable? In my opinion, it is inevitable because Web3 offers an experience that maximizes personal value and profit. Its fundamental difference from Web2 is its emphasis on value. Web3 is a technology that aligns closely with our inherent human nature; therefore, I am very optimistic about its future.

Today, we all have a basic understanding of, or have used OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It does present barriers to entry, but the value it brings outweighs those barriers, motivating people to use it. In comparison, most people don’t have a crypto wallet and don’t use Web3 technology because it is not yet widespread.

Web3 is a robust and cutting-edge technology that can benefit the public, but in a framework that lacks regulation or compliance, various human desires can emerge, including the FTX fallout. The event occurred in an unregulated environment, and I don’t think it would occur in traditional banks.

The absence of regulation is the reason why we say that Web3 is fundamentally a decentralized technology. However, I think it still needs some form of regulation to inspire public confidence and achieve mass adoption.

Zheng Bin, Deputy CEO, ICBC (Macao)

I believe the use scenarios for the digital yuan can be divided into two main categories. For domestic use, the digital yuan may not bring significant changes to people’s daily experiences, but it does offer some advantages, such as legal tender status and mandatory acceptance by merchants in certain environments or scenarios. Merchants have no reason to refuse the digital yuan as it is a legal currency.

At the same time, establishing connections with foreign countries is of strategic significance. Many countries have their own frameworks for digital currency. The digital yuan’s ability to serve as a bridge between different digital currencies presents a valuable opportunity for the yuan to disrupt or shape the existing currency system that has evolved over many years. From a  personal standpoint, this is a very good strategic opportunity.

How can we achieve a balance between innovation and regulation? The digital yuan as I just mentioned is a good example of striking such a balance. It leverages blockchain technology but does not rely entirely on it to establish its credibility. It ensures anonymity but can also be traced if regulatory authorities require it. It has integrated and resolved certain contradictions, resulting in the current outcome, and I think this may become one of the possible directions for the future development of the entire industry.

Former President of the United Nations Security Council Kishore Mahbubani sees the 21st century as Asia’s century, with a great opportunity to improve the lives of billions of people, but also a great threat to the current world structure.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Kishore Mahbubani, former president of the United Nations Security Council. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

There’s an Arab proverb which says: He who speaks about the future lies even when he tells the truth. And we all know that the future is unpredictable. I’m sure we all keep getting surprised. And yet at the same time, the paradoxical thing about our world today is that the future, I assure you, is going to be very surprising, but there are still four certainties. That’s paradoxical. We can make confident predictions about what’s coming. So in the five or ten minutes assigned to me, I’m going to speak about the four certainties about the future and one big uncertainty.

So one of the four certainties, the first certainty is that the 21st century will be the Asian century, just as the 19th century was the European century, the 20th century was the American century. The 21st century will be the Asian century, and that will be a return to the norm because from the year 1 to the year 1820 — for 1,800 of the last 2,000 years — the two largest economies of the world were always those of China and India. So the return of China and India to the center stage is normal. The 200 years of Western domination of world history was abnormal.

And through a personal quirk, I have come to discover that the world is actually getting ready for the Asian century because in early 2022, thanks to my good friend, I published a book of essays with Springer, a German publisher, called the “Asian 21st Century.” The German publisher expected 20,000 downloads of the book. Instead, in 16 months, there have been 2.9 million downloads of the book in 160 countries. The world is psychologically preparing for the Asian century.

And here, just to reinforce a key point that my good friend Andrew Cheng just made — if you look at the future of Asia, the growth will be driven by what I call the new CIA. The CIA is not the Central intelligence Agency. The CIA is China, India, and ASEAN. And remember that — the new CIA. The CIA countries make up 3.5 billion of the world’s population. Now in the year 2000, out of the 3.5 billion people, only 150 million were in the middle class. By 2020, the number had grown to 1.5 billion and increased 10 times in 20 years. And by 2030 it will grow to 3 billion people. That middle class is going to drive this growth. So that’s one certainty, the Asian century.

The second certainty, if the first one was good news, the second one is bad news. I predict, sadly, with great certainty, that the US-China geopolitical contest, which has already begun, as you know, will gain momentum over the next 10 years. A few weeks ago out in the United States, I delivered a lecture at Boston University. In that lecture, I discussed and predicted that this geopolitical contest will gain momentum because it’s driven by an iron law of geopolitics, which tells us that whenever the world’s number one emerging power, which today is China, is about to overtake the world’s number one power, which today is the United States, the number one power will push down the world’s number one emerging power. That’s the iron law of geopolitics, and you’ve seen that. And you’ve seen the trade tariffs that have been imposed. You see the Chips Act that has been passed. And I confidently predict, sadly, that there will be other measures that will come. So that’s the second certainty.

The third certainty, which also has been referred to by many of the distinguished speakers before me, is that climate change is coming. It’s real, it’s accelerating and all the things that we are doing, all the development that we’re creating — I gave you the figures of the new middle-class populations in CIA — the more they consume, the more the greenhouse gas emissions of the community. So that is something clearly we all agree we should do something about. But that’s going to be a challenge.

And the fourth certainty and that’s why we are here today, is that science and technology will continue to develop and strengthen. Now let me be very honest with all of you: I’m not an expert in this field. I was so impressed with some of you who were nodding your heads when the speaker before Andrew Sheng was speaking — Professor Jia about quantum physics — I didn’t understand a word. I couldn’t understand the equations. I didn’t know what you were talking about, but I did know that it is going to lead to a great leap forward in terms of our understanding of the world that we live in. And so in that sense, we should be seeing, we should be expecting an era of great promise.

And yet, all this brings me to my one uncertainty. The big uncertainty that the world faces is whether humanity will be wise enough to use all this information that we have, all this accumulated understanding of science and technology. Can we bring it all together to save our world and to save our planet? In theory, all of us are becoming more intelligent and have gone to universities. We studied the best theories, the best practices, we should be wiser and more capable. Yet, despite that, the big uncertainty is whether humanity is wise enough to realize that when we used to live in under 193 separate countries, it was as though we were living 193 separate boats — now all of humanity lives on one boat in 193 cabins on the same boat. If you just take care of one of our cabins, we will not save the world. We have to take care of the world as a whole.

And that’s why I’m very glad that President Xi Jinping has launched a concept of a community with a shared future. That’s what’s coming to us. Humanity is going to have a shared future. If we can all come together, the world will be a better place. If we don’t, it will be very challenging. So be ready for the uncertainties, also. Thank you very much.

On Wednesday, Chinese quantum physics expert Jian-Wei Pan explained China’s progress in utilizing quantum physics at the BEYOND Expo 2023 in Macao, adding that the country still needs a long time to popularize quantum computing. He highlighted China’s efforts in developing the world’s first quantum science satellite, Micius, in 2016 and the long-distance fiber-optic quantum communication backbone network, the Beijing-Shanghai National Quantum Communication Backbone, in 2017.

Pan has conducted extensive research experience in quantum optics, quantum information and fundamental issues in quantum mechanics. He is particularly known for his systematic innovations in quantum communication, multiphoton entanglement manipulation and cold-atom quantum storage.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Jian-Wei Pan, Academian of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Quantum Physics. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

The 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to scientists Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for their ‘experimental violations of the Bell inequalities using entangled photons, and for laying the foundations of quantum information science.’

The work of Chinese scientists was highlighted during the news conference and scientific presentation in the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physics, including the use of the Micius satellite for intercontinental quantum key distribution and Earth-quantum-channel distribution, as well as recent work on quantum key distribution.

Quantum information science mainly involves two applications: using quantum communication to provide a theoretically unconditional secure communication method, and using quantum computing to greatly improve computational power.

In quantum computing, information is encoded using quantum bits (qubits), and the superposition principle can be used to achieve ultra-fast parallel computation, resulting in exponential acceleration. Therefore, quantum computers can be used to solve a variety of problems in fields such as classical cryptography, weather forecasting, financial analysis and drug design.

To achieve a generalized quantum communication network, we can use fiber optics to build a metropolitan quantum communication system and use quantum relays to achieve intercity quantum communication. Further, with the help of quantum satellites, long-distance quantum communication can be realized. After nearly 20 years, Chinese scientists successfully developed the world’s first quantum science satellite, Micius, which was launched in August 2016. In addition, in September 2017, China’s long-distance fiber-optic quantum communication backbone network, the Beijing-Shanghai National Quantum Communication Backbone, was officially opened. Micius and the Beijing-Shanghai Backbone helped China preliminarily test the hypothesis of building a wide-area quantum communication network and prove in principle that a unified quantum network is feasible.

In the field of quantum computing, achieving a universal quantum computer will require significant effort over an extended period of time. To ensure the healthy development of this field, academia has set three stages of development for quantum computing. The first stage is the demonstration of the superiority of quantum computing, which means that the quantum computing system’s solving speed for certain specific problems has far surpassed that of classical supercomputers, demonstrating its inherent superiority. The second stage is the construction of a specialized quantum simulation machine used to solve specific complex problems that classical computers cannot handle, such as high-temperature superconducting mechanisms. And in the third stage, the goal is to achieve universal programmable quantum computing with the help of quantum error correction.

To achieve global quantum communication in the future, we need to overcome the challenges currently faced by satellite quantum centers. The first challenge is that a single low-orbit satellite cannot directly cover the entire globe. The second challenge is that current satellites can only operate in low-visibility areas. There are corresponding solutions to these challenges. One solution is to launch multiple low-orbit satellites to form an efficient satellite network, known as a “constellation.” On this basis, satellites with longer transit times in medium to high orbits can be launched to distribute more keys. However, the fundamental premise for these solutions is that satellites can work under the background of solar radiation.

And in July 2022, China launched the world’s first micro-nano quantum satellite, “Jinan-1.” With a payload of only 20 kilograms, it is much lighter than the Micius satellite. We are currently developing the first mid-to-high orbit quantum satellite, which is planned to be launched around 2026. In addition to achieving quantum key distribution, it also provides a new platform for quantum precision measurement. This quantum satellite can achieve quantum entanglement distribution on a scale of tens of thousands of kilometers. In the future, by utilizing global entanglement distribution, multiple atoms can be entangled to significantly improve stability in atoms. Using optical neutralization and ultra-precise transmission of light screen targets, we can construct a long baseline interferometer in outer space and carry out tests on fundamental physics principles, including the detection of dark matter and gravitational waves.

In the field of quantum computing, our goal is to achieve manipulation of hundreds of quantum bits in the future, allowing for the construction of dedicated quantum simulators that can help us understand complex physical systems, such as high-temperature superconductivity and quantum Bohr effects. Currently, through 10 to 15 years of effort, we hope to manipulate millions of quantum bits and achieve quantum error correction, ultimately building a programmable universal quantum computer.

Joe Tsai, co-founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Alibaba Group, sees AI tools as powerful forces in shaping and transforming the future of the entertainment sector, according to his speech on Wednesday at the BEYOND Expo 2023 opening ceremony.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Joe Tsai, Co-founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Alibaba Group. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Honored guests, I am very privileged and honored to stand here in front of you to talk about the future — the topic of “What’s Next?” When Jason (Jason Ho, co-founder of the BEYOND Expo) asked me to make this presentation, I thought about several factors that are affecting not just the world but also Macao itself.

So, the first thing about Macao that I learned over the last several months is that Chief Executive Iat Seng Ho is very intent on transforming the economy away from just a single industry of gaming into the world of entertainment, content, healthcare, sustainability, and consumption. And I think that’s a very, very interesting factor, which will explain why I’m going to talk about what I talk about.

The second factor is what’s going on in the technology world — the launch of ChatGPT late last year. Everybody has been completely entranced by the whole idea of generative AI. AI used to be able to tell you the difference between dogs and cats, whether it’s black or white. But now AI can actually generate content just like a human brain, very actively generating new information, new content. So generative AI is going to be another important factor in what I’m going to talk about.

The third thing is, it’s important in my business. We’re in the online retail e-commerce business, and we’re very much part of the economy in China in terms of helping the whole Chinese economy to grow through consumption.

Consumption today in China is around 40% of the total GDP. Over time we hope to help the country grow the economy through consumption. But what we do today is online shopping — buying stuff, material things, buying material things.

What I’m going to talk about is something that’s a little bit more spiritual. Although it feels like not a real economy, it’s virtual, but I think having spiritual well-being is very important in terms of the whole consumption economy. So, my presentation with the confluence of these three factors — where Macao is going, where AI is going, and where consumption is going — I’m going to talk about digital entertainment.

So, we’re going to redefine digital entertainment. I will take you through an example of filmmaking. In making a film, there are a lot of problems. What are the problems? We have to decide who to pick. We have to decide actors and actresses. And actors and actresses are human beings. They’re very, very difficult to manage.

Believe me, I manage a basketball team and the players are very difficult to manage. If you’re in Hollywood, it’s very, very difficult to manage people.

The next thing is logistics. The logistics involve a lot of costs and moving around and then finally shooting post-production and things like that. Well, what happens if you make a film when it’s already done? You’ve done the shooting and then you want to change it. What happens? The change is a part of the pain point of the industry that is very difficult to solve.

So, these are the pain points. Let’s see what technology and the future can bring to solve these three problems.

[Shows an ad]

Leah is a digital actress. She is a digital personality that we’ve created. She’s not a real person, and here’s the beauty of this. With digitization, we can bring together what is a very American sport, like baseball with something from China, that’s made in the image of a Chinese actress. And then we can merge the two together into a very sort of Chinese-American scene of promoting Major League Baseball. In fact, our group had done a deal with MLB to help promote this thing, and we have created a 3D model. When we create, we create a 3D model and it took us about a month to create. But today, if you use generative AI, it’ll take about a week to create this model.

So, today, in order to create this digital model, it’ll just take one week. That’s a very interesting aspect because now you replace human beings, you don’t have to manage the emotion for the issues with real humans. And the other thing is Leah is now a digital asset of the company — of the movie production company — and she belongs to the movie production company, and she’s in fact represented by an agent. The next thing is the NBA will probably call us and say, ‘Hey, can we use your Leah to help promote the league?’ I think that creates longevity for whoever created the character, and you can obviously build on the character.

The next thing is about logistics. This is what we call a digital studio. The traditional way of creating a studio and making an outdoor scene is you use the green screen, and the actor is standing on an empty stage with a green screen behind it, trying to act out something.

But now, with LED panels, we can create a studio with very little space. We have a studio in Beijing that’s about 2,000 square meters that can handle everything. The fact that you can create LED screens with scenes — we have hundreds of thousands of scenes that you pre create and put onto the screen. It makes shooting a film very easy. So you don’t have to really go on location. For example, here we have actors that are actually acting in front of the screen, so they are actually put into the environment of the story that they’re trying to tell. In this case, Mars and the spaceship. Once you’re in this environment, instead of standing in front of a green screen, you’re basically in the situation. You’re in the mood of the acting.

Now I want to talk about production a little bit. So, if you created a show, create something real and then you want to change things, there’s post-production tools to make it virtual. And what this does is it actually democratizes production and the whole post-production process because imagine if you are on TikTok, you can actually change things as you create your content.

And finally, generative AI. One of the last aspects of making a movie is marketing and promotion. So, what do you do when you market and promote a movie? You make posters. And now it’s very easy to generate these posters.

Within a few hours, you can use these generated AI tools to promote the posters. So, this is a movie (Born to Fly) that Alibaba Pictures invested in and it started showing during the Labor Day holiday. It’s a great movie, and we have basically generated these posters and put it all across the country at a very low cost. So that’s pretty much what I want to share with you about the future. And please go see this movie. It’s much, much better than Tom Cruise’s (Top Gun).

Chief Adviser to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission Andrew Sheng on Wednesday called for the embracing of a world power paradigm shift while exploring the interplay of philosophy, technology, and cooperation in a changing world.

“Today, thanks to technology, both in its physical and digital forms, our mindsets have opened tremendously. This openness, largely attributed to the AI revolution and ChatGPT, presents not only incredible opportunities but also profound threats,” Andrew Sheng, Chief Adviser to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, said at the BEYOND Expo 2023 tech conference, held in Macao from May 10 – 12.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Andrew Sheng, Chief Adviser to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

I am honored to come to Macao and would like to thank Jason for joining this important session at BEYOND Expo. I am delighted that my esteemed fellow speakers, including my very good friend, the president of Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank, Jin Liqun, have spoken about finance and the role of AIIB.

The previous speaker discussed quantum physics, which unfortunately, is a bit beyond my expertise, but aligns with my thinking on the challenges we face today. Talking about what comes next – we really need to think about what is wrong with the system today and see it as a whole rather than in parts.

One of the reasons the system is imbalanced is because the different parts are imbalanced. If your paradigm, or the way you think about a problem is only in parts, you cannot fix the problem. What are the key parts of a system? As the previous speaker mentioned, a lot of it is quantum thinking, an area that Einstein pioneered in science and technology.

We already understand that there are four critical parts in a system. The first is meta or the way we think about everything. It is the paradigm, and that is what I would like to discuss. Next, we delve into macro or the big picture. In economics, it is called macroeconomics, while microeconomics includes details. This connection between macro and micro is meta, and includes institutions. Joe Tsai from Alibaba will talk about the platform and the institutions that link the macro policy and the micro. However, if we really look at any system, it is the worldview or the thinking that matters most.

For 500 years, the world has been dominated by the West. The West has had a paradigm that expanded out of a small part of the world to colonize the rest, but that paradigm is now shaken because we are seeing an imbalance at the human level, which includes social imbalances, social inequality, people aging rapidly, and regional differences. There are rich countries and poor countries; fast-growing economies, slow-growing economies, and some failing economies; and therefore, the human aspect is deeply imbalanced.

Similarly, climate warming is about planetary imbalance. There is planetary imbalance and human imbalance, but planetary imbalance is because humans are going too fast. So, what are the solutions? As all the speakers before me have said, technology is the solution to many of the challenges we face, and as President Xi Jinping said, technology will offer an important way out. What is technology? Technology is cumulative human knowledge.

That is why all leaders have emphasized that Macao holds a central position in the fastest-growing region in the world, which is East Asia. China and India today account for half of the global growth in 2022. Those of us in Central East Asia and Northeast Asia, which is prosperous, must not overlook Southeast Asia represented by ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations). ASEAN is 700 million people, half the population of China and India, half the geographical size of China and one-third larger than India, and growing at 5% to 6% annually.

North Asia, Japan for example, might grow at 2%. China is growing at 4%, but 700 million people are growing at 5% to 6%, and over the course of this decade, will be growing at nearly 7%, and if my projections are right, nearly 8%. The reason is the influx of money into this region. The Greater Bay Area plays a crucial role as an important platform, and shapes how we think about its paradigm.

What other paradigms should we consider? The previous speaker discussed quantum physics. Quantum thinking is ancient Chinese and Indian thinking. It focuses on the whole. We are all a part of the system and cannot say you are bad, or I am good because we are together. This underscores the importance of technology working together as noted by earlier speakers. We must cooperate and how we cooperate depends not just on the paradigm, but also on the platform.

That is why BEYOND Expo is a wonderful platform because, through technology, not only are we are able to physically meet each other and enjoy each other’s company, great food and culture, but we are also able to do it digitally. Today, thanks to technology, both in its physical and digital forms, our mindsets have opened tremendously. This openness, largely attributed to the AI revolution and ChatGPT, presents not only incredible opportunities, but also profound threats. Those who can harness technology will enjoy better income and prospects for the future. But those who do not understand technology risk being left behind. This imbalance is the most pressing challenge we face currently. How can we ensure that education extends beyond the privileged few and empowers the masses to understand the new challenges of our world? How can we cooperate with each other in a systemic manner? And here, again, I would like to touch upon ancient Chinese thinking.

For example, if we think about human beings, according to Qian Xuesen, the father of Chinese modern science, we are huge, open, complex systems. If one man is an open and complex system, he is living with 8 billion others. It is a system within a system and reflects the concepts of Tao Te Ching and I Ching, where we recognize that we are living in a world that is constantly changing. Change is perpetual, yet we remain unchanged. The new thinking is understanding how to go from simple to complex and back to simple again. While trying to understand quantum physics, I suddenly discovered that it is really ancient Chinese and Asian philosophy.

With this philosophical thinking, we are better prepared to see that the world is imbalanced. Asia is growing and aging at the same time. How do we use our own wisdom and combine it with new technology to navigate this new world? We must think for ourselves because it is essential to do so when confronted with challenges. That is where we stand today.

I’m honored to participate in this discussion. I hope that in the panel discussion we can explore how the East, West, South, and North can all cooperate to create a more prosperous future for the people and the planet.

Thank you very much!

The BEYOND Expo 2023 kicked off in Macao on May 10 with the theme “Technology Redefined.” The three-day expo will focus on showcasing and discussing technologies related to consumer technology, healthcare, and sustainability. The event will also feature multiple international investment and financing summits, as well as startup roadshows, providing a platform for emerging players in the industry to showcase their innovations.

The BEYOND 2023 opening ceremony on Wednesday morning saw government officials, executives and leaders from technology and finance industries gathering in Macao, where they discussed the role of technology to empower various industries in the future.

Here are some key takeaways from the opening ceremony speakers:

1. Jin Liqun, President and Chair of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

“At this Expo, I see the dream of a more inclusive Asia, particularly, a more financially inclusive Asia,” Jin said. He also emphasized that AIIB’s financial services can “make it possible for people to climb out of poverty by obtaining credit, to invest in their education, to take out insurance, to run the business, and to weather the shocks of the changing climate.”

Moreover, Jin sees digital access as a key threshold to keep people connected and resilient. AIIB prioritizes two types of infrastructure investment. The first is infrastructure development that supports the expansion of the digital economy, such as 5G towers and fiber cables. The second is digitalizing existing infrastructure into smart infrastructure. “That means we are thinking not just towers and data centers but smart cities, smart growth, smart roads, and smart vehicles.”

2. Jian-Wei Pan, Academian of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Quantum Physics

Chinese quantum physics expert Jian-Wei Pan explained China’s efforts in quantum communication and quantum computing. Pan believes that China still needs a long time to make progress in popularizing quantum computing. However, after nearly 20 years, Chinese scientists successfully developed the world’s first quantum science satellite, Micius, which was launched in August 2016. In addition, in September 2017, China’s long-distance fiber-optic quantum communication backbone network, the Beijing-Shanghai National Quantum Communication Backbone, was officially opened. Micius and the Beijing-Shanghai Backbone helped China preliminarily test the hypothesis of building a wide-area quantum communication network and prove in principle that “a unified quantum network is feasible.”

“To achieve a generalized quantum communication network, we can use optical fibers to build quantum communication between major cities, use quantum relays to achieve quantum communication between cities, and further use the quantum satellite platform to achieve long-distance quantum communication,” Pan said.

3. Andrew Sheng, Chief Adviser to the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission

In his speech, Sheng touched on both the benefits and challenges AI tools like ChatGPT has posed on society. He said AI will create obstacles for people who are less knowledgeable about tech. “Those who do not understand the technology will be pushed further and further behind. And that is the biggest imbalance that we now face: How do we educate the masses not for the elite for the masses to understand the new challenges of the world?”

4. Kishore Mahbubani, Former President of the United Nations Security Council

In his speech, Mahbubani emphasized the rise of Asia and the challenges that come with it. He said that “the 21st century will be the Asian century, just as the 19th century was the European century and the 20th century the American century.”

He also coined a new version of the CIA — China, India, and ASEAN (the Southeast Asian regional intergovernmental organization). “If you look at the future of Asia, the growth will be driven by what I call the new CIA. The CIA is not the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is China, India, and ASEAN. And remember that — the new CIA. The CIA countries make up 3.5 billion of the world’s population. In 2000, out of the 3.5 billion people, only 150 million were in the middle class. By 2020, the number had grown to 1.5 billion and increased 10 times in 20 years, and by 2030, it will grow to three billion people. The middle class is going to drive this growth.”

5. Joe Tsai, Co-founder and Executive Vice-Chairman of Alibaba Group

Alibaba’s Joe Tsai shared his thoughts on generative AI and agreed with Macao’s effort to transform itself from a city of gaming to entertainment, content, healthcare, sustainability and consumption.

In his speech, Tsai demonstrated an ad featuring an AI-generated actress named Leah, showing the potential of Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) and its revolutionary power in the entertainment industry. “With digitization, we can bring together what is a very American sport, like baseball, with someone [AI actress Leah] made in the image of a Chinese actress. And then we can merge the two into a very sort of Chinese American scene of promoting Major League baseball,” he added.

He also showed how advanced LED screens can significantly slash the space needed for film shoots and simplify operating logistics. “With LED panels, we can create a studio with very little space. We have a studio in Beijing that’s about 2,000 square meters that can handle everything. We have hundreds of thousands of scenes that you pre-create and put onto the screen. It makes shooting a film very easy, so you don’t have to go to various film locations.” Joe said.

6. Panel discussion

BEYOND opening speakers Jin Liqun, Andrew Sheng, Kishore Mahbubani and Joe Tsai also sat down with BEYOND Expo co-founder Jason Ho for a panel discussion on the latest challenges of tech in society.

Speakers shared their thoughts on the fast-developing AI technology and its challenges to leaders and society at large. Mahbubani echoed concerns about AI accelerating the trend of people being replaced at jobs; Jin Liqun also raised a question whether AI will ever exceed human’s capacity to manage the robots? Joe Tsai said he doesn’t worry about robots, as he believes in the future evolution of human intelligence. “We actually have not explored how smart the human brain can get. There are 80 million neurons in the human brain and trillions of connections and synapses in the human brain. So there’s the potential of the human brain to get smarter and operate at a higher capacity.” Tsai said.

All the speakers agreed that countries globally should work together to develop a set of rules to help humans better manage and use AI. 

New product release

On the first afternoon of the BEYOND summit, six technology companies announced new products at the event. They are:

China State Construction International released three new products: Light A, C-SMART smart construction management platform and Hailong’s original concrete modular residential product. Light A, which mimics the appearance and texture of aluminum panels, can generate electricity while serving as a building facade. C-SMART smart construction management platform uses cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things, sensors, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, BIM, data information and communication technology to create a customized platform for smart, digital and information-based construction site management. Hailong’s original concrete modular residential product divides the building into independent modules, completes more than 90% of the construction in the factory, and then quickly assembles them into a building using reliable cast-in-place connection technology, achieving the goal of “building houses like building cars.” This technology system ingeniously integrates cast-in-place construction of the frame shear wall structure, making its mechanical properties and building height restrictions equivalent to those of traditional buildings.

Aerofugia, a tech company specializing in aerial mobility, unveiled its new product, the AE200, during the BEYOND Expo. The AE200 is an Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) aircraft designed to meet high-density aerial travel needs of urban areas, with a focus on safety, performance and comfort. The prototype of the AE200 has completed its maiden flight and the certification process is now underway with regulatory authorities. This product is independently developed by Aerofugia, with outstanding capabilities in aircraft, system integration and certification experience in civil aviation.

XAG released the XAG P100 Pro agricultural drone, which is powered by electricity and designed to help farmers complete tasks such as seeding, fertilizing, and pesticide application in a more efficient, eco-friendly, and easy manner. Compared to its previous generation, the P100 Pro has been upgraded in terms of payload, efficiency, control, stability and other aspects, providing users with a more precise, efficient and user-friendly farming experience.

Shanghai Changing Biotech unveiled the Kluvy Protein and the Alternative Dairy Products for Professionals. This product line is based on biotechnology that creates microbial protein and biosynthetic milk protein, which efficiently uses limited earth resources to achieve unlimited nutritional potential. It is sourced from nature, with strains originating from Shangri-La, and the product also uses advanced technologies such as mutation evolution and gene editing to create future food from natural sources.

iFlyrec launched iFlyrec AI Writer to improve office efficiency and quality of work. The iFlyrec AI Writer is an AI writing assistant that provides services such as AI writing, abbreviation expansion, rewriting, polishing, proofreading and document translation in news writing, official document writing, marketing promotion, project planning and other scenarios.

Snail Zhixing introduced a product called the “Solar Scooter,” which uses safe and innovative solar energy technology to provide a zero-emission mode of transportation. This scooter is suitable for users traveling within 100 kilometers globally, providing them with an environmentally friendly means of transportation. Through this innovative product, Snail Zhixing will contribute to achieving the global dual carbon target and demonstrate the “power of China.”

BEYOND summits, programs, and exhibitions

Apart from a diverse range of exhibitors, this year’s BEYOND Expo has created six stages and two lounges for global technology and investment professionals to hold various discussions and meetings. The main stages are Stage T (Theater), Stage C (Consumer Technology), Stage H (Healthcare), and Stage S (Sustainability). In particular, Stage C (Consumer Technology) is partnered exclusively with ICBC Macao and gathers global top technology innovation leaders; Stage H (Healthcare) is jointly established by BEYOND and China Taiping, aiming to explore trending topics in life science and global health challenges solutions; and Stage S (Sustainable Development) is hosted by China State Construction International Holdings Limited, BEYOND’s exclusive strategic partner, and will provide cutting-edge solutions for trending topics in sustainable development industries and global challenges.

BEYOND Expo 2023 has set up a nearly 100,000 square meter exhibition area at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center, welcoming more than 600 exhibitors from around the world, including Fortune 500 companies, large multinational corporations, unicorn startups, and new early-stage enterprises. The three major exhibition areas — consumer technology, sustainability, and healthcare — have attracted participation from top companies within their respective industries.

In the Consumer Technology exhibition area, leading players such as Huawei, AliCloud, and Lenovo are among the exhibitors. There are also exhibitors like Cowarobot, which specializes in L4-level commercial vehicle autonomous driving, and Mogoauto, which focuses on L4-level autonomous driving of urban public service vehicle fleets, including buses, taxis, sweepers, patrol cars, ambulances, and logistics vehicles. Exhibitors focused on flight travel such as Aerofugia, Xpeng Aeroht, and Ehang are also present.

In the Sustainable Development exhibition area, traditional giants such as China State Construction International, China Civil Engineering (Macau), Fujifilm, and Inspur are among the exhibitors. New companies that focus on hydrogen energy, agriculture, and plant-based meat such as Sinosynergy, Chinabric, and MoreMeat are also present.

The Healthcare exhibition area features exhibitors such as China Taiping, the nation’s oldest national insurance brand, United Family Healthcare, Fosun Pharma, and the Guangzhou Taihe Medical Technology Innovation Center.

The BEYOND Expo is held at The Venetian Macao’s Cotai Expo, which has been a major conference and exhibition venue in Macao since its opening in 2007. With an area of approximately 75,000 square meters, Cotai Expo is one of the largest MICE venues in Asia and features six independent exhibition halls over two levels, accommodating up to 5,000 exhibitors. It offers a wide range of flexible spaces, an international team of professional event planners, and one-stop MICE solution with diverse facilities and services.

President of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) Jin Liqun on Wednesday called for more efforts to finance new infrastructure projects to digitize the Asian economy in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Digital infrastructure is quickly becoming one of the most important tools for structuring a balanced, post-pandemic world that keeps people connected and communities resilient,” Jin Liqun, president of the China-led development bank, said at the BEYOND Expo 2023 tech conference, held in Macao from May 10 – 12.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Jin Liqun, president and chair of Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

It gives me great pleasure to be in Macao with you all at the 2023 BEYOND Expo. Over the last three years, Macao has grappled with the Covid-19 pandemic like other cities in China and the rest of the world.

The challenge is particularly formidable for Macau given its special economic feature. The tough situation could be regarded as a blessing in disguise because Macao has doubled down in its efforts to diversify its economy for the cause of more sustainable development. I am confident that more growth engines with powerful driving forces will be created in Macao moving forward. Please allow me to express my best wishes to the Macao SAR government and the Macao people. I wish you all the best.

The Pearl River Delta region serves as a natural hub of connectivity across Asia. People of ambition, people of grit and determination, and people of intellectual creativity, have long been attracted to the magnetic energy of this dynamic region. It is the focal point for the region’s development that hinges on its connectivity with the rest of China, Asia, and the world. The region has played a critical role in catalyzing and driving economic development that has catapulted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and into prosperity. The spillover effect from this region has also contributed to the robust growth of China’s neighbors.

For those of you who don’t know much about the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), I want to take advantage of this opportunity and introduce ourselves to you. Seven years ago, initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping, we began with 57 founding members. We now cover 160 economies with $100 billion in capital to finance the sustainable infrastructure for tomorrow. We represent the North and South, East and West, and developed and developing countries. We operate to the highest standards of global governance, currently called the AAA credit ratings.

At the BEYOND Expo, I see the dream of a more financially inclusive Asia. I see an Asia with better access to financial services, which can make it possible for people to climb out of poverty by obtaining credit to invest in their education, to take out insurance to run a business, and to weather the shocks of a changing climate. This is the dream of a financially inclusive Asia where all people are able to generate income and improve the quality of their lives.

There is no magic bullet for achieving the dream of financial inclusion across Asia. Our region is incredibly diverse with vast differences in per capita GDP and population size, a dizzy variety of cultural, linguistic, and religious diversity. We must understand the unique preferences and barriers that shape financial access in each of Asia’s local markets, and ensure that we continue to keep people moving forward in their education, health, and livelihood.

Our bank also recognizes one key constraint which affects access to financial inclusion in Asia, and indeed, access to your products as well, and that is digital access. Data and broadband have become essential necessities, fueling economies and flowing through the veins of our modern lives. Digital infrastructure is quickly becoming one of the most important tools to structure a balanced, post-pandemic world that keeps people connected and communities resilient.

For this reason, AIIB thinks about infrastructure a little bit differently. We go beyond traditional physical infrastructure, like roads, ports, airports, or power stations, to include more communications, digital, educational, and health infrastructure, or any infrastructure that opens new opportunities toward a more sustainable society and supports the growth of Asia’s digital economy.

Our bank targets financing towards two aspects of digital infrastructure. The first is infrastructure development that supports the expansion of a digital economy. For example, 5G towers, fiber cables, and data centers that are essential for bridging the digital divide and ensuring more equitable economic growth. The second is digitalizing existing infrastructure into smart infrastructure. That means we are thinking of not just towers and data centers, but also smart cities, smart roads, and smart vehicles. By thinking about digital infrastructure in a more holistic manner, our bank makes efforts to improve financial access across all of Asia.

Given the scale of the challenges, private sector capital is an essential partner to the mission of reducing Asia’s digital divide and improving financial inclusion. Public and private capital must work together to leverage our respective strengths. Our bank is laser-focused on scaling up our impact to achieve this vision while investing in opportunities that leverage even greater amounts of private capital toward infrastructure investment.

Though the road ahead is far from certain, Asia’s technology sector has already shown tangible benefits and awareness of financial inclusion. It is now our shared responsibility to ensure that we realize the true potential of a more prosperous and equitable Asia for all. More than seven years ago, when AIIB was set up, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that this bank must be operated to the highest possible standards and the best international practices. We follow President Xi’s instructions and that is why we are recognized by everybody in this world. Thank you very much.

BEYOND Expo 2023, which will be held in Macao from May 10 to 12, will host investment and financing sessions, including the International Investment and Financing Summit, DEMO Day and Fund at First Pitch. BEYOND aims to help startups find more investment, financing and cooperation opportunities.

The Brazil-Portugal Innovation Company Roadshow is one of the highlights of BEYOND DEMO DAY and will be held on May 11 from 09:30 to 12:00. Below are the 10 companies participating from Brazil and Portugal for the roadshow:

BIOO (Brazil)

BIOO is founded by a group of entrepreneurs focused on reducing the incidence of diabetic foot disease, a complication of diabetes. The company aims to apply artificial intelligence and scientific knowledge in an economical and extensible way to save lives and build a sustainable economy for the world.
Company website: https://bioo.care/

Biosolvit (Portugal)

Biosolvit is a biotechnology company engaged in the development of new materials. Biosolvit researchers have developed the world’s most efficient oil-absorbing materials and other products.
Company website: https://www.biosolvit.com

Decoy (Brazil)

Decoy is a Brazilian biotechnology startup focused on researching and developing products to control animal pests. The company started working by analyzing the livestock market and observed that ticks were responsible for incalculable losses in the dairy and meat production sector in Brazil and elsewhere. To minimize losses, the company searched for the best solution to balance the proliferation of ticks in cattle and help producers control this problem through scientific research. Decoy is developing a much more effective way of controlling pests in a biological, precisely strategic, and natural way.
Company Website: https://decoysmart.com/en/

DruGet ( Brazil)

DruGet is an electronic drug platform solution that accelerates the development of new drugs and reduces the traditional time-consuming and expensive problems in developing new drugs. Users can upload the molecular structure of drugs they are interested in developing to the DruGet platform, and then choose to perform predictive analysis of pharmacokinetics, toxicology and forced degradation. Finally, an analysis report will be generated through the platform, indicating which of the analyzed molecules have development potential and deserve further research, and what can be removed from the candidate list. Through using computer technology, it aims to provide faster and more instructive results to promote the development process of drugs.
Company Website: www.druget.com.br

Key2Enable (Brazil)

Innovating in digital accessibility, startup company Key2Enable empowers people with disabilities to develop their skills and individualities.

Based on assistive projects first developed in Brazil in 2015, Key2Enable was established to use exponential technologies to give autonomy and plenty of possibilities to people with motor and intellectual disabilities all around the world.

Beginning its operations in the United States of America with the Key-X Multi-purpose Smart Keyboard, the startup has already accomplished a remarkable achievement: In 2018, Key2Enable became a portfolio company of Singularity University, the world’s leading school of innovation and entrepreneurship.

That means the company can impact 1 billion people in the next 10 years with its range of solutions and applications designed for people with disabilities. 
Company website: https://key2enable.com/

Pocket Clinic (Brazil)

Pocket Clinic is a med-tech startup company that aims to develop a smart syringe controlled by a smartphone to treat various chronic diseases requiring continuous drug injection.
Company website: https://pocketclinic.life/

R5  Marine Solutions (Portugal)

R5 Marine Solutions specializes in providing engineering solutions to address coastal and offshore maritime challenges, aiming to promote more effective management of coastal areas and improve environmental sustainability. The COAST assessment tool, R5 Marine Solutions, can provide coastal construction simulation scenarios, pre-designed construction structures and cost-benefit assessments for this specific scenario. The COAST tool also helps predict risk scenarios and territorial losses due to coastal erosion and can be applied to different regions worldwide, including the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
Company Website: https://r5engineers.com/marine/

Virtuleap (Portugal)

Virtuleap combines brain science and virtual reality technology and uses a small game library of gamified cognitive training exercises designed by neuroscientists to evaluate and train a series of cognitive abilities, such as memory, attention, information processing, cognitive flexibility and problem-solving skills. VR users also track their physical actions through a realistic, immersive experience, collecting psychological and other valid physical data, such as heart rate, facial expressions and pupil dilation, and sending them back to the Virtuleap platform for more accurate neuropsychological evaluation.
Company Website: https://virtuleap.com/

Yosen (Brazil)

Yosen is focused on bringing health to the public using nanotechnology for lipid drug delivery. Yosen is developing a smart delivery system based on nanotechnology to efficiently diversify the delivery of various drugs and nutrients, such as active ingredients, including vitamins, plant extracts and peptides, by obtaining different lipid nanoparticles, thus improving the therapeutic effect. These nanoparticles protect the active ingredients and are highly compatible with human cells, thus increasing the nutrient absorption rate or bioavailability. Yosen has developed two product forms: Ydrosolv, a dietary supplement, and Ynano food ingredients. A study pointed out that Yosen’s Coenzyme Q10 Ydrosolv has a faster absorption rate of up to five times than Q10 pills and capsules on the market.
Company Website: http://www.yosen.com.br/

Plux (Portugal)

Since 2007, Plux’s goal has been to facilitate access to solutions that cover the entire biosignals life cycle & drive biosignals innovation, from learning the first steps with BITalino to research with biosignals plux to developing your next medical device. The company provides the biosignals engineering tools & services to build biosignals products and medical devices while meeting all industry standards and beyond.
Company Website: https://www.pluxbiosignals.com/

BEYOND Expo will announce more details on the investment and financing sector activities. During the three-day expo, the investment and financing sector will invite top investors from all over the world to participate in the forum. They will discuss current investment conditions, share future investment trends and communicate with innovative entrepreneurs in the Fund at First Pitch and innovation roadshow, linking high-quality projects globally and effectively implementing a win-win investment environment.

During the previous two DEMO DAY roadshows, investment institutions such as Temasek, Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group, Eurazeo, Lightspeed China Partners, Gobi Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Sinovation Ventures, 5Y Capital and China Everbright Limited have participated in the event, focusing on helping startups thrive and stimulating market vitality.

The Brazil-Portugal Innovation Company Roadshow aims to strengthen in-depth integration of scientific and technological achievements and financial capital. It aims to provide a real-time exchange platform for Brazil-Portugal enterprises to display the latest products and concepts to solve development-related financial problems. Meanwhile, the roadshow provides numerous high-quality products and projects for investors while conducting in-depth on-the-spot discussions on products and concepts to improve communication efficiency, reduce investment risks and maximize investment benefits. The two sides will work together to promote the development of the industry for mutual benefit.

Investor registration channel

About BEYOND

Since 2020, BEYOND Expo has been held twice with great success. It has become one of the largest and most influential international technology expositions in Asia, attracting 800+ exhibitors and 55,000+ attendees worldwide. More than 150 industry forums featuring 500+ innovative business leaders as speakers will provide a global platform for insightful technology exchange.

BEYOND has officially announced that “Technology Redefined” is the theme for BEYOND Expo 2023, which will be hosted in Macao from May 10 to 12. BEYOND Expo 2023 is set to reach a new high in terms of scale, attendee influence, diversity of industries, companies, number of exhibitors, and overseas visitors. There will be more than 100 events and networking sessions. We look forward to connecting with global tech innovation enthusiasts and facilitating in-depth interaction in all fields, including enterprise, product, capital, and industry to promote the global tech scene in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.

For inquiries regarding cooperation, please contact us at:

Business Partnerships: BD@beyondexpo.com
Media Partnerships: media@beyondexpo.com
Other Inquiries: event@beyondexpo.com

As 5G, artificial intelligence, and sensors continue to develop, AI has deeply integrated into various aspects of the automotive industry. Intelligent cars have entered a period of rapid development, including intelligent connected cars, autonomous driving, intelligent cockpits, urban smart transportation solutions, which are all accelerating the development of smart cars. Among them, the most important one is autonomous driving.

Autonomous driving technology is triggering a worldwide revolution in automobiles and travel, and is one of the key areas of focus at BEYOND Expo. To promote the development of autonomous driving technology, BEYOND Expo 2023 will help accelerate the commercialization of this technology through exhibition areas, forums, and real-life experiences. Currently, companies such as Cowarobot, Qcraft, Xpeng Aeroht, and Shenzhen Autonomous Driving Intelligence Research Centre Eco-Enterprise (PIX Moving, BUS ME) have confirmed that they will bring their latest autonomous driving products to BEYOND Expo 2023, including unmanned cleaning, unmanned delivery, online car-hailing, buses, and other multi-industry autonomous driving application scenarios. The exhibition will showcase the value of autonomous driving technology in different industries along with the prospect of commercialization of autonomous driving.

Take a look at the intelligent cars at BEYOND Expo in advance.

Cowrobot

Cowarobot will be present at the exhibition with the COWA 1T Unicorn autonomous driving cleaning robot, equipped with CowaPilot 5.0, COWA’s latest generation L4 level autonomous driving control system, 128 line beam LIDAR, 6 intelligent cameras (two HD cameras, four surround-view cameras); four 77Ghz millimeter wave radars and one set of ultrasonic radars, which can achieve 360 degrees all-round environment perception, centimeter-level high-precision positioning, hundred-millisecond planning, and control. Cowarobots can be used to clean squares, pavements, non-motorized lanes, municipal gardens, back streets and alleys, commercial areas, and other urban semi-enclosed scenes. It works with pure electric power, low noise, and efficient operation, with the operating capacity and endurance equivalent to a 3-ton sweeping vehicle. It has the functions of intelligent waste identification, fully autonomous path planning, adaptive sweeping and automatic parking, enabling full-scene, all-weather and unmanned sweeping.

Qcraft

For L4-level autonomous driving, Qcraft’s Dragon Boat series (Dragon Boat ONE, Dragon Boat LONG, Dragon Boat SPACE, ROBOTAXI) autonomous vehicles and solutions can meet the needs of smart city construction. In many scenarios, they can be used as a network car, bus, and shuttle bus, creating a “mobile technology showcase for the city. The main exhibits at BEYOND Expo 2023 will be the Dragon Boat SPACE and Dragon Boat ONE.

Dragon Boat SPACE will create a “mobile living room” in the exhibition area. Dragon Boat SPACE is a tailor-made mobile space for future mobility that can operate on complex roads, with a steering wheel-less, modular, and customized cabin that can quickly meet the needs of different scenarios and satisfy the imagination of space.

Dragon Boat ONE is a self-driving minibus for the open roads of the city, running through the city’s core areas in an urban micro-circulation mode, creating an urban landmark for commuting, hospitality, and sightseeing. Dragon Boat ONE has nine passenger seats and one driving seat, but it is no longer the driver who sits in the driving seat. Instead, a safety officer monitors the regular operation of the vehicle, and the driving operation of the vehicle will be done by the self-developed self-driving software system of Qcraft. Qcraft will create a test route in Hengqin this time and open it up for experience in the autonomous driving experience session.

Xpeng Aeroht

This year, Xpeng Aeroht will present the Traveler X2, a two-person intelligent electric flying machine, the fifth generation of the product developed and manufactured by the company. The X2 features an enclosed cockpit with a similar design to the P7. Through its minimalist design, the X2 presents a teardrop shape that is polished and pure, with a futuristic sci-fi appearance. It also considers high-efficiency aerodynamics to achieve the ultimate flight performance. When empty, the X2 weighs 680kg with the battery and can carry two passengers with a maximum load of 160kg. The X2’s entire fuselage is made of carbon fiber to reduce its weight.

The X2’s zero carbon emission during flight aligns with the goal of green urban transportation. The battery life can last up to 25 minutes, and it is designed to fly at an altitude of under 1,000 meters, making it suitable for future low-altitude flights in cities. During the flight, the maximum flight speed is 130 km/h, which can meet the demand for short-distance travel in towns, and serve scenarios such as tourism, wilderness rescue, and medical transport.

The X2 is currently equipped with two driving modes: manual and auto-pilot, with the auto-pilot function allowing it to automatically fly along a planned route according to a set flight altitude, speed, and time. During the automatic flight of the X2, passengers do not need to have any professional piloting skills, instead, they can use simple operations such as start, return, and landing to enjoy a safe and intelligent flying experience.

In October 2022, X2 was awarded a charter flight certificate by the Dubai Civil Aviation Authority (DCAA). It successfully held its first public flight in Dubai, witnessed by Dubai’s Royalty, their family members, the Chinese Consul General in Dubai, and over 100 media outlets worldwide. In January 2023, the Voyager X2 was officially granted a Certificate of Authorization by the civil aviation regulator, making it the first manned eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing) product to be formally applied for and successfully awarded in China.

PIX Moving 

PIX Moving, an eco-enterprise of Shenzhen Autonomous Driving Intelligence Research Centre, will showcase the PIX-Robobus Mobile Space. PIX Moving designs, develops, and manufactures third-generation vehicles based on self-driving chassis and AIGC toolchains, and is committed to building a new industrial ecology with chassis as the core. Its products have been delivered to nearly 30 countries worldwide. With safety as its top priority, PIX Robobus Mobile Space is dedicated to providing passengers with a comfortable and diverse commuting experience, creating unmanned shuttle vehicles, self-driving coffee carts, and beauty carts, making the vehicle no longer just a means of transport, but a movable space. PIX Moving provides customers with a complete set of industry customer success stories and integrated hardware and software self-driving deployment services to complete the commercialization of Robobus mobile spaces.

BUS ME

BUS ME, an ecological enterprise of Shenzhen Autonomous Driving Intelligence Research Centre, provides autonomous driving solutions for short-distance travel from urban metro to communities, universities, and parks. BUS ME applies L4 autonomous driving, but the cost of the whole vehicle is economic, controlled at less than 100,000 RMB, and can achieve mass production. This exhibition will feature a variety of models, including the unmanned ferry car series, patrol car series, minibus series, and others.

Real experience of autonomous driving: efficient, comfortable, and secure

Can autonomous vehicles reach their destination precisely? Can they park themselves? Will they free up the hands of experienced drivers? During the expo, in order to enable participants to experience autonomous driving cars, the BEYOND Organizing Committee has opened an autonomous driving experience zone for the first time in the Hengqin Guangdong-Macao In-Depth Cooperation Zone, offering free and efficient observation of autonomous driving, intelligent bus, and drone flight. Our goal is to provide participants with a new travel experience and a glimpse of the enormous changes that autonomous driving will bring to the automotive industry, smart cities, and smart mobility! This includes, but is not limited to, companies and products mentioned above.

Please stay tuned for more updates on the participating companies in autonomous driving and flying cars!

More special activities

DEMO DAY keywords: Investors, company representatives, media

New Product Release keywords: Global media outlets, attract global attention, lower cost and increase efficiency

BEYOND Awards keywords: Official release, highlight of expo

With more official events in the pipeline, BEYOND will offer an enriching experience and increased business opportunities to global exhibitors and attendees. We welcome you to join us at BEYOND to discuss the latest cutting-edge technology trends, promote industry communication, seek new partners, and maintain competitive advantage through innovation.

BEYOND Expo 2023 will be held from May 10-12 in Macao. A variety of special events will be held during the expo, including a Business Matchmaking & Reception. This event is specifically planned for exhibitors with the aim of helping exhibitors find more opportunities for collaboration. We will promote the implementation and application of innovative technology ideas and products, to improve how technology serves human beings. Besides, leading enterprises from various fields will gather to create synergistic innovation opportunities for different industries, injecting new energy into the global future of technology and innovation.

Sands Macao, Galaxy Group, Wynn Macau, Melco Resorts & Entertainment, MGM, SJM Holdings Limited, Sino Group, Swire Properties and China State Construction International Holdings Limited have confirmed their participation in the Business Matchmaking & Reception.

Business Matchmaking & Reception

*Not limited to the following industries

Service robots

With the rapid advancement of technology, service robots have become increasingly common, bringing more convenience to our lives. BEYOND is bringing together the world’s top real estate developers and resorts to explore opportunities with robotics companies for integrating robotics into their daily operations. BEYOND is working with renowned companies like Sands Macao, Galaxy Group, MGM, Melco Resorts & Entertainment, SJM Holdings Limited and Wynn Macau, to provide visitors with superlative service through robots that greet and guide guests, clean rooms, and carry luggage. We hope that both sides will cooperate to drive the continuous upgrade of property technology, and provide more diversified cooperation opportunities for robotics companies. We are excited about the potential for service robots to quickly empower various industries.

FoodTech

In recent years, FoodTech has become a trending issue due to growing demand from customers. BEYOND will collaborate with many famous Michelin restaurants in Macao, which will include participation from their Michelin Star Chefs, to help companies in the agri-food technology sector to explore the future of FoodTech, innovate the future value chain and improve the sustainability of the food industry, and provide healthier and more environment-friendly food choices for consumers.

Construction and property technology

Asia has one of the biggest property development and urban renewal markets. However, the construction industry generates considerable carbon footprints, and we believe the industry is looking for solutions for sustainable building practices. Construction sustainability is an important part of practicing the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. BEYOND is working with well-known property developers like China State Construction International Holdings Limited, Swire Properties and Sino Group to discuss the innovative applications and future development of construction technology, promote more sustainable building and urban construction solutions, and contribute to the future of urban development technology.

More business matchmaking & reception activities will be updated soon. Please stay tuned for more information on the official website!

Please register for our Business Matchmaking & Reception activities as soon as possible. Please note that these activities are open to exhibitors only. We welcome your participation!

 Schedule @BEYOND

BEYOND hopes to establish an open platform for technology exchange and unite more high-quality events to create a global technology carnival in Macao! For more events, please click [Read More] to visit our official website for the latest schedule!

More special activities

DEMO DAY Keywords: Investors, company representatives, media

New Product Release keywords: Global media outlets, attract global attention, lower cost and increase efficiency

BEYOND Awards keywords: Official release, highlight of expo

Registration for DEMO DAY at the 2023 BEYOND Expo is now open. The Expo calls for startups and investment institutions. Deadline is April 15.

Capital and innovation are essential drivers for the development of the science and technology industry. To accelerate the improvement of the linkage of the industry chain, gather more opportunities for innovation and entrepreneurship, promote the deep integration of tech innovation and financial capital, explore more cooperation models, and stimulate market vitality, BEYOND has specifically organized a DEMO DAY. Registration for this event is now open, and we welcome exhibitors and investment institutions from all over the world to participate.

After the daily roadshow, the venue will be open for one-on-one communication between investors and enterprises, and all companies participating in the roadshow will have access. To qualify, companies can identify themselves through the official APP and their participation name tag.

Global top investment institutions gather at BEYOND to offer customized services to startups

As an important platform for demonstrating transformation results and matching science and technology innovation resources, the BEYOND Organizing Committee aims to help startups find more cooperation opportunities through the roadshow. To achieve this, we will invite top investors and investment institutions worldwide to participate and cover the global capital network.

During the past two DEMO DAYs, top investment institutions such as Temasek, Hillhouse Capital, IDG Capital, Shenzhen Capital, EURAZEO, Lightspeed China, Gobi Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Sinovation Ventures, 5Y Capital, and China Everbright Ltd participated in the event, focusing on helping startups thrive and stimulating market vitality.

A global cooperation platform for the tech innovation industry

During BEYOND Expo 2022, the BEYOND Organizing Committee collaborated with the Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region-Economic and Technological Development Bureau to hold a special roadshow for Brazilian and Portuguese projects at the  BEYOND Metaverse venue. A total of 12 Brazilian and Portuguese companies participated. Investors from Kairous Capital, Creative Ventures, Yael Capital, LATAM China Tech, Ericsson ONE, New Frontier and other investment institutions were also invited to participate. As epidemic prevention and control measures continue to improve, this year’s DEMO DAY will be more international, with innovative entrepreneurs worldwide attending the event on site, conducting innovative roadshows and showcasing their latest innovative products and ideas. This event will provide more diversified and international opportunities for innovative global entrepreneurs, to communicate with global capital in-depth and one-on-one, accelerate the connection between capital and startups, and promote the development and success of the technology industry.

Reviewing the past to improve the present and future

During the past two DEMO DAYs, the BEYOND organizing committee invited 150 renowned investment institutions and investors worldwide to participate, providing efficient one-on-one communication opportunities for exhibitors and representatives of investment institutions. Participating companies fully demonstrated their self-developed technology innovation and application prospects, and investment institutions had the opportunity to witness many high-quality projects.

DEMO DAY description

Qualification

Companies & investment institutions align with BEYOND three sub-brands

Channel

BEYOND Expo official website has established registration channels for companies and investment institutions. Submit your information before April 15 and get access once verified.

Activity format

Each company will be given a 5-minute roadshow time and an additional 5-minute to do investor Q&A.

Registration time

March 14 – April 15

Registration fee

RMB 15,000 / 10 min

Services included

– Conference-related services such as crowd control, lighting, sound, etc.

– Pre-promotion and post-communication of the official platform once each.

– Invitations for 8-10 investment institutions.

TechNode’s International arm TechNode Global is excited to announce that its signature Southeast Asia-focused tech event, ORIGIN Conference, will be back offline, to be held on 11 May 2023, as one of the BEYOND Week events.

ORIGIN Conference, a Southeast Asia-focused exclusive event at BEYOND Week that brings together industry leaders, investors, and innovators to discuss the rapidly evolving landscape of Southeast Asia’s technology ecosystem. ORIGIN will feature an exciting lineup of keynote speeches, panel discussions, and showcases, providing valuable insights into the region’s most promising industries and emerging opportunities.

Dr. GANG Lu, Co-Founder of BEYOND and Chief Executive Officer of TechNode Group, will kick off ORIGIN Conference with a keynote about unlocking the potential of Southeast Asia as a  rapidly evolving region. The panel discussions will provide an overview of the market and delve into the reasons behind the region’s increasing global significance.

“Southeast Asia has become an increasingly important player in the global technology landscape, with the region experiencing rapid growth and innovation in recent years. According to a report by Google, Temasek, and Bain & Company, Southeast Asia’s internet economy is expected to reach USD 360 billion by 2025, with technology startups playing a significant role in driving this growth. At BEYOND Expo, we believe it is crucial to showcase the advancements made by Southeast Asian companies and provide a platform for them to connect with international partners and investors,” says Dr. GANG Lu.

Participants can look forward to engaging panel discussions on a wide range of topics, including discussions about digital transformation, the next generation of unicorns, artificial intelligence, electric vehicles and mobility, healthcare, sustainability, market opportunities, and the investment landscape in the Southeast Asia region. Some of the exemplary companies that will be present include Gobi Partners, Kairous Capital, Carsome, Aerodyne, Pluang, FastCo, Enlitho, and Wellous.

“Through ORIGIN Conference, TechNode Global hopes to help position the region as a key player in the global technology landscape by highlighting the innovative work being done by Southeast Asian companies and providing a platform for them to connect with international investors, entrepreneurs, and other stakeholders,” says Stanley Chong, Director at TechNode Global.

“We believe that BEYOND Expo represents an unparalleled opportunity for Southeast Asian companies to showcase their innovations, build meaningful connections, and grow their businesses on a global scale,” he adds.

ORIGIN Conference, a Southeast Asia-focused content track at BEYOND 2023, offers a unique opportunity for attendees to connect with industry leaders and gain insights into the future of Southeast Asia’s technology landscape. Don’t miss this chance to be part of the conversation shaping the region’s tech future.

For more information and to register for BEYOND Expo and ORIGIN Conference, please visit https://www.beyondexpo.com/.

About BEYOND

Since 2020, BEYOND Expo has held two successful events, growing to be one of the largest and most influential technology expositions in Asia, attracting 800+ exhibitors and 55,000+ attendees worldwide. Running more than 150 industry forums with 500+ business leaders as speakers, BEYOND Expo provides a global platform for insightful technology exchange.

BEYOND Expo will be held at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center, which is spread across approximately 100,000 sqm and can accommodate more than 1,000 exhibitors. We expect Fortune 500 corporates, large multinational enterprises, tech unicorns, and startups to participate in this year’s event. There will be more than 100 events and networking sessions at BEYOND Expo.

We look forward to connecting with global tech innovation enthusiasts and facilitating in-depth interaction across all fields, including enterprise, product, capital, and industries, to promote the global tech scene in the Asia-Pacific region and across the world.

Official website: https://beyondexpo.com

About TechNode Global

TechNode Global is a Pan-Asia tech platform offering premium tech news, industry insights, events, and tailor-made marketing solutions for startups, VCs, corporates, and other industry pioneers. With a vast network of partners in global innovation and entrepreneurship, TechNode Global facilitates cross-border partnerships and businesses. TechNode Global is a spin-off of TechNode, China’s leading innovation and entrepreneurship platform.

Official website: https://technode.global

For media inquiries, please contact: J. Angelo Racoma at tnglobal@technode.com.

BEYOND Awards 2023 has entered the re-selection stage. Since the Awards opened entries for award nominations, the BEYOND Organizing Committee has received more than 300 applications. After re-selection, 90 companies will be shortlisted for final consideration across three categories of Innovation Awards (Healthcare, Sustainability, and ConsumerTech). The selection process for the Impact Awards is also underway simultaneously.

Selection process

The selection process consists of the following steps: Launch, Nomination, Preliminary selection, Re-selection, Final selection, Media matching & meeting / Award ceremony.

Professional judging committee

BEYOND Expo has established a BEYOND Awards Committee comprising members from BEYOND Expo’s global partners and international investment institutions. The committee will play a significant role in developing the criteria and selection process for the four awards, and will create a common selection mechanism for the BEYOND Awards.

The committee will select and nominate professional judges for the four BEYOND Awards 2023. Each judging panel will comprise technology and innovation authorities, industry experts, and senior media professionals. The judges will ensure an impartial and authoritative assessment of the award applicants based on their expertise and experience in the field.

The judges are selected and invited based on their widely recognized and respected backgrounds and professional achievements in the industry. During the award selection process, the judges will conduct in-depth research and analysis of the applicants, and determine the winners after preliminary selection, re-selection, and final selection to ensure that only the most outstanding innovators are awarded. This is intended to encourage more people to devote themselves to the field of technology and innovation.

BEYOND Awards 2023

List of first panel of judges (in no particular order）

Huang Zhimin, director of Guangdong Hong Kong Macao Greater Bay Area Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Platform, executive director of the Youth Committee for Sustainable Development

Zhang Yu, member of the Shenzhen Municipal Committee of the CPPCC, CIO of Optimize Integration Group Inc and principal of the Intelligence Structure, member of the Youth Committee for Sustainable Development

Ruby, co-founder of Impact Hub Shanghai, partner of Impact Capital

Zhao Yuheng, co-founder of Shen Impact Venture

Du Feng, co-founder, CFO, and MP of TheJiangMen, member of Investment Committee. Former principal of Microsoft Ventures Greater China, former co-founder of GRC Sinogreen Fund, former co-founder of JL McGregor&Company

Guo Ruiling, investment incubation director of Impact Hub Shanghai Impact Hub Shanghai

Tracy Zhang, publisher of FTChinese.com , former deputy general manager of Business Week(China), former chief China representative of Dow Jones & Company

He Xiao, deputy general manager of Min Yin International Investment, member of Youth Committee for Sustainable Development.

Li Hongkai, deputy director of the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship of Peking University HSBC Business School

Dee Zheng, investment director of Bits x Bites

Zhang Han, innovation director of Plug and Play China

Wu Lanting, energy and sustainability director of Plug and Play China

Carl Wu, co-founder and CEO of New Frontier, CEO of New Frontier Health Corporation, co-founder and executive director of Yidekang, Boxful, HelloToy Tech, and Better Health, and chairman of Care Alliance

Jerry Wu, investment director of TUSHOLDINGS

Lin Zihong, dean, Doctor of Business Administration

Wang Young, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Wang Dan, BS of Peking University, joint MS of Stanford University and Singapore, and MPP of Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy

Dai Minghan, investment director at Miracle Light Venture

Feng Jianlin, LTM of China Business Angel Association, Guangzhou Technological Innovation Talent, eco-consultant at XJTLU Greater Bay Area Modern Industry Research Institute

Liu Dong, chief editor and partner of VBDATA.CN

Zhang Chen, general manager of Shenzhen Zhongeurope Innovation Center, principal of Stockholm Overseas Innovation Center, rotating chairman of alliance at Shenzhen HongKong Macau Angel Investor 2023

Liu Bo, deputy general manager of TusStar, general manager and managing partner of Enlightenment Star (Beijing) Technology Business Incubator

Shen Qiang, co-founder and CTO of TheJiangMen, former CTO of Microsoft Ventures Reactor

Qiao Jianhua, CEO of Phoenixtree Capital

Cai Xiaopeng, vice president, general manager, and CCO of ZOL

Pan Weizhe, chief editor of PChome

The 3rd BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo is the first offline conference after the pandemic. All the exhibitors are showing great enthusiasm and will bring their latest black technologies to the show; many new products are ready to be launched! To this end, the BEYOND Organizing Committee has planned a special New Product Launch event, which will be held on May 10 after the opening ceremony. As one of the highlight events of this year’s fair, the BEYOND Organizing Committee will provide the best service for the exhibitors participating in the New Product Launch event. We hope to see more exciting technology products.

The most luxurious top-quality theater venue of BEYOND site to boost the global launch of new products

The new product launch event will be fully built with top configuration, providing the largest display stage and the best resource allocation for participating companies. This event will be held at the venue of the conference’s opening ceremony, which is also the most luxurious venue of BEYOND Expo. The site is equipped with an ultra-clear LED screen, and multiple cameras for the global professional media and buyers to introduce new products, and show product highlights so that more people understand the original intention of product design and design concepts.

Overseas media is expected to account for more than 50% of the media coverage to help international communication

In this event, domestic and overseas media will be invited to gather at the launch site and report in various forms, with broad radiation and a high communication density. At the same time, global mainstream media will pay attention to this event in real-time, accelerating network communication, increasing the exposure of new products and spreading the volume of sound, expanding the influence of the brand so that the new products can gain a high degree of attention, strengthening the international buyers’ awareness of the brand and products.

Participation List of English media (in no particular order):

CGTN, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNN, Yahoo HK, Time Magazine, TechCrunch,  Engadget, SCMP, Nikkei Asia, Techsauce, Jumpstart Media, Caixin, e27, DealstreetAsia, VietCetera, WHub, The Edge, TechShake, AHEAD ASIA, DailySocial, Teman Startup, The Story Thailand, Channel News Asia (to be updated)

Participation List of Chinese media (in no particular order):

CCTV, People’s Daily Online, Xinhua News Agency, China Net, World Wide Web, National Business Daily, Tencent Technology, Sina Technology, Netease Technology, Phoenix Technology, Nan Fang Daily, Yangcheng Evening News, Macao Daily News, TechNode, 36Kr, TMTPost (to be updated)

Official online and offline channels support, covering core audience groups of more than 150k

BEYOND officials will also support the dissemination of this event online and offline. A large billboard will be set up in the exhibition area. BEYOND’s official website, APP, and domestic and overseas new media platforms (WeChat public number, Weibo, video number, Jitterbug, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) will carry out activity announcements, live broadcasts, and reports on the new product launch event, focusing on the display of new products and technologies, allowing global attendees to fully understand the advantages of the products and establish a brand image, bringing a visual feast for users while also providing more accurate matchmaking opportunities for participating stations.

Registration

Time: May 10th afternoon

Venue: Theatre venue

Duration of each session: 30 minutes

Fee: $8000/ 15 minutes

Services included:

– Conference-related services like crowd control, lighting, sound, etc.

– Text simultaneous interpretation services.

– Official platform with full online live-streaming services.

– Pre-promotion and post-communication of the official platform once each.

– 20 media invited.

The BEYOND Organizing Committee will provide a special exhibition space of 108 square meters at most(up to RMB 314,000) for free to companies who apply to participate in the new product launch event!

Scan the QR code or click here to register.

The Beyond Organizing Committee has officially announced that the BEYOND Expo 2023 will be held offline in Macao from May 10 to May 12, 2023, under the theme, “Technology Redefined,” with three sub-brands: Sustainability, Healthcare, and Consumer Tech. Participants can enjoy three days of exciting exhibition content, including stand-alone exhibits and industry summits.

BEYOND Expo 2023 is all set to reach a new high in terms of scale, attendee influence, diversity of industries, companies, number of exhibitors, and overseas visitors. As Asia’s largest and most influential international technology exhibition, BEYOND Expo 2023 will be held at the Macao Convention and Exhibition Center, which is spread across approximately 100,000 square meters and can accommodate more than 1,000 exhibitors. We expect more Fortune 500 companies, large cross-border enterprises, tech unicorns, and start-ups to participate in this year’s event.

Standard booth registration

Standard booth area: 9 square meters
Register and make a successful payment before Feb. 28 to enjoy a 30% discount on early bird booth fees.
Available for $2520.

Please contact Sicily at 1586817650 or send an email to event@beyondexpo.com.

Special exhibition registration

Please contact Sicily at 15868176570 for more details.

Why choose BEYOND Expo 2023?

Offline exhibition. BEYOND Expo 2023 will attract more than 1,000 exhibitors from around the globe, with 40% of exhibitors from overseas companies. Exhibitors have the chance to access quality attendees around the world.

International buyers and government and enterprise delegation tour. The BEYOND Organizing Committee will organize visits to the exhibition area for VIPs, such as government representatives, international buyers, overseas chamber of commerce representatives, and industry eco-partners. During the exhibition tour, companies will have the opportunity to meet with these VIP groups and explore opportunities for cooperation.

Industry leaders’ dinner. The BEYOND Organizing Committee will invite exhibitors to a VIP dinner on May 10. The dinner will be attended by key representatives from government agencies, investment institutions, major corporations, business associations, and the media.

The summit & roundtable conference. Every year, the BEYOND Organizing Committee invites distinguished speakers from around the world to discuss topics related to the three sub-brands of the BEYOND Expo. As a top international technology innovation summit, BEYOND Expo will feature pioneering forum topics and authoritative industry leaders sharing their insights. As an exhibitor representative, you can also apply for a speaker’s seat and represent your company on the international stage.

Global media coverage. As part of BEYOND’s mission to promote better communication, the BEYOND Organizing Committee will invite more than 100 domestic and overseas media outlets to cover the event. If your company wishes to launch new products or has other communication needs during the event, the BEYOND Organizing Committee can help make arrangements for you.

Business conference. The BEYOND Organizing Committee will also arrange closed-door meetings for exhibitors who require them. During this meeting, you can meet privately with other companies, business organizations, or individuals you are interested in, communicate efficiently during the conference, and invite potential customers, upstream and downstream partners, investment institutions, or government representatives in a targeted manner.

Funding activities. The BEYOND Organizing Committee will organize a variety of investors and capital matching activities during the conference, including but not limited to one-on-one international capital matching sessions and innovation roadshows. In addition, the BEYOND Organizing Committee will invite industry leaders, international capital, and media to attend the event, providing your company with the opportunity to present your business plan in public or in one-to-one meetings.

The BEYOND Organizing Committee will organize a variety of investors and capital matching activities during the conference, including but not limited to one-on-one international capital matching sessions and innovation roadshows. In addition, the BEYOND Organizing Committee will invite industry leaders, international capital, and media to attend the event, providing your company with the opportunity to present your business plan in public or in one-to-one meetings.

Social activities. During the expo, the BEYOND Organizing Committee and its partners will host various social parties every day, creating a relaxed social scene for VIPs to enjoy the unique international atmosphere of Macao.

The BEYOND Organizing Committee

Host: Macao Technology General Association

Co-hosts: The State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration commission of the State Council, Center for International Economic and Technological Cooperation, the Ministry of industry and information Technology, Trade Development Bureau of Ministry of Commerce, Foreign Environmental Cooperation Center，Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China, China Centre for International Science and Technology Exchange(CISTE), China International Cooperation Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, Chinese Medical Association, CHINA ELECTRONIC CHAMBER OF COMMERCE

Strategic partners: Research and Development International (RDI), CCG CHINA-ASEAN GREATER BAY AREA CO-OPERATION CENTRE

Co-organizers: Guangdong Federation of industry & Commerce, Council for the Promotion of Guangdong- Hong Kong-Macao Cooperation

Organizers: TechNode, Forte inc., Nam Kwong International Conference ＆ Exhibition Co., Itd.

Supporters: Macao Trade and investment Promotion Institute, Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region-Economic and Technological Development Bureau, Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region – Health Bureau, Government of the Macao Special Administrative Region -Pharmaceutical Administration Bureau, ZGC Group, Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province, Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Committee, Beijing and Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Cooperation Center of Science and Technology, Shanghai Science and Technology Exchange Center, China Association of Environmental Protection Industry, BRI International Green Development Coalition, Chinese Entrepreneur Commerce Club, China Alliance of Social Value Investment, Service Bureau of Shenzhen Municipality, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Bay Area Entrepreneur Union, Beijing-Macau Economic and Cultural Exchange Promotion Association, Zhongguancun Private Equity ＆ Venture Capital Association, Impact Hub Shanghai, Hong Kong United Youth Association, Y.Elites Association, Macau Youth Federation

Don’t miss out on the early bird booth prices.

Enjoy a wealth of activities.

Worth the trip.

Book the Best Booth at BEYOND Expo in advance.

Early bird tickets for the conference pass are now on sale.

The original price is $99, but you can get it for an early bird price of $49 if purchase before Feb. 28.

Explore innovative technologies and numerous products.

Participate in a forum to interact with technology companies.

Scan the code to place your order.

About BEYOND

Since 2020, BEYOND Expo has been held twice with great success. It has become one of the largest and most influential international technology expositions in Asia, attracting 800+ exhibitors and 55,000+ attendees worldwide. More than 150 industry forums with 500+ innovative business leaders as speakers will provide a global platform for insightful technology exchange.

Please contact us about other cooperation!

Business Partnerships: BD@beyondexpo.com
Media Partnerships: media@beyondexpo.com
Other Inquiries: event@beyondexpo.com

BEYOND Expo 2023 calls for companies to release new products at the tech event, an exclusive opportunity to showcase innovation.

Market competition is becoming increasingly fierce as products and technologies are constantly being updated.

If you want to showcase the latest and most innovative products of 2023, raise brand awareness and influence globally, demonstrate your company’s potential, attract the attention of global technology innovation enthusiasts and customers, and debut your latest products on an international platform, BEYOND Expo gives you the perfect opportunity.

As an international technology exchange platform, BEYOND Expo provides a global stage to showcase the latest cutting-edge technological products and creates an exciting atmosphere for product launches.

Don’t miss the chance to exhibit your new products at BEYOND Expo!

Maximize your returns with reduced costs. The BEYOND Organizing Committee will offer a complimentary exposition space of up to 108 square meters (worth up to RMB 314,000) to applicants approved for new product releases. BEYOND Expo 2023 will take place at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center, spread across approximately 100,000 square meters, providing a professional platform for innovative companies in consumer technology, healthcare, and sustainability. With over 1,000 exhibitors, including Fortune 500 corporates, large cross-border enterprises, tech unicorns, and startups participating in this year’s event, the exhibition features state-of-the-art technology and products. Companies with new products from all industries are welcome to apply, participate, and make an outstanding appearance at BEYOND.

Media exposure. BEYOND Expo 2023 will invite over 300 mainstream media to participate and cover the event, increasing the exposure of the new products and attracting global attention. These products will thus stand out from the competition and attract more consumers. Furthermore, the Organizing Committee will provide opportunities for media and exhibitors to network and exchange thoughts and ideas. Events such as Media Tours and Media Networking will also be held to connect with media partners and learn more about advanced technological concepts and brand culture in various fields. This will give enterprises increased exposure and an opportunity to present their cutting-edge tech products to media from all industries. The BEYOND Organizing Committee will also invite Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) from the technological innovation sector to the exhibition area to experience the new products and interact with participants on site.

Official support. The BEYOND Organizing Committee will provide comprehensive support for the product release, both online and offline. This includes a pre-expo warm-up, event announcements, and product launch promotions across all channels, such as the BEYOND official website, the BEYOND app, and domestic and international social media platforms. Currently, BEYOND has over 150,000 followers on its official social media, with the total engagement of the posts published during the conference exceeding 10,000,000. To enhance the recognition and awareness of new products during the expo, the organizers will implement a combination of online and offline interactive activities. In addition, they will focus on continued exposure after the expo to attract more offline attendees to participate in the event and help online users understand the advantages of the products.

We look forward to seeing you in Macao in May at BEYOND Expo!

Technology is driving us towards a smarter future.

We look forward to sparking a trend of innovative technological products in the post-pandemic era in Asia and raise the profile of Asian technology on the global stage.

We hope that BEYOND Expo can serve as a global launch platform, and we look forward to seeing more interesting, insightful, and valuable “new gadgets” at the product release event!

If you would like to showcase your products to a global audience and capture the interest of technology enthusiasts, please scan the QR code below to submit your information by February 28, 2023, or click [here]. We will review your submission as soon as possible and get back to you shortly. We look forward to your participation!

About BEYOND

Since 2020, BEYOND Expo has been held twice with great success. It has become one of the largest and most influential international technology expositions in Asia, attracting 800+ exhibitors and 55,000+ attendees worldwide. More than 150 industry forums featuring 500+ innovative business leaders as speakers will provide a global platform for insightful technology exchange.

BEYOND has officially announced that “Technology Redefined” will be the theme for BEYOND Expo 2023, which will be hosted in Macao from May 10 to 12. BEYOND Expo 2023 is set to reach a new high in terms of scale, attendee influence, diversity of industries, companies, number of exhibitors, and overseas visitors. There will be more than 100 events and networking sessions. We look forward to connecting with global tech innovation enthusiasts and facilitating in-depth interaction in all fields, including enterprise, product, capital, and industry to promote the global tech scene in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.

For more cooperation, please contact us:

Business Partnerships: BD@beyondexpo.com
Media Partnerships: media@beyondexpo.com
Other Inquiries: event@beyondexpo.com

Although the global economy faces enormous challenges in the post-epidemic era, technological innovation is showing us extraordinary potential. With cloud computing, artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet of Things, and 5G as core technologies, new technological innovations and product solutions today are revolutionizing all aspects of traditional businesses, such as autonomous cars, robots to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and the metaverse that transcends the boundary between virtual reality and reality.

Earlier, BEYOND officially announced that “Technology Redefined” will be the theme of BEYOND 2023, which will be hosted in Macao from May 10 to 13. In line with this concept, BEYOND Expo 2023 is set to reach new heights in terms of scale, attendee influence, diversity of industries and enterprises, number of exhibitors, and overseas visitors. As the impact of technology on social and human development is still a key focus of BEYOND, thousands of outstanding tech innovation companies will showcase their breakthrough technologies and products at BEYOND Expo 2023, a tech gala that is all set to attract global attention!

BEYOND Expo launched the BEYOND Awards to demonstrate cutting-edge innovation, promote comprehensive integration and interaction between capital, industry and innovation, fully realize the impact of technological innovation, and encourage more participation in shaping future trends. BEYOND Expo 2023 launched the BEYOND Awards, including the BEYOND Innovation Awards and BEYOND Impact Awards. The BEYOND Awards established the Healthcare Innovation Award, the Sustainability Innovation Award, the Consumer Tech Innovation Award, and the BEYOND Impact Awards to discover innovative technologies and companies, highlight outstanding individuals including technological products and services, and demonstrate the infinite possibilities of technological innovation and its impact on the global community.

BEYOND Innovation Awards

The BEYOND Innovation Awards has established three awards for its three sub-brands: Healthcare, Sustainability, and Consumer Tech. The goal is to identify and promote the most innovative companies and products featuring breakthrough technologies and industry-leading solutions of the year. Award winners will be judged by the BEYOND Awards Jury based on a variety of factors such as technical content, commercial value, and innovation. Each year, a total of 30 award-winning enterprises are selected across the three categories of the BEYOND Innovation Awards.

BEYOND Impact Awards

The impact of technology on social and human development is one of BEYOND’s main concerns. Therefore, the BEYOND organizing committee established the BEYOND Impact Awards. Based on the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN, these awards recognize companies that have made significant contributions to the environmental, social, economic, and technological fields. These companies have addressed carbon emissions, public health, environmental protection, and social poverty alleviation through technological innovation under the premise of carbon neutrality.

Selection instructions

Selection process:
The process includes the following sections:
Launch – Nomination – First Round of Selection – Second Round of Selection – Final Selection – Media Matchmaking Meeting / Awards Ceremony

2023 selection calendar:
January 10: Official launch, nomination channel is opened

March 10: Nomination deadline
All nomination information must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. (EDT) on March 10, 2023, through the BEYOND Awards official nomination portal. Extensions or submissions from other sources will not be accepted for any reason.

March 10-15: First round of selection
Initial screening to weed out applications that do not meet the criteria for nomination

March 15 to April 15: Second round of selection
Confirmation of shortlisted candidates with 30 candidates selected in each category. Finalists will be announced no later than April 15.

April 30: Final selection
BEYOND Awards jury meeting to select finalists
BEYOND Awards media matchmaking meeting: See the BEYOND Expo official calendar
BEYOND Awards ceremony: See the BEYOND Expo official calendar

Nomination methods:

1. The nomination is open worldwide; all companies and institutions can apply via online nominations. The only official portal for self-nominations is the BEYOND Awards official nomination portal.
2. Referral nominations are jointly nominated by BEYOND Expo sponsors and BEYOND Awards partners. The only official portal for nominations is the BEYOND Awards official nomination portal.

Nomination qualification:

• Industry: Open to all innovative technologies, products, and solutions that contribute to industrial and social development. The industry should belong to the “Healthcare”, “Sustainability,” and “Consumer Tech” areas that the BEYOND Innovation Awards focus on.
• The applicant must be a legally registered company or legal institution.
• Innovation Awards: The submitted product must be first marketed or released after March 1, 2022, or must be marketed by March 1, 2023, or it must be a technology or project that will be released in the interim and for which intellectual property rights have been acquired.
• The technology and products submitted with the application must not infringe any intellectual property rights, including but not limited to patents, copyrights, and trade secrets.
• The products or projects must be submitted in the relevant product category. Specific categories with built-in options can be found in the nomination form on the official website.
• Each nomination must be submitted in .jpg format and must not exceed 10MB in size. For intangible products, applicants can submit screenshots or diagrams.

Award benefits:

1. The BEYOND Awards winning trophy
2. The right to use the BEYOND Awards logo
3. Direct access to the BEYOND Expo international investment and finance matchmaking meeting in Macao, and one-on-one communication with representatives of investment institutions
4. Honorable display on the official website, and the opportunity to participate in the BEYOND Awards offline media matchmaking meeting in Macao.
5. 100% subsidy for a standard booth at BEYOND Expo (limited to one booth per company) to showcase the award-winning products and projects to the global audience in Macao. The booth will feature a special logo for the BEYOND Awards finalists.
6. A corporate member at the co-founder level will receive a Macao travel subsidy (economy class) to BEYOND Expo 2023.
7. Special benefits for 2022 award-winning companies: a discounted booth at BEYOND Expo 2023 (specific benefits to be announced soon).

About BEYOND

Since 2020, BEYOND Expo has been held twice with great success. It has become one of the largest and most influential international technology expositions in Asia, attracting 800+ exhibitors and 55,000+ attendees worldwide. More than 150 industry forums with 500+ innovative business leaders as speakers will provide a global platform for insightful technology exchange.

BEYOND Expo will be held at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center, which is spread across approximately 100,000 square meters and can accommodate more than 1,000 exhibitors. We expect more Fortune 500 corporates, large cross-border enterprises, tech unicorns, and startups to participate in this year’s event. At the same time, there will be more than 100 events and networking sessions. We look forward to connecting with global tech innovation enthusiasts and facilitating in-depth interaction in all fields, including enterprise, product, capital, and industry to promote the global tech scene in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.

Business Partnerships: BD@beyondexpo.com
Media Partnerships: media@beyondexpo.com
Other Inquiries: event@beyondexpo.com

The four summits at BEYOND Expo are among the most influential platforms in Asia and the world. They are key drivers of technological innovation due to influential speakers and specialized topics. BEYOND Expo 2023 will continue to host four international summits: the Sustainability Summit, the Healthcare Summit, the ConsumerTech Summit, and the Global Investment Summit.

From development to practical application, technology is revolutionizing traditional businesses and impacting every aspect of our daily lives with 5G, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, and the metaverse. The global economy faces tremendous changes in 2023 and the post-pandemic era as businesses transition from reality to virtual reality. As a Chinese proverb says, there is no construction without destruction. The purpose of “Technology” is being redefined, and so is its value. BEYOND Expo 2023 will be held in Macao from May 10 to 13. Our goal is to introduce and discuss the latest innovative technologies from various industries, and re-evaluate their economic value and social impact.

With the theme “Technology Redefined,” BEYOND Expo 2023 continues to focus on its three sub-brands: BEYOND Sustainability, BEYOND Healthcare, and BEYOND ConsumerTech, focusing on hot topics across industries. The expo brings together global leaders in technological innovation, renowned experts, entrepreneurs, and representatives from international organizations to share advanced technological concepts and explore future development trends across various industries for a better future.

BEYOND Expo 2023 is now recruiting speakers in full swing

If you want to share your unique insights into technology innovation industries, showcase cutting-edge technological products and concepts to attract industry attention, and explore future trends on an international technology exchange platform, BEYOND Expo 2023 is a perfect choice!

BEYOND Expo 2023 will host at least four industry summits, focusing on its three sub-brands: BEYOND Sustainability, BEYOND Healthcare, and BEYOND ConsumerTech.

Sustainability Summit: The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) are important criteria in the evaluation of many companies. Tentative topics include green cities and infrastructure, alternative energy solutions, green transportation, food and agriculture, and green logistics.

Healthcare Summit: Recently, coronavirus and other new epidemics caused by climate change have attracted much attention in the life sciences. As a result, it is more important than ever to accelerate the development of new drugs, vaccines, and medical devices to ensure public health and safety. The BEYOND Healthcare Summit will provide forward-looking insights and ideas on these concerns to global attendees. Tentative topics include innovative medicine, groundbreaking biotechnology, big data medical care, innovative medical devices, future medical research, AI pharmaceuticals, cutting-edge medical diagnostics, genetic testing, and anesthesia and life sciences.

ConsumerTech Summit: The speed of innovation and development in consumer technology is breathtaking compared to most industries. Tentative topics include artificial intelligence, portable devices, drones and robots, IC chips, smart home technology, and financial technology. We will invite experts, academics, and leaders in this industry to share their insights with global attendees.

Global Investment Summit: Financial capital is the driving force behind technological innovation, making it an integral part of the innovation ecosystem. This summit focuses on the development and impact of cutting-edge technology across various industries in light of future investment trends. Top investors worldwide will gather to discuss and share observations and experiences in capturing promising technological innovations. Tentative topics include family investment, impact investment, female investors, the next decade in investment, early-stage investment, and infrastructure investment.

Our visionary speakers

As the opening and closing ceremonies and industry summits are key components of BEYOND Expo, the organizing committee invites world-class industry experts, academics, and business leaders to promote authoritative exchanges, forward-thinking ideas, and deep-dive discussions on the current situation and future development of the tech industry, and establish business relationships.

Previous Visionary Speakers

If you are interested in BEYOND Expo or the topics of its industry summits and have insights into the current situation and future development of the above industries, please feel free to scan the QR code below or click here to enter your information and speech summary! In addition, you have the chance to be a speaker at the largest and the most influential international technology exposition in Asia, and share your ideas with global entrepreneurs, business leaders, investors, scientists, and government representatives.

About BEYOND

Since 2020, BEYOND Expo has been held twice with great success. It has become one of the largest and most influential international technology expositions in Asia, attracting 800+ exhibitors and 55,000+ attendees worldwide. More than 150 industry forums with 500+ innovative business leaders as speakers will provide a global platform for insightful technology exchange.

BEYOND Expo 2023 is expected to reach another milestone in scale, attendee influence, diversity of industries and companies, and the number of exhibitors and overseas visitors. The expo will be held at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center, which is spread across approximately 100,000 square meters and can accommodate more than 1,000 exhibitors. We expect more Fortune 500 corporates, large cross-border enterprises, tech unicorns, and startups to participate in this year’s event. At the same time, there will be more than 100 events and networking sessions. We look forward to connecting with global tech innovation enthusiasts and facilitating in-depth interaction in all fields, including enterprise, product, capital, and industry to promote the global tech scene in the Asia-Pacific region and the world.

Business Partnerships: BD@beyondexpo.com
Media Partnerships: media@beyondexpo.com
Other Inquiries: event@beyondexpo.com

As one of Asia’s largest and most influential international technology expositions, BEYOND Expo has drawn widespread attention from the global technology innovation industry. Founded in 2020, it has been held twice before with great success, bringing together 800+ exhibitors, 55,000+ visitors, 500+ business leaders, and world-class speakers to participate in 150+ industry panels at online and offline summits.

Technology has long been ubiquitous in our lives, revolutionizing traditional businesses and influencing every aspect of our daily lives. The global economy in 2023 and the post-pandemic era faces enormous challenges as businesses transition from reality to virtual reality. As a Chinese proverb says, there is no construction without destruction. The purpose of “Technology” is being redefined, and so is its value. Therefore, “Technology Redefined” will be the theme of BEYOND 2023, which will be hosted in Macao from May 10 to 13. Our goal is to introduce and discuss the latest innovative technologies in various industries and re-evaluate their economic value and social impact in this new era.

With the relaxation of strict Covid controls, BEYOND Expo 2023 is set to reach a new high in terms of scale, attendee influence, diversity of industries, companies, number of exhibitors and overseas visitors. The expo will be held at the Macao Convention and Exhibition Center, which is spread across approximately 100,000 square meters and can accommodate more than 1,000 exhibitors. We expect more Fortune 500 companies, large cross-border enterprises, tech unicorns, and startups to participate in this year’s event. Industry forums and networking sessions will be held concurrently. We look forward to connecting attendees from all technological backgrounds with in-depth interactions to promote the global tech scene in the APAC region.

Comprehensive integration of cutting-edge technologies and industries with a focus on BEYOND sub-brands

BEYOND Expo 2023 will continue to focus on its three sub-brands: BEYOND Sustainability, BEYOND Healthcare, and BEYOND ConsumerTech. Through exhibitions and industry summits, the platform will facilitate the exchange of ideas to promote comprehensive industrial modernization, development and transformation, for better global technological innovation. BEYOND Sustainability focuses on technological innovation and the application of environmentally sustainable technologies by fostering collaboration among individuals, companies, and governments worldwide, and stimulating their interest in sustainable development.

BEYOND Healthcare puts cutting-edge technologies, products and solutions in the life sciences industry at the center by creating a platform that integrates companies and connects upstream, downstream, investment and academic exchanges.

BEYOND ConsumerTech brings together the latest technologies and products in the consumer technology industry, ranging from foundational technologies such as AI, smart manufacturing, and semiconductor chips to industrial applications for individuals, home and travel, creating a world-leading consumer technology expo in Asia — the largest consumer market and supply chain hub in the world.

Global exchanges across three tech verticals

In BEYOND Metaverse, a unique virtual online event previously held for BEYOND Expo 2022, we created a visual feast of outstanding technological innovations and striking exhibition booths.

In the past two BEYOND Expos, Alibaba Group, Deloitte, Huawei, Nam Kwong (Group), SIMENS, ICBC (Macau), China State Construction International Holdings Limited (CSCI), and Bank of China Macau Branch participated in the BEYOND Sustainability exhibition to propose more low-carbon solutions for green development. Edwards Lifesciences, Fosun Pharma, BGI, Merck, Concord Medical Services, Abbott, and China Taiping attended the BEYOND Healthcare exhibition to share their latest research findings in the life sciences sector and connect the upstream, midstream, and downstream industries to discuss people’s health and well-being. BYD, Insta 360, Nreal, OPPO, Pico, Macau Pass, Ant Bank, and SenseTime participated in the BEYOND ConsumerTech exhibition to promote the development of the consumer technology industry, discuss future trends and introduce new technologies for the transformation of the industry.

BEYOND Expo 2023 exhibitor area will continue to focus on its three sub-brands: BEYOND Sustainability, BEYOND Healthcare, and BEYOND ConsumerTech. It will attract 1,000+ exhibitors from around the globe, with 40% overseas companies exhibiting in Macao, and communicating with attendees from all over the world. The exhibition promises to be an informative and exciting experience for all attendees.

Meet world-renowned speakers at the opening and closing ceremonies and participate in 4+ industry summits for a smart future

The opening ceremony has always been a BEYOND Expo highlight. The organizing committee will invite industry experts, scholars and global business leaders to share key insights with technology innovators. BEYOND Expo 2023 will gather world-renowned experts to discuss the theme of “What’s Next”, and offer forward-looking perspectives to followers of global innovation. Speakers will also focus on technology and its impact by exploring and analyzing industry and innovation trends from a macro perspective.

At the industry summits, an important part of BEYOND Expo, global experts, scholars, and business leaders will discuss the industry’s current and future situation. In BEYOND Expo 2022, the BEYOND organizing committee worked with China State Construction International Holdings Limited (CSCI) to co-host the Sustainability Summit with the Chinese Medical Association and China Taiping for the Healthcare Summit; ICBC (Macau) for the ConsumerTech Summit; Bank of China Macau Branch for the Global Investment Summit; and SenseTime for the Web3 Summit for deep-dive discussions across verticals, providing insight into the seamless integration of technology and industry.

BEYOND Expo 2023 will host at least four industry summits, including the Sustainability Summit, Healthcare Summit, ConsumerTech Summit, and the Global Investment Summit. The BEYOND Sustainability Summit will focus on green cities and infrastructure, alternative energy solutions, green transportation, food and agriculture, and green logistics. The BEYOND Healthcare Summit will share innovative insights and visions with global attendees. Tentative topics include innovative medicine and biotechnology, big data medical care, AI pharmaceuticals, cutting-edge medical equipment, future of medical research, innovative medical diagnostics, genetic testing, and anesthesia. The BEYOND ConsumerTech Summit will discuss artificial intelligence, portable devices, drones and robots, IC chips, smart home technology, and financial technology with the attendees. The BEYOND Global Investment Summit will focus on global investment, cutting-edge technologies, and the impact of technological innovation, serving as a platform for entrepreneurs, top investors, and industry leaders to discuss and share their experiences in discovering promising technological innovations. We look forward to connecting with all innovators to explore the future of these industries together!

BEYOND Awards to promote innovation in technology for social benefit

As the impact of technology on society and human development has always been its key focus, BEYOND 2023 will also feature three innovation awards for its sub-brands: BEYOND Healthcare Innovation Award, BEYOND Sustainability Innovation Award, and BEYOND ConsumerTech Innovation Award along with the BEYOND Impact Awards. BEYOND Innovation Awards recognize tech companies that offer innovative products and services with breakthrough technologies and industry-leading solutions to show the world the potential of technological innovation. BEYOND Impact Award recognizes individuals or companies with outstanding achievements and contributions to natural, societal, economical, and technological reforms, as well as solutions for carbon emissions, national health, environmental protection, and poverty alleviation under the premise of carbon neutrality, based on the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). After nominations and selection rounds, 10 winners will be chosen in each category. On May 12, the BEYOND Awards Committee will hold an award ceremony to announce the final winners, who will enjoy special benefits from the organizing committee.

An extraordinary tech expo for global innovators in Macao

BEYOND Expo 2023 aims to distinguish itself across industries by comprehensively showcasing and discussing technology’s commercial application and social value. Events such as Fund at First Pitch (VC meetups), Startup Roadshows, and Closed-Door Meetings will be organized to build a capital network centered on innovation for global tech entrepreneurs, and to create a high-quality source of business matching for investors and investment institutions. A media tour will be organized to increase company exposure. Social events, including dinners and parties, will also be held to help people build high-quality connections. In addition, other exciting events will provide a wonderful experience for attendees worldwide, promoting industry exchange and further strengthening the exhibitors’ brand influence by reaching more technology innovators and enthusiasts.

See you again in Macao in May 2023!
We invite you to join us in learning about the immense potential of technology,
and creating a brighter future together!

Contact us:
Business partnership: BD@beyondexpo.com
Media partnership: media@beyondexpo.com
Other inquiries: event@beyondexpo.com

An intrinsic part of most people’s daily lives, the fashion industry also consumes a huge amount of resources. The industry is the second highest polluting industry, after petroleum. One cotton shirt usually requires 700 gallons of water to be produced, an amount sufficient for one person to drink for 3.5 years, according to Joann Cheng, Chairman and CEO of luxury fashion firm Lanvin Group.

To improve sustainability in the industry, efforts are needed at all levels – from supply chains to sale channels – and the importance of new business models can also help the transition.

Representatives from Lanvin Group, Fashion for Good, and Feiliu Tech shared insights on sustainability in the fashion industry and the approaches required to improve it at the BEYOND Expo 2022 sustainability conference, held online in the BEYOND Metaverse.

The text below features some of the highlights of the discussion and has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Joann Cheng, chairman and CEO of Lanvin Group

Sustainability is not just about fabric or some technology but about the supply chain. 

When we talk about the supply chain, everybody talks about how to minimize costs to improve efficiency. But sustainability is not about reducing the cost. The key is to protect our environment and to get long-term protection. So we must think about new business models and challenge the old way of saving dollars by including more fashion pieces. 

I think we have to change our current business model from the supply chain to the sales channel to get sustainability to the next level.

We challenge ourselves in an innovative way in how we sell. For example, there are a lot of platforms in the market now focusing on resales, repairs, or rentals. And some fashion pieces can be recycled. There are a lot of brands, like Allbirds, using a very sustainable fabric as a fundamental of the product. However, this is definitely a trade-off of profitability versus sustainability because getting there costs more money. 

We also linked the design and the product to the sustainability concept. For example, Wolford is a brand in our group. It is the first to achieve the gold level of accreditation from Cradle to Cradle in this industry. This means our products are 100% disposable. 

And we have designed a special capsule: Aurora uses a fabric that is totally not polluting to the environment and really 100% disposable. By pushing them to the market customers, we can really contribute our efforts to sustainability. 

There still is a long road to go, but we have a long-term vision on ESG and sustainability and will take action going forward. 

Priyanka Khanna, Asia Expansion Head, Fashion for Good

In my opinion, the industry dynamics need to change quite a lot. This buyer-seller relationship exists in the industry between the brand and the supplier. That dynamic needs to be changed into [something] more co-developed and co-created. And literally bringing on board with these suppliers and brands the technologies that would make this change happen. 

We foresee that to transform this industry, to make it more circular and sustainable, you have to infuse technology into it. We are hoping to find these technologies, assessing whether they can actually work with a larger industry or industry as a whole, and we then support these technologies to scale with the existing players and hopefully with industry-wide integration in the future.

It’s multiple industries in the one fashion industry. It’s so large and so complicated in each supply chain step, from raw materials to processing, to actual manufacturing, and all the way to the end of use. There are multiple technology intervention areas that can potentially transform the industry’s footprint, reducing the usage of natural resources like water and overall carbon emissions, the pollution of water, etcetera.

To make that happen, we work with multiple [parties]. I think one of the most important is the manufacturers. They have to be brought on board and educated on everything happening because they are usually the final people to work with the innovations. Now we’ve looked at about 3,000 technologies, and we’re working with about 157 across the supply chain. We have brands supporting this initiative, partnering to assess which technologies can work and then supporting scaling them. 

Kate Liu, Ph.D. Co-Founder and CPO of Feiliu Tech

In our opinion, most of the fashion industry’s impact is not only at the ground level but also at the production level at the supply chain side. It’s about the raw materials and the whole production process. 

We are trying to bring a new concept of sustainable fashion into this very traditional area, especially the manufacturing side. When we talk about the supply chain issue, we talk about the factories and the workers in the [production] lines. They do a lot of work, such as sewing and cutting, for the process. And they usually need some technology to help them improve efficiency while doing all the processes.

Big orders with large quantities usually give you enough time to get familiar with procedures to make their work more effective. But for small companies and orders with a very short delivery time, you need a delicate plan to make a dynamic production process.

On the supply chain side, with AI’s help, the factory can have a brain to make decisions, so it’s not only on the technical person, the plant owner, or the team leader. It can also have all the data and collect the digitalization process from each station and each worker. Then AI can also analyze to make the workers more effective. 

In this way, people can take small orders in small quantities. This flexible work can avoid overproduction and waste in the fashion industry, making the whole thing more sustainable.

Plastics play a central role in numerous industries. The material has become firmly embedded in our lives, but increasingly that’s a statement that can be taken literally – microplastics were found in human blood for the first time in March of this year, adding to concerns about the environmental impacts of white pollution. 

The race is now on to find ways to reduce such pollution and develop alternative materials, especially in plastics-heavy areas such as product packaging.

Representatives from Unilever, Finnish consumer packaging company Huhtamaki and biomaterial company Bluepha discussed alternatives to plastics and the different approaches that these firms are adopting at the BEYOND Expo 2022 sustainability conference, held online in the BEYOND Metaverse.

The text below features some of the highlights of the discussion and has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Huhtamak on food packaging

Thong Yinsheng, Senior Vice President, Asia Pacific, Fiber Foodservice, Huhtamaki

Only 5% of the carbon emissions in the food system are attributed to packaging in general. We know that the purpose of food plastic and as well as plastic control is to prevent environmental pollution. Since food packaging is essential, from an environmental perspective, we face several main challenges. Number one: making the positive choice in selecting the material for a fit of purpose. In terms of packaging and alternatives, we will look for solutions equal to or even better than the current plastic ones. 

Another focus is increasing material recycling, especially at the end-of-life stage. It requires proper recycling technology as well as sufficient infrastructure. These are very critical. 

Fiber will play a very important role. 70% of our product portfolio is made of fiber, either virgin fiber or recycled fiber. Virgin fiber is used primarily with food contact. And that’s where we ensure that the food safety and hygiene regulations are being met. While for recycled fiber, typically we use it for a trace, for example, where the shell itself is already a natural barrier to prevent direct food contact. 

To meet this growing demand for plastic-free alternatives, Huhtamaki’s site in Alf, Germany is switching its focus from plastics to smooth molded fiber (SMF) products. That’s where we are able to have a significant impact. It’s the first such large-scale production capability in Europe. Now, when it comes to plastic, we are also focusing on how we can create new innovations in this. And now we have next-generation model materials that help minimize the number of layers being used.

Unilever on personal care packaging and recycling

Weiwei Kou, sustainability director North Asia, Unilever

We have a strong targets and commitments on plastics. There are four targets. The first one is regarding virgin plastic. We target to reduce original plastic by 50% by 2025, which means there will be 100,000 tons of absolute reduction.

Under the virgin plastics reduction, what we’re doing is driving investment in innovation in reuse business models. Particularly in our laundry product line, we have concentrated washing liquid. Instead of two-liter big bottles, you have the 15 milligrams [eggs], but with the same washing effects. It is also recyclable, like non-virgin plastic.

The second target is to help collapse and process more plastic packaging than what we sell. Collecting in China is very expensive so we invest in partners to improve waste management infrastructure like collecting, sorting, and processing. Right now, we’re looking for partners here in China to work on the collection model, because we don’t have a collection capacity at this time.

The third target is 100% of our plastic packaging will be reusable, recyclable, and compostable. The fourth target is 20% of our plastic packaging will come from post-consumer resin (PCR), a recycled plastic. PCR is on average 20% to 30% more expensive than virgin plastics. That puts a lot of cost on us every year across all our product lines, particularly for our home care and personal care, and product lines that use more plastics.

Bluepha on bio-based alternatives

Bai Yuanbin, co-founder and VP Marketing, Bluepha

If using one sentence to describe our product, I’d like to say Bluepha is a 100% bio-based and marine-degradable biopolymer. It has four key features. First, it’s a natural polymer produced by microorganisms. The production method is different. It makes the product different – not only different from traditional plastic, but it is also different from other kinds of biopolymer. It’s the only biopolymer produced by a fermentation process rather than a petrochemical process.

Second, we use sustainable biomass at the feedstock to produce our Bluepha product. This biomass can be blonde or starch. Even [for] carbon dioxide, we have a unique technology named a biohybrid. That means we can use carbon dioxide and traditional biomass as feedstock. 

Third, Bluepha has remarkable degradability in various natural environments and artificial environments, including marine freshwater, soil, industrial compost, at-home compost landfill, anaerobic digestion, and different kinds of environments. 

And fourth, PHA (Polyhydroxyalkanoate) has versatile properties for multiple uses. By adjusting molecular structures, we can influence its all-around performance. We have developed different grades of Bluepha PHA to apply to rigid packaging, soft packaging, coated paper, fibers, coffee capsule, and other applications.

With ongoing advancements in technologies such as artificial intelligence and communication networks, new infrastructure has become a hot topic globally, especially across less-developed regions. Eager to modernize their societies and weather difficulties such as the ongoing global pandemic, governments from developing countries are pushing for investment in infrastructure technology and digital transformation of their labor-intensive industries.

Sir Danny Alexander, vice president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and Leslie Maasdorp, vice president and chief financial officer of the New Development Bank (NDB), discussed the vital role of technology investment in economic development at the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online in the BEYOND Metaverse. 

The discussion also echoed this year’s UN climate summit where developed nations agreed to help provide funds to poor countries in compensation for loss and damage by climate change. The speakers also shed light on some of the challenges bankers face when bridging the technology gap. 

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Sir Danny Alexander, vice president of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB)

Technology has changed infrastructure investment in many different ways, and the application of technology to traditional infrastructure is critical to how we affect social and economic transformations. To start with, technology creates demand for new types of infrastructure, like data centers, 5G networks, telecommunications grids, and so forth. Then, these new infrastructures also help to upgrade existing infrastructure. For example, turning a grid into a smart grid, turning a city into a smart city, and so on.

Thinking through those infrastructure needs is a critical issue. In Asia, we’ve seen huge digital divides, such as cities and countries with highly developed digital infrastructure and vice versa, causing economic changes and accentuating differences. So, part of our strategy has to be how we can help those on the wrong side of digital divides with investments to help them improve or, in many cases, leapfrog directly to the most modern technology. That means you have to focus on the end users and the outcomes.

This also creates opportunities for better efficiency and greater transparency to enable infrastructure projects to work more effectively and manage better for maintenance costs. Roads and bridges are always needed unless we take them to the air sometimes, but technology changes those roads and bridges. It changes the way that you operate, construct and maintain them. It changes the types of vehicles you can use on them, the roads with sensors built to monitor the traffic, and the electric charger built to enable new energy vehicles.

So technology actually affects every aspect of infrastructure development. That’s what’s referred to when we talk about infrastructure tech, which is really at the center of the political agenda, given all the challenges we’re facing today, such as the need for governments to bridge infrastructure financing gaps with less spending. Infra tech actually offers a supply-side solution. It helps us to manage the maintenance costs much more effectively and get much greater spin-off benefits for other aspects of society.

Enabling new technologies to be transferred, adopted, and localized quickly is a critical part of ensuring that developing countries have the opportunities to develop at the pace they need. There are still huge issues of basic access to power and affordability in these countries. We should operate in a way that it shouldn’t be a choice between do you develop your economy or do you transition your energy system, but find a way for the two to go forward together and, ideally, to reinforce each other.

Leslie Maasdorp, vice president and chief financial officer of the New Development Bank (NDB)

Multilateral banks have a unique, critical role to play in the transition to net zero carbon emissions and draw on the best of what new technologies offer to reboot infrastructure throughout emerging markets.

Every sector, whether it be energy, transport, or logistics, is undergoing significant changes in respective business models. What we are trying to do is to be a catalyst for the changes that require significant investments. For example, I come from South Africa, where the energy grid is more than 88% based on coal-fired power stations. We have to build new energy infrastructure but at the same time have a more appropriate mix in terms of renewable energy sources, whether it be wind, solar, and so on.

Technology is probably the most exciting element of an infrastructure investment today because we are moving away from business-as-usual models. And yet, the demand for new sustainable infrastructure in emerging markets is distinctly different from that of developed countries to a degree. Many developing countries have a historical disadvantage. Let’s take Africa, for example. Large parts of Africa do not have access to electricity, and only around 35% of the continent has access to sustainable energy resources. Carbon emissions are not at the front and center of consciousness.

Therefore, asking a country that is poorly endowed with solar investment resources or wind power not to use the coal that they have, we have to put appropriate incentives in place to ensure that we enable these countries to move on to this higher technological and more sustainable development model. It is important that we ensure sort of an equitable transition and recognize that different countries come with different historical endowments.

The energy sector is an area with significant scope for us to mobilize large volumes of private-sector capital. Over the last few years, we have no longer been focusing on financing projects and growing our balance sheets but using our funding in a catalytic way to bring more capital from the private sector into renewable energy industries. Most of the investments in new energy are not done by state enterprises or governments but are indeed done by the private sector.

NDB has a couple of offshore wind projects in China’s eastern Fujian province and hydro and solar projects in many of our member countries. We are now focusing on increasing the size and scope of our private sector operations and working much more closely with the private sector regarding these kinds of new energy infrastructures.

Though sometimes not as visible, family offices are having an influential impact on the investment industry, as their existence allows the assets of wealthy families to have a positive social impact while generating financial returns.

At the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online in the BEYOND Metaverse, Rochel Leah Bernstein, Founder of RLB Partners; Michael Smith, Partner at Regeneration.VC; and Andrew Rubinstein, Founder of Shorewind Capital, joined moderator Robert Grimaldi, CEO at Ad Infinitum, to discuss how family offices impact the tech industry and explore investment strategies for family offices over the next two years.

Andrew Rubinstein, founder of Shorewind Capital

Family offices play a big role in the tech industry, a lot of them are investors themselves in those big VC funds. I think they do that for two reasons: One, for their own sort of investment returns, so they can kind of invest directly in some of the companies that those venture funds will first invest in and identify the winners. So they absolutely played a role, though they tend to be more behind the scenes, because they don’t have to put in as much effort into marketing, one because they don’t have to go invest or they don’t have to go raise outside capital. And two, their value-add is sort of inherent in their family name a lot of the time, so if you’re a small venture fund you sort of have to position yourself to entrepreneurs, to say we can add value by doing X, Y and Z. If you’re a family office with a big name behind you, you don’t really have to make that pitch as much of the time. So they definitely play a big role both in the sense that they invest in many of those companies directly and in the venture funds that source them.

My sense is that family offices are a little bit more sort of risk-off right now. I think part of that is because they don’t know exactly how to value their current portfolio, because if they were investing in round seeds stages, a lot of those companies probably are a little bit overvalued. And because they’re private companies, they don’t really have to get remarks until they go and raise subsequent funds, so a lot of family offices are fairly content to sit on the sidelines right now and say let’s see how the dust settles and kind of evaluate exactly how much our portfolio is right now. For us, we’re a family investment vehicle but we’re also a new venture fund on the block. We launched fourteen months ago and we’re excited that valuations are coming down, we’re also excited that other venture investors are staying on the sidelines a bit more because it means we get more access to deals we otherwise wouldn’t.

As I continue my investment career, I’ll always be someone around the family, I still want to prioritize at the center of that Venn diagram, or drift more to just we’re looking purely for returns. And I think that’s probably something that a lot of family offices deal with because they have flexible mandates where they can invest in anything from an early stage, private to public. So trying to hone in on your vision as a family office, or just as individuals within a family office, I think is pretty key to help kind of guide you towards exactly how you want to spend your time.

Rochel Leah Bernstein, founder of RLB Partners

There’s a risk aversion piece I’m definitely seeing, but the interest in co-invest is very strong. So what I do hear a lot behind closed doors is a desire for people to see each other’s deal flow within families and to sort of share what they’re looking at because there is more trust. The other thing I’ve seen in the last, I would say, two years since Covid-19 is more of an interest in mental health, healthcare, and education, those are spaces that are really shifted. There’s more of a desire to look at edtech and sort of alternative sources of education and more equity around education. From a public health perspective, a lot has changed. I’m seeing more and more offices that are trying to leverage their networks and their resources to solve some really big global problems because everyone was affected. I have a family office friend who came out of Shanghai and was incredibly traumatized by the lockdown. It was shared with me that it had such an effect on his mental health and he is now really interested in some of these spaces he had never looked at before. So I think it left an indelible impact on all of us and how we think about how we leverage capital for social good.

I’ve been passionate about child protection and child sexual abuse prevention and impact investing for years, but I think during Covid-19 I was especially terrified. I use that word deliberately because children globally were essentially locked up, often with people that were hurting them, whether that’s domestic violence or child sexual abuse or poverty or other issues. So I believe that we’re going to see a tremendous uptake in reporting child sexual abuse globally within the next fifteen years. Considering the average length of disclosure of seventeen years, I believe we’re about fifteen years out from a massive crisis. And in such an anemic space, I’ve sort of doubled down on my focus on both raising dollars for advocacy and for lobbying, legislation, and parent education, because I do believe that parents ultimately sit at the nexus of all of the institutions and all of the places that their child exists.  So I feel called to really spend a lot of my time and energy on [the issue].

And it is global, I was actually in Asia recently and someone approached me and said you know I looked you up and we don’t know how to talk about that here and it’s not a topic that we know how to address. And it really hit me very hard, sort of emotionally, thinking about how many children and how many families were affected by Covid-19 from a safety and a mental health perspective. The other thing that we’re seeing increasing worldwide is also suicide and adolescent suicide, and so for me, those are areas that I spend a lot of time on, from an investing perspective, advocacy, and philanthropy.

The last thing I’ll say is that I think we really need to focus as an investment community on unity. We see so much divisiveness and so much heat in our world. I know it sounds cheesy, but whatever ways we can come together and bring our stories and our cultures and what unites us as humanity together for the planet, for humanity, for human health, for our children, for the future, is something that I think would be incredibly important for all of us as family offices and investors and philanthropists to be focusing on.

Michael Smith, partner at Regeneration.VC

When you look at all the different places that family offices invest, it’s a big question. But from our day-to-day within climate tech, it’s actually become a very good time with this recent climate bill, with a lot of momentum on corporate and regulatory, tailwinds.  So we’re seeing a flood of interest coming in and people wanting to learn more and how do they get smart and how do they figure out who are the right managers and the right opportunities to focus on, and where things are really headed. So there are a few bright spots, but overall there’s just a whole heck of a lot of uncertainty and most family offices have that ability to be long view.

I remember a few months back before things were getting really choppy, it was like “oh I’m so over-indexed in venture” because I’m having all these good outcomes and I’m just trying to figure out how to get a better balance to my portfolio construction and things like that. This is changing day by day, but right now it’s been exciting to see all the interest with what we’re doing within the family office community.

We won’t change how we’ve been doing things in the next 12 to 24 months. When I started focusing on the same issue, I got to know what was happening with this crisis in a way that really motivated me to fully focus on doing everything I could to address it. Regeneration in our work with pine valley is really an expression of that, and it’s not a short-term issue. This is very much a long view issue, so our goal is thinking how over the next 10, 20 years, how do we move the needle on putting atmospheric carbon back into natural systems and regenerating, planning, and building more resilient structures and adapting to changes were already feeling right now. So the time is not to slow down now depending on all the different indicators and where they’re going. This is really urgent and important work that we do take it very, very seriously.

In a world of increasing challenges and uncertainties, women investors are making prudent choices to help build a more resilient future. Yet there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to diversity in the venture capital industry.

At the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online in the BEYOND Metaverse, Helen Wong, managing partner of AC Ventures; Shuo Chen, general partner of IOVC; and Gwendolyn Regina, investment director of BNB Chain, discussed the path for women in the investment field and offered their advice for young entrepreneurs.

Their comments have been edited and condensed for clarity.

Helen Wong, Managing Partner, AC Ventures

When it comes to investment, women do make different results from men. I think women are as capable as men, but in certain areas, women are maybe more in tune with.

In general, I wouldn’t say that there’s a gender bias, I’ve seen people who are very good at analyzing business models and they are female, and I’ve seen very good ones that are male as well. So we just shouldn’t have this gender bias toward investing.

On the whole, there’s no difference between women and men, but there are maybe certain characteristics which are different, for example on the board of a company, female board members I’ve seen tend to have more empathy, they are able to put aside the egos. Generally, many female board members don’t have as big an ego, and they can communicate more effectively.

When I started my career in venture capital in Silicon Valley, I still remember a very prominent male VC who told me that it’s harder to succeed as a female VC because most of the founders were male and they prefer male VCs. So I think it’s sometimes chicken and egg: do you have female GP funds that would invest more in women or would you have more female founders and then make it easier for females to become GPs as well?

When I came to China, it was quite a pleasant change because there were a lot more women in the workforce. Even though we are still the minority, on the whole there have been very successful female VCs in China. I do think that over time, what I’ve seen is that there’s been a lot more awareness of this issue and a lot more emphasis on trying to do the right thing, which is good both for women and as well as for the funds that you may have overlooked a certain demographic group, so I do believe that we’re moving in the right direction.

At AC Ventures, we found that we have 40% of our founders are female and 40% of the ones in high senior management positions are also female. This is without setting up any gender-focused fund and even prior to me joining the firm, so I think that a lot of progress has been made and it would be nice if one day we don’t even have to talk about this topic and we just have no gender bias at all.

Do not let any gender bias prevent you from achieving your dream. You might encounter it, but you know it’s not something that should hold you back, and do see if there are other people that can help you – you don’t have to feel that everything is just falling on your own shoulders, whether it’s child care or other aspects. Find people to help you along the way to mentor you; people have gone through the same challenges as you, so it would be very helpful.

Shuo Chen, General Partner, IOVC

It’s really hard to put stereotypes to what female founders versus male founders are like because I’ve seen folks that break the stereotype, whether female founders or male founders, but at the high level, I would say a couple of things. First, it acknowledges that female founders have received less funding, at least in the US. We’ve seen that actually out of all the venture capital that has been written out just in terms of the proportional split, more money has gone to male founders throughout the pandemic and less money than before in history written to female founders, which I think means that there is an opportunity to identify female founders running startups that are relatively undervalued just because female founders as a population are receiving less capital.

And then the second part is that we’ve seen the data in the US, over a decade-long longitudinal study, that companies that have a female co-founder on the team tend to be 67% more likely to stay alive ten years later than if it was an all-male team.

On a board level, on American boards of public companies, if they have one additional female board member, they are significantly less likely as a company to get into situations of fraud and get in trouble and be persecuted for all of that, so it is proven – whether it is among co-founders or board members – that additional diversity of thought is helpful.

As we think about supporting female founders, we should make sure that we have an equitable system set up from day one. If you keep on building a legacy system, technical debt just builds up further and further, but I have a lot of faith in younger generations not having that diversity debt from day one because I think at least the Gen Z founders who we work with now are much more thoughtful about including a diverse team and when you have a diverse group of co-founders you are more likely to hire a more diverse team of employees. Those kinds of effects ripple throughout the ecosystem.

We should better feature role models like Helen and Gwen here, because it’s really hard to be what you can’t see, and if you never even knew this was a possibility, how can you ever even aspire to be that?

I had no idea what venture capital was for most of my educational career, I think it was really after I had accidentally stumbled into entrepreneurship that I even knew that being an investor was a career path. So getting exposure as early as possible to all these career options and seeing other amazing women is such an important point.

In terms of advice for young entrepreneurs when they start careers, I would mention if relationship building or even the concept of networking feels like too many things, just break it down into a super manageable piece that you feel you can repeat on either a weekly or monthly basis. For example, if it means reaching out and catching up with someone once a month, if that feels manageable, then stick to that and make sure you do it once a month. If that feels like too much, make it once a quarter to reach out to someone and make sure you maintain that relationship, so if you just set one area of focus that you feel is important and helpful to you and stick to that habit and repeat it regularly that adds up to tremendous benefits in the long run, I couldn’t recommend that more.

Gwendolyn Regina, Investment Director, BNB Chain

(Moderator: Shuo brought up a point that females get fewer funds than males when it comes to doing startups. Do you think setting up female-focus funds to support investing in female advanced startups is a good way to promote women’s entrepreneurship?)

Female-focus funds, I mean to each our own right. I think there are many funds without biased agendas and focused on investing in underrepresented minorities, which are all good in different ways.

There’s some systemic bias against underrepresented minorities in general, so I think I probably would not do a female-focus fund, but for people focusing on women-focus funds. Because looking at a targeted segment does really make sure that you’re more open-minded, you’re almost forcing your team and people who are joining your fund to be more open-minded, it’s almost like a key thing if I tell you not to think of a pink elephant, you will think of a pink elephant, right? So not saying that investing in underrepresented minorities, females or others included but more like there is a certain positive to be said about female-focused funds.

(Moderator: In addition to female-focused funds, do you think there’s a better way to promote female entrepreneurship in this ecosystem?)

Many many different ways, and in general we need education on all the stats that show again mentioned. This is education that we need across the board to feed to males as well, so I do think that there is value to just be more inclusive from the get-go and educate the non-represented, the non-minorities essentially, so in this particular case talking about gender, we just need more people to be more aware, because we cannot assume that just because a female you know that there is a lack or know that they’re underrepresented, this is gender-free bias to some extent, so we do need all kinds of people to be more aware of the stuff that we’ve talked about.

And I would say that if you face bias, it reflects more on them than you, so don’t let that affect your own self-confidence. And I would say, in general, people who create bias often do so just because they lack awareness, in a sense ignorance, so doing some education on your part also helps the other person and the other person can be grateful. 

As AI technology becomes a ubiquitous invisible force in our daily life, traditional fields such as medical research and development have embraced the technology to speed up processes and change the industry. 

Wen Shuhao, the founder of AI-powered drug developer XTalPi, said, “the door for the digitalized drug industry, intelligent automation, and AI-driven drug development has opened.”

Wen shared his views on how AI works in the process of drug research and development and discussed what startup they would invest in a fireside chat at the BEYOND Expo 2022, held online at BEYOND Metaverse on Sept. 23. 

Using AI in drug discovery and development

First, we need to know what AI is before we figure out what AI drug discovery is. From our perspective, AI is all about collecting, connecting, computing capacity, and sharing data worldwide. 

In terms of AI drug discovery, it’s all about using AI algorithms to help us understand drug structures such as AlphaGo 2. 

Compared to traditional chemistry, looking at hundreds of millions of molecules, we can do many properties predictions and then form a feedback system, which is what AI can help us with. 

That’s our interpretation of the essence of AI drug discoveries. This is a new paradigm instead of relying on humans for drug discovery. We can use huge computing power and algorithms for more effective drug discovery and development.

[We] hold great expectations in artificial intelligence for drug research and development. AI in the drug industry is an inevitable trend. The door for the digitalized drug industry, intelligent automation, and AI-driven drug development has opened. It does not happen overnight but is a process.

XTalPi is pretty lucky. Most of the leading companies in this industry started in 2015. In the past couple of years, we raised about $100 million. The top 20 pharmaceutical companies have established collaborative relationships with my company.  

AI drug development is about building the most efficient feedback system, not just the algorithm. Whether the score your AI or algorithm produces can be fed back to the AI in the most efficient experimental way matters too.

What startup would you invest in?

We want to lower the barrier to drug development. So we want to be able to help more biological and farming companies so that they can develop more drugs and benefit the entire industry. 

And to do that, we were able to develop and incubate many ecosystem partners so that we can also give feedback to the industry and get returns from this. 

And there are a lot of unmet needs in the industry. For example, we helped two companies — one work on self-immunity and another on stomach cancer — [on fundraising.] Both are small startups with huge market value and facing difficulties accessing early rounds of funding. Within a year, we help them to get funding. I think they are doing great things, and their founders also have great expertise and much experience in medical practice and have published five or six articles in Nature. 

And they are also the first top-ranking researchers in their specialized fields, so we can help them scale. And also another company is doing AI medicine to develop a delivery system. So within three years, they gained several rounds of funding, and they could grow 50 times or 100 times faster than before. And we’re able to develop and help to grow these companies.

From transportation to defense to smartphones, graphene, the lightweight and ultra-strong material, can be used in various fields and has the potential to become a ubiquitous engineering material. 

Jiaxing Huang, chair professor of materials at Westlake University, shared his views on graphene and talked about why the material is important for modern industry and what China has been doing in the field at a fireside chat at the BEYOND Expo 2022, held online at BEYOND Metaverse on Sept. 21. 

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Why is graphene important?

Let’s look at the material science of graphene’s structure. The basic structure of the whole graphene family is single atomic layers of carbon. It’s carbon formed of single atoms – and that’s the fundamental structural characteristic of graphene.

So based on this structural characteristic, what exciting properties does it have?

The first is hardness. Graphene is single atomic in type and has a free-standing structure, making it an incredibly strong material. 

The second is its thinness. The material is made of a single atomic layer, unlike other kinds of material like paper, which can be made to different levels of thinness. So it will only have one atom thickness. And its electrical properties lead to a strong ability to absorb light. 

Graphene also has other properties, such as conducting electricity, producing heat, and possessing stable chemical reactivity. It won’t change if you leave it in the air for an extended period, making it convenient for various usages.

How can graphene disrupt industries?

Graphene could become a widely used engineering material like aluminum alloy, which is so ubiquitous that you don’t even know it’s there.

I think the application of graphene won’t happen in one major eruption, but a more incremental and transformative process. The material may end up being used in your phone, in your computer or even in your clothes, like a graphene coat or a suit of armor. 

It has the potential to be everywhere in every corner of your life. And if you want to use a material for heat management in fields such as outer space and deep sea exploration, graphene, as a non-metallic material, has lighter weight and better radiation resistance. That’s why I say it will become a fundamental engineering material.

Smartphones already adopt graphene for cooling. The material is lighter than copper and performs better in heat conduction. Although not exactly a killer[-level] application. Using graphene in smartphones is a great preparation for future killer[-level] applications. 

China’s advance in graphene development

In China, we now have a notable production capability of graphene in a single layer and a few layers. Thicker layers are made of folded single layers, and China can be said to be the best in this area. China also leads in the number of graphite powder manufacturers worldwide. There are fibrous, foam-shaped and a variety of other forms, too, where Chinese firms have done pretty well.

However, this industry has a high technological barrier. There are a lot of startups and American entities [doing similar things]. But they will soon meet a bottleneck in that the conductivity of [produced graphene] is two orders of magnitude worse than copper. Yet it’s ten times more difficult when you try to advance and close that gap. However, I have seen research results and applications of graphene in China [close to copper’s performance], which is really extraordinary.

Companies have been exploring different gaming and social experiences in the Web3 spaces as they continue to build out the next generation of 3D internet experiences. Ownership and community have been essential to these new experiments, as well as new web infrastructure like blockchain.

Saro Mckenna, co-founder of AlienWorlds, and Mable Jiang, chief revenue officer at STEPN, shared their views on SocialFi and GameFi, and what could be different in from our current internet experience. The panel discussion was a part of the BEYOND Expo 2022 Web3 Summit, held online at BEYOND Metaverse on Sept. 26. 

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Saro Mckenna, co-founder of AlienWorlds

We think that a blockchain construction is really required to be called a metaverse, because only with a blockchain construction can you have people really coming together, peer to peer, who are not simply there because of a centralized platform owner. 

The first thing that we’re doing inside of the metaverse at scale is gaming. But there are many other aspects of our lives that happen within the metaverse, including education, work of other kinds, and certainly, social interaction is in the metaverse, which we’re already seeing through gaming. 

There has been a lot of content creation and especially novel content creation. People are pushing the boundaries of what technology can do. What I love to see is the way that people come together. People are just so ingenious, and we’ll find a way to add value to any system and to create things. In AlienWorlds, there have been whole companies that have been created servicing the AlienWorlds’ metaverse. Some of them have created leaderboards and competitions that have even been built out a little bit, technically. 

For the social-fi elements, if something’s adding value to a system, I think the question is more about who’s capturing that value – the person themselves or the platform owner. And that’s the real distinction between Web 2.0 and Web3.

So I’m not sure if I would necessarily emphasize the Fi (decentralized finance, DeFi) so much if the person is only involved in the system because they want to earn money. I think that’s potentially the connotation when you put the Fi suffix onto something. It’s more about empowerment and just the next iteration of property rights, and that gets extended into a metaverse environment under blockchain construction. And then everything that results from that, all the potential and creativity, get unleashed when you acknowledge the sovereignty of people’s capturing into the platform itself.

I think one of the things that’s kind of interesting is what we see on social media. People have been pushing the boundaries of that for themselves as influencers, right? So these are people who are like super sharers on social media. And they do manage to monetize a bit of a position for themselves through a lot of hard work. But they’re sort of working against the boundaries of what’s been created. It’s only if they happen to be a breakout success can they earn something like a living wage.

Whereas what we’ve done in Web3, the starting point is that people just own the fruits of what they’re doing beyond that and love how they transfer that value around. So that doesn’t mean that there aren’t paid services or that everything’s free. There are plenty of commercial services that get offered in the metaverse. But people themselves will choose to engage in them. And I think that creates far more creativity [in the system].

Mable Jiang, chief revenue officer at STEPN

I would be actually very straightforward about SocialFi, I actually never liked adding the word Fi after everything. I think that’s a very mimetic way of doing things. When we talked about our product, we just mentioned that there’s like social element instead of SocialFi.

Within the whole metaverse, and regardless of how you define metaverse, not everything needs to be powered by blockchain, that are valuable, and needs to be actually stored and have instant finality will require blocking settlement within what we are seeing today.

There are a few things that actually could be monetized, influence is one of them, such as social graphs. That’s something that could actually be recorded by the blockchain. Also, there are a lot of actual activities that people will try to do to accumulate their social relationships. But those activities, those proof of work, do not really have to be recorded every single step on chain, but rather just a result of it. 

There are a lot of interesting potential things that people could explore around, like anything related to social, and could also be captured by tokenizing the specific names or specific results of that social behavior. But I think the process of it probably will still likely to happen in a Web 2.5 stage.

I do think game-fi or like extra to earn has their own merit to it in a certain historical period of time because it has bootstrapped a lot of users within a short period of time. However, I think if you do want to keep these people within your ecosystem, you do need to think about the question of externality. So then you know it’s about maybe working with external brands, or maybe with like some other lifestyle applications to really give the users who you use the extra to earn kind of models, other things to do, or actually to do something that’s like creating values, or at least like creating values for themselves.

One thing that we were trying was opening our merch store (merchandise), but it’s not just a simple shop on our website. It’s actually going to be rendered by a partner within their actual virtual merch store. And people just go in, and they can buy, and they will have the ownership of that. The NFT is for people to get physical merch. That’s an example of the hybrid model. So I think there are many things that we can obviously leverage and go around with it.

Major companies and brands are investing money and technology into the metaverse with visions of endless marketing and promotion potential – from NFTs and avatars to games and digital products. As the technology is still growing and evolving, how can we learn from those who are already diving into this virtual world? And what are the experiences of major brands inside the metaverse?

Jim Feng, VP of NBA China, joined moderator Hanson Wang, the Deloitte China Metaverse CoE leader, to discuss the business practices of big brands in the metaverse and share their views and methodology when analyzing the metaverse market. The discussion took place at the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse.

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jim Feng, NBA China VP

We believe the metaverse does have huge potential value for products especially to increase different experiences that we cannot experience in our real life. VR is a very good example. If you wear and watch VR, it will create another world for you, something that you can never imagine until you try it out. 

Though there are still some technological boundaries of VR that might be too heavy to wear, and sometimes the resolution of goggle glasses is not that cool, but fundamentally it just creates a new experience to compare with our real life. There are so many things we already have in real life. It’s very hard if we want to create a new world or experience, but once you create it, you have a new industry like the cell phone or the Internet. Nobody knows what the future will look like at the beginning here, but people need to keep polishing and improving the experience, the quality value of the content, and the production value of the content. Once it passes the line, then it will become a new part of our life.

The NBA is already trying different things in China, and my suggestion for those big brands wishing to start or to continue their pilot of the metaverse in the Chinese market is that they have to comply with the law in China. And regulations can be different from territory to territory, so don’t just assume that what works in other regions will work here in China. Companies have to be very conservative and explore what the regulations allow, and the type of restrictions.

Companies or brands also need some good partners and some reliable big companies. Lastly, they should be conservative, patient, and accumulate in small ways.

The Covid-19 pandemic has not only changed the ways people live but also accelerated the development of metaverse technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) over the past few years. This unleashes the opportunity for internet users to explore a connected, three-dimensional online world through avatars and other ways.

Representatives from consumer electronics firm HTC and Nio-backed Chinese AR glass maker Nreal talked about the ongoing migration from the mobile internet space to a virtual-physical blended metaverse at the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse. They also discussed the potential of the metaverse and the challenges in scaling the technology.

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Xu Chi, founder and CEO of Nreal

It has been quite challenging for us during Covid because we have a relatively small team but operate in multiple countries. Especially during the early days of the pandemic, it was hard for us to go to local stores, gather customer feedback, and assemble offline campaigns to attract customers.

However, it’s also an opportunity for us because people can’t go out too often, and they would love to browse online to find some cool gadgets. I think VR/AR definitely got some boosts out of that, and many companies are taking this opportunity. Instantly, you have a chance to lower the cost for customers to try something new. There has been a boost for VR/AR in general over the last couple of years, and I do think that trend will continue even after the Covid period.

We are building a computing platform that is getting ready to host more and more 3D content and can attract people coming from the mobile internet to the spatial internet or metaverse. We must display true 3D content with VR/AR devices, and there must be a more complicated, brand-new optical display that is driving the entire thing, compared with the traditional 2D display technology we’ve been using for cellphones and televisions.

Internally, we call the metaverse the spatial internet, and it’s kind of like the next internet. We also think that’s like five to 10 years ahead of us, and we need to find out what are the best use cases that people would be interested in dedicating their time to them. How we can actually evolve from today into the future means a lot of new questions and opportunities as well.

Alvin Wang Graylin, president of HTC China

It’s clear that over the last couple of years, the Covid situation has actually created an acceleration for the adoption of and interest in [VR/AR], while there is growing heat and hype around this metaverse concept. These trends are creating a new inflection point, both in terms of customer interest to adopt as well as investor interest to put more money into this space, with entrepreneurs and content creators both wanting to get into the space.

Overall, I think we’re quite happy with where things are headed, and we recently released completely new generations of our products. Now, these devices are getting to a point where they’re much more accessible and comfortable and attract customers that used not to be open to using these devices. That’s going to help gain a new customer base and expand the overall market.

There’s a lot of misunderstanding of what the metaverse is. I think it’s important to kind of set the stage and say: Hey, the metaverse is something that is coming. It’s going to take five to 10 years to realize in terms of having a fully interoperable, open-world concept where people can get into it with any device, whether an AR device or a VR device and be able to go into any of these 3D virtual worlds with a common ID. That’s what the metaverse promises.

Metaverse is kind of the 3D version of the internet that we’ve been building over the last 30 years. In the near future, most people will probably consume it on their PCs or their tablets, because those are the devices that are out there in the world. But as time goes on, we’ll see more people migrate to a more immersive experience with an XR [Extended Reality] device.

The total amount of money invested in Web3, which is widely regarded as the next generation of the internet, reached more than $23 billion in 2022, according to Crunchbase data. Though venture capital seems to be slowing down their Web3 funding rush, Web3 is still among the most interesting areas for VCs.

Three guests from Web3 and investment companies spoke with moderator ShinWei Teh, an Investment Banker at Credit Suisse, about whether Web3 investment is all hype or based on science, as well as how to evaluate the performance of Web3 companies and other Web3-relate questions at the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online in BEYOND Metaverse.

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner, Dragonfly

One word to describe my latest thoughts on the recent development in the Web3 space is macro.

We’ve seen this entirely different macro environment coming and beating down on all risk assets since last November. Crypto, of course, is the quintessential risk asset, so it’s been at the center of the macro fire stream that’s been hitting almost every asset class. At this point, we obviously just saw the Fed raise rates, markets once again are trying to digest what exactly is going on and crypto is no different. What Nasdaq did, you probably know what crypto did that day.

I think there’s going to be some time until we get out of this macro environment and there’s some return to normalcy, and I think crypto can get some room to breathe again, but I think until we get past this macro instability, this is going to be what crypto looks like for the probably the next six to twelve months.

In my opinion, there hasn’t been too much money invested in Web3 if you look into the return for folks investing in January. Anybody who invested money in January has lost money because the entire industry has gone down as with almost every asset class. 

If you are investing in tech generally in January, the money is also down quite a lot. Now, you could argue that’s a sign people were putting too much money into these assets,  but the right way to think about it is there’s an adjustment of the price of risk because of interest rates and the macro environment.

The reality about what makes crypto and Web3 so powerful is that Web3 is pure software innovation, which means that your cost structure is extremely slim. It doesn’t require a lot of capital, you don’t need to build plants, manufacture anything, and invest a ton into hardware for the most part, so that makes the space very capital efficient. 

As the valuations have come down over the last six months, what we’ve seen is a lot of late-stage capital that was really crowding the market late last year, and I felt there was way too much money in the space and teams that really didn’t need to raise as much capital as they did end up becoming overfunded.

A lot of growth capital is pulled back, if you look at the big groups that were throwing money at the top like SoftBank, Tiger, and a lot of these players, they’ve pulled back. What you have left is that most of the capital that’s still investing into crypto are the crypto native investors, who spend all their time in this industry, who understand very deeply the technology and have a better ability to discriminate where exactly the R&D money being well spent and where is it being malinvested. 

So I think in the long run there’s a ton of applications that need to get built, but they have to get built at the right time with the right level of resources. Giving people a bunch of money right now when the infrastructure is not fully in place yet is mostly going to result in the money sitting around not really doing anything useful. So the pipelining of investments is very important, it’s too easy to make bad investments in Web3, which is part of why it’s so difficult to invest in this industry.

Milton Santiago, Global Head of Digital Services, SVB

I’ll use education to describe my thoughts on Web3. What I’ve seen over the last six months is a hunger and an appetite of people in all classes and all lifestyles – consumers, business people, and executives who want to know more about the Web3 space, and they’re really driven to understand how this could transform their business.

I remember an article that I read saying 82% of CEOs felt that Web3, cryptocurrencies, and the metaverse are something they need to invest in now and over the next three years. So there is a voracious appetite to learn more about how they can do so during this time when we have advancements in speed if you think about the internet speeds that we have now. If you think about the cell phone speeds equipped with  5G, they enable a form of AI, Web3, and AR that we could never have had before, like the phone that you have in your pocket, something like this that could provide so much value and immersive experience, not only to do business but to express yourself and to share, is changing the way we communicate and it’s changing the way we do business. And that appetite is just every single person I talk to asks me what should I think about when it comes to Web3, crypto, metaverse, and how could this influence my business, so it’s education.

In terms of how to evaluate the performances of Web3 companies, user sentiment is an important part. You can’t underestimate the power of marketing of communication and value. I have two more things really well with more traditional businesses and that is the roadmap, which isn’t meaning roadmap short-term here, but we’re talking long-term, so the problem that you solve today, a need, or uncover an unsatisfied want tomorrow, so having a long road plan that gets communicated, that drives adoption, that drives user sentiments, which is going to create a really solid foundation when it comes to any type of company that is focused on Web3.

And then the last thing is going to be brass facts, kind of traditional things. If you have a utility roadmap, obviously, it’s like what’s the revenue model look like? What’s the profitability of the solution at times to invest in an organization or in a solution that may not have the highest margins? But if I’ll have user sentiment so solid in a solid roadmap, it goes down to term,  instead of being a short-term win, it becomes a longer win. And there are so many examples in the market today where if you have those kinds of ingredients that really deliver a very sound solution that will frankly survive any market condition, because these cycles that we see have existed for years and the companies that survive are those that really focus on those things.

XIAO Feng, Chairman of Hashkey

The word to describe my thoughts on Web3 is “application.” Before 2022, investments in Web3 were more focused on infrastructure. And since Ethereum2.0 promises to process 100,000 transactions per second, meaning that all the technical foundations are in place for a major explosion of applications, I think as the Web3 infrastructure matures and create real values, VCs will shift their focus on a wide variety of other applications.

For now, the real investors in the Web3 space are still some pioneers, and there’s a large number of institutional investors have not entered the space yet. But in my opinion, Web3 application-level funding in the future will reach tens of billions of dollars to support its growth.

I am optimistic about the future development of Web3, no matter in the short, medium, or long term. And I believe it’s a combination of technological innovations that can bring disruptive paradigm change, which is not simply a marginal improvement to traditional things.

Besides, since international geopolitical turbulence and structural inflation may last for the next two years, Bitcoin’s natural ability to fight inflation and protect against geopolitical turmoil could be more fully recognized by the market.

The world is facing various challenges, among which one of the most urgent is the sustainable development of food production and environmental protection. As food demand continues to rise amid a growing population and global climate change, calls for advanced technologies and innovations to minimize agriculture’s environmental footprint and ensure a safe and abundant food supply are more important than ever.

Representatives from Swedish vegan milk producer Oatly and XAG, a Chinese agricultural drone developer, talked about how plant-based foods and drones could help improve biodiversity and, more broadly, how businesses leverage technology to address sustainability challenges at the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse.

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Michelle Yu, associate director of sustainability at Oatly

Oatly is the first oat drink company globally, and we focus on people and the planet, which is how our company was initiated. Sustainability is one of our core values, and it’s very well incorporated into the straight decision-making process in the company. Our vision is to be a company that leads a global plant-based movement to reduce cow milk products by half. We also aim to produce sustainable oat-based products, maximize nutritional value and minimize environmental impact.

We have developed four ambitions in our sustainability plan. The first one: We want to give back to nature and communities where we source by improving biodiversity and boosting farmers’ income. The second ambition is to reduce our climate footprint caused by Oatly’s production by 70 % in a decade.

The third one is that we are producing in facilities that we wish to meet our future factory criteria, which include being safe and inclusive in the working environment. We also source 100% renewable energy in our operation, from a supply chain that uses 100% sustainable transportation. The last but not the least ambition is about leading a shift from dairy to a plant-based diet.

When we compare oat milk with cow milk in the same volume, Oatly uses 90% less water in the life cycle of producing oat milk and, generally, there is 70% less greenhouse gas emission from oat milk. This shows how different food options can have different environmental impacts.

Oatly is growing very fast in China, which draws attention to our climate and environmental footprints. Because global transportation creates a lot of gas emissions, we’ve already started our in-house production in Asia, with one factory in Singapore and the other in Ma’anshan, China. The local-for-local strategy not only contributes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions but also makes us closer to our consumers so that we can provide fresh, localized products with nutrition.

Dr. Tong Wei, head of branding and global affairs at XAG

As an agri-tech company, XAG has been in 50 countries and regions, especially in Southeast Asia and Latin America. In the agricultural space, we face a common challenge: an aging society and labor shortages. Agriculture is an ancient industry. With the development of technology, fewer and fewer people would like to get involved in the industry. Talented teenagers and young people would like to stay in the city because of urbanization. They can enjoy a very nice and fancy lifestyle, rather than living in the countryside.

Here’s an example of how we guarantee efficiency and help farmers grow enough food to feed the world: Traditionally, you have to spray pesticides and raise crops hydroponically, which means you push all the liquid into the soil. Now we can purely use the chemicals and save 90% of the water needed using a highly precise method of spraying. This benefits hundreds and millions of people around the world.

Drones can not only spray liquids but also spread granular fertilizer and seeds, so the drone’s function is expanded for environmental protection. Let me give you an impressive example: There was a bush fire in the state of Victoria in Australia before the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019, in which around 90% of the forest was burned and destroyed in the natural disaster.

The state government found it difficult to make a recovery and do anything for reforestation after the fire because it was hard for human beings, or any other vehicles, to get into the core areas of the forest. Our local partners provided a comprehensive solution, including using drones to seed from the air, and several weeks after seeding, the trees grew up fast in that area. We got a thank you letter from Victoria state.

The technology of data, networks, and 3D visuals have developed so much in the past decade that many people and companies are now in the early stages of building the next generation of web experience. They call it Web3, in contrast to the current internet experience (Web 2.0). It’s still too early to pinpoint what that experience might bring, but many are hoping for a more decentralized experience where users have more ownership over their digital assets and the data they generate. 

Three tech entrepreneurs in the Web3 space discuss the core differences between Web3 and our current internet experience at a panel discussion that took place on Sept. 26 at the Beyond Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse. They are Wilson Wei, founder and CEO of social graph protocol CyberConnect; Eric Liu, founder and CEO of digital clothing design software company Style3D; and Suji Yan, founder and CEO of Mask Network, a portal that allows users to use decentralized applications on traditional social media platforms. 

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Wilson Wei, founder and CEO of CyberConnect

We have no asset ownership on the internet during the Web 2.0 era, and thanks to blockchain technology, now we do [in Web3]. For the first time, users will be able to own their own stuff completely decentralized, without any kind of centralized party granting them the right to own any assets. That’s why we’re building the social protocol to give data, especially important data like social graph data, back in the hands of users. 

In the Web 2.0 era, there is a lot of important social data. For example, you know how Facebook login was so powerful back in when they opened up the API, and in China, WeChat login is super powerful. For users, when you login into different scenarios and sometimes you’re allowed to port your social graph to the other app, but sometimes not. A lot of people don’t actually know why. The reason is that you don’t own that data at all. 

Centralized platforms, on which you spend years building your social graph, own all the data you created on their platforms. And that’s a problem. 

For content creators, like any YouTubers who spend years building up their livelihood on YouTube, they have absolutely no bargaining power against the platform because they own zero data, and they have no option to easily migrate to any other platform. If they try to create another account on any other new media platform, they’ll have to bootstrap all over again. That’s a huge problem for social status mobility or social capital mobility, and it wasn’t possible before on Web 2.0 because the infrastructure is purely centralized.

I think owning your social status is the key thing, and also, we’ll have to build the infrastructure to enable users to build their status in a way that they own it. And that’s what I think, other than crypto assets, is the most important thing that’s different from Web 2.0 to Web3.

Eric Liu, founder and CEO of Style3D

We are in the fashion business, and before it was a physical fashion business, now it’s a digital fashion business. 

The copyright of digital assets in fashion will be much easier than Web2. All the decentralization can generate copyright-based digital content at a low cost, make it more convenient, create more convenient transactions, and bring in more profit.

In the physical world, we are mostly using computers to solve pain points. For example, we provide our core products, such as 3D digital product software and digital asset management platform and online collaboration platform and others. But in the virtual world, what we can provide is the 3D virtual cloth and fashion infrastructures, such as the technology and application of 3D design and modeling and 3D digital content itself. 

We are trying to connect the physical world and digital world through digital twins technology, and we hope that whether it is the digitalization of the physical world or rendering of the 3D world, we are going to be the provider of underlining technology and content as long as you want to create something in fashion.

Suji Yan, founder and CEO of Mask Network

The decentralized social network is like the public forum of ancient Rome. This is Web3 Rome and in every aspect, Web 2.0 and the current ecosystem we live in have failed us at some point, and it’s not improved in the last 10 years since the mobile internet came to life. So I think that’s something we are going to change. 

Decentralization is rebuilding the social consensus. I think that in the next 20 years, a new kind of social consensus will be formed during this crypto war against the community of regulators. And we’re going to have new laws established during these DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations), during the inception of these DAOs. 

You don’t want a single point of failure, which could happen at any point and get your asset stolen or just vanish. Decentralization could help with that. It also means the consensus comes from the community, the crowd, a decentralized, non-biased decision group of decision-makers, or from machines. That kind of trust level is what decentralization could provide that a centralized party could never provide.

Even if [a centralized party] is a great company. It’s a great product. It’s a great team, you know, companies like Google, it’s a great brand. They said ‘don’t do evil,’ but it’s always don’t do evil. It’s not like you cannot do evil. Decentralization cannot do evil and cannot be evil. You don’t have to trust anybody; you just trust the coding, the virtual machine, the blockchain, and that will promote so much more productivity when we collaborate from all aspects because of trust. 

The “metaverse” has quickly found its way into mainstream vocabulary since last year, with an array of tech majors eager to stake their claim within it. But how should we really define the metaverse and how can we ensure it’s built in a way that works for everyone? Moreover, where do its boundaries with reality lie and what impact will it have upon our more tangible world?  

Harry Shum, founding chairman of the International Digital Economy Academy (IDEA) and a former executive vice president of Microsoft, explored these topics and shared his vision for the future of this field as part of a keynote speech delivered on Sept. 26 at the Beyond Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse. 

The following transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity:

People initially became excited about the metaverse because of the publicity from Facebook’s name change to Meta and the excitement around Roblox’s successful IPO. 

To understand the metaverse, I’d like to define metaverse technology in four layers: application, interaction, entity, and protocol. 

Application is where human beings experience the metaverse and participate in activities to accomplish certain purposes. Interaction is the physical process where human beings connect with the metaverse, receive the metaverse, experience the metaverse, and have fun through interactions with others. 

What kind of entities will exist in the metaverse? How will entities in the physical world get reflected in the metaverse? What about AIS [Association for Information Systems] in the metaverse? How do we define and create entities in the metaverse and specify the rules for the activities that take place there?

And just like the physical universe where time and space are defined, the metaverse needs its own protocols to define how everything is connected and how information gets exchanged.

Many important problems need to be addressed. For instance, how do we define the ownership of any entity? A good way to understand these technological layers is to compare them with counterparts in the physical world and the internet.

In fact, many people view the metaverse as a significant extension of the internet as we further move into the virtual world. 

1. Application

In the physical world, for instance, a market is an application where people come to sell and buy goods on the internet. People can stay at home and buy goods with e-commerce applications. In the metaverse, people can try and experience goods in immersive ways before ordering them.  

2. Interaction

In the physical world, people use pen, paper, speech, and language to exchange information. With the internet, people use computers and smartphones, interacting via apps like WeChat on a 2D flat screen. With high-quality AR and VR equipment, people can immerse themselves in the metaverse and have much richer multimodal information exchanges. We have come a long way with AR and VR technology. Yet great challenges remain in building powerful and lightweight AR glasses. It’s great to see exciting brain-computer interface research lately, although it’s far away from being practical.

3. Entity

Entities in the physical world can be persons, companies, organizations, and all sorts of objects. Interestingly, entities are not clearly called out on the internet. Rather, entities are mechanically incorporated into independent web apps on the internet, which has led to them being defined by powerful apps. By introducing entities back into the metaverse, we make sure that entities are not defined by apps, but belong to the entire society or metaverse.

4. Protocols

The physical world can be accurately defined in space-time coordinates. For instance, distance and relationship. With protocols like HTTP and HTML, the internet has its own definition of relationship and distance. With the help of blockchain, we have records of activities and relationships between human beings, AI beings, and objects in the metaverse.  

We should have metaverse equivalence protocols like HDEP and HTML and definitely need to have a browser for the metaverse so that we can keep exploring the metaverse. Let me show you an example of AI beings in the metaverse.

This a newly-released app called Xiao Ice Island [Xiao Bing Dao, in Chinese] is where human beings, AI beings, and objects interact in a metaverse. When you start the app and get on your Xiao Ice Island, you get to meet 10 AIs with various capabilities like seeing and chatting. 

Xiao Ice Island is the first AI social network in the metaverse. Like it or not, we are entering the metaverse as we spend more and more time in the digital world.  

Here at the BEYOND Expo, many exciting metaverse technologies, applications, and systems are on display. I’m looking forward to sessions that cover a variety of topics in the metaverse from smart cities to branding, from entertainment to hardware.

We are at the beginning of a long journey into the metaverse. The best way to predict the future is by creating it. There is so much to be invented in the metaverse from technology to product to business models. Let’s do it together. Thank you very much.

In recent years there has been a concerted push within the field of consumer electronics toward smart devices and digital services, with the emergence and growth of sectors such as smart home, digital health metrics, and online shopping tech. But how has the pandemic impacted such trends?  

Becky Center, CEO of Indiegogo, Alex Yang, co-founder and COO of Tuya Smart, and Romeo Luo, General Manager of Asia Pacific and Europe at Anker discussed these major global tech movements, Covid-19’s impact, and future trends at a panel discussion on Sept. 26 at the Beyond Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse. 

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Becky Center, CEO of Indiegogo

From a global perspective, the developing trend of smart home products and smart home services is unstoppable. From an Asian perspective, clear trends can be seen in smart cleaners, smart storage for toys, smart child care, and other add-ons related to in-house scenarios.

I’m the kind of person who wants to buy cleaning products because I want the cleaning robot to help me clean my home while I’m asleep. Smart homes and smart security products have been on the rising trend for a while.

Another [rising] area is dining. There are all kinds of small home appliances for manufacturing food in Asia. The speed of development here has been very fast and during the Covid outbreak, sales of such products got even better. Even areas like generators and batteries for family use saw sales growth. Consumers are paying more and more attention to such products. And it is easy to understand why sales of such products are rising during the pandemic.

Alex Yang, co-founder and COO of Tuya Smart

The biggest pusher of technological progress is that people are getting lazier, and they are starting to care about their health. Also, people increasingly rely on their smartphones to control everything, like their facilities and devices at home. They even want to put their health data into phones, and I think that’s a habit that will drive technology forward, helping people to live healthier life.

People usually don’t like to work out, so they need to have some power to force them to exercise, such as seeing more data. They need data from apps to tell if they have a good workout and encourage them to continue. If they missed three days’ attendance, they would want to get back on track to continue exercising. And this is a very popular trend in our view.

People need to know how many calories they are burning and how much energy they are using in their homes, and more consumers are using data to drive their behavior. Those tools have been high in demand.

Romeo Luo, general manager of Asia Pacific & Europe at Anker

When we talk about changes in [buying] behavior, we have to start with the changes in sales behavior. Many brick-and-mortar stores have opened their own online stores, and major supermarket suppliers have set up online platforms. For companies like Walmart, selling online or offline is the same because they have integrated the two channels.

We also have livestreaming channels on Taobao, which makes it not only an online e-commerce platform. Sellers can interact with consumers in real time, which is a great change. It can better enhance interaction, recording the traffic trend and direction. And we are basically following this trend, tracking consumers’ consumption habits and needs, hoping they can find products in the most accessible channels. For example, we know that Austin Li returned a few days ago. He is the king of livestream e-commerce. In the livestreaming room, he can bring waves of sales just by interacting with the audience.

Therefore, we can see the combination of offline products, online sales channels, and communication channels. It would have taken us a decade or two to get there if the pandemic didn’t force us, or it would have taken us a long time globally to get there.

SenseTime’s co-founder Xu Li shared his vision and insights on digital natives of the metaverse and how their habits can redefine business models in the immersive virtual world. This keynote speech took place on Sept. 21 at the Beyond Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse.

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Digital natives of the metaverse

In 2020, Travis Scott’s virtual concert on Fortnite attracted 100 million views from 23 million audiences, generating $20 million in revenue. The show is completely virtual. Why did it attract so many consumers?

We have to talk about it from the perspective of the metaverse natives. From their views, the barrier between the real world and the virtual one is thin. The difference between both worlds can be torn down fairly easily. 

In the traditional internet era, the distinction between the virtual online world and the offline world has always been clear. There is a very clear boundary when people surf online. I remember when we, the first generation [of netizens,] surfed online, we had to dial via modem to get connected, a ritualistic process. But today, in the mobile internet era, we are connected all the time, with all devices.

And that’s why we’re suddenly talking about the word – metaverse – today. The old internet world wasn’t that real. In many cases, it’s not exactly like the real world. So you won’t think of it as a universe. But now, the virtual world is reaching a new level in digitization, vividness, and interactivity, further blurring the boundary between the digital world and the physical world.

And that leads to a new generation of digital natives who do not experience difference [between the two worlds].

Willing to spend on virtual identity

Metaverse natives identify themselves with virtual goods. They are not just buying the things, but an icon, an identity for themselves. 

For example, when we play games in virtual scenes, we may need to enter with an avatar, creating our own digital image.

Since everyone would want a unique identity, even in the virtual world, we want to create our own characteristics. Many of the purchases in the metaverse are driven by people wanting to express their personalities to the outside world. 

Many people would ask whether the metaverse has big commercial potential. I foresee new disruptions to the core business models in the internet age as long as productivity tools and interactive experiences keep improving. 

We can think about what a platform company can do for today’s internet: social networking, searching, e-commerce, and traditional games. In the metaverse, all the current business models on the internet can be redefined. If we think about new business opportunities from the viewpoint of metaverse native, we will get to wilder imaginations.

As many regions around the world enter an adjustment period, startup founders and investors have to adjust to a slower fundraising pace. Still, some investors see the adjustment as a healthy thing since it produces more reasonable valuations, weeds out unproductive firms, and forces founders to focus on creating real value. 

Three veteran investors — Oscar Ramos, General Partner at SOSV and Managing Director at Orbit Startups; Bernard Moon, Co-founder and Partner of Sparklabs; and Jeff Chien, Senior Vice President of Plug and Play — shared their thoughts on how companies can navigate this period, and discussed some of the developing trends at a panel discussion that took place on Sept. 22 at the Beyond Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse. 

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity。

Oscar Ramos, General Partner at SOSV and Managing Director at Orbit Startups

It’s no secret that fundraising has not been easy during the last month. If I had to describe the situation regarding fundraising for startups right now, I’d say the word is slow. For Orbit Startups, we work very closely with many of our portfolio companies across the globe. The common pattern that we’ve seen is that the decision-making process for any investment is taking longer. Every investor is scrutinizing all the decisions even more. 

And right now, I think a lot of investors are trying to analyze how real it is what the company has, how repeatable and scalable is revenue, how dependent are they going to be on capital, how far is their own break-even point in terms of investment, and if they reduce the pace of investment-driven growth, can the company still be sustainable? 

One thing companies need to consider is: Am I a nice to have, or am I a must-have for my customers? And if you are a must-have type of service, how do you compare with the existing alternatives?

A developing trend that we’re more excited about is we see technology as a force for improving the quality of life in emerging markets. Some of the goals that society has are to be able to reach a level of stability and wellbeing – those solutions that are very efficient in terms of cost, very effective in terms of solutions, and sometimes very simple to be inclusive, and require a low barrier of entry in terms of knowledge or technological literacy. So those solutions are eventually going to be able to make a jump and become solutions that are also going to be quite relevant and reasonably competitive in more developed economies. 

We already see that with some of the companies. So I think that trend is an emerging trend where we see new hubs of innovation that will take shape in the future…And we’re very excited about that. We’re looking forward to bringing in more innovation from the rest of the world. 

Bernard Moon, Co-founder and Partner of Sparklabs

For investors, and for entrepreneurs to see this cycle, realize it’s not always about the highest valuation. It’s really about executing with what you have and also hitting your next benchmarks and goals. 

I think [the adjustment period] weeds out certain types of entrepreneurs that might have been just going for a quick money grab. I think it also filters out any bad actors in certain spaces like crypto. So I think it’s a good thing for the overall ecosystem to go through this period of adjustment, and for first-time entrepreneurs to sort of see the cycle. 

I would advise the startup founders to just be persistent. I think in this environment it just takes probably twice as many asks and pitches. A year or so ago, maybe it took 50 meetings or 50 to 100 pitches, maybe it’ll take 200 now. So I think just be persistent. But also, get the basic things right, know the investors that you’re targeting, and what they’re really looking for. And whether that firm has adjusted its strategy.

In terms of general developing trends, we are seeing more innovation on the enterprise software side, especially in even top OECD nations. Besides the US, UK, and certain markets, I think that’s developing further in Asia, whether it’s China, Korea, or Japan, and also continuing in sort of second-tier OECD nations. Crypto infrastructure, I think that’s going to grow, that’s a space we’re watching. 

Also, just overall healthcare innovations. I think that’s going to continue. It was a trend in Covid but I think that it is just further accelerated, whether it’s on the biotech side or even just in terms of software and other innovations.

Jeff Chien, Senior Vice President of Plug and Play

I think one thing that we’ve been seeing is the domestication of products. Especially with some of the heightened political instability, we’ve seen a lot of growth in that. Plug and Play, we work with other Fortune 500 companies in terms of innovation, introducing startups to them. And we’ve been noticing that they’ve been requesting this type of startup from us.

For example, in China, after they purchase the equipment, they’re now looking for something that’s domestic in terms of the software that operates it, as opposed to just looking for the best available technology. So in that area, we’ve been seeing some trends. Cybersecurity, we’re starting to see a bit of a comeback in that area as people started to pay more attention to that. Carbon neutrality has always been a solid area to invest in. So these are some of the areas where we’ve seen some growth. 

Another developing trend we’re also seeing right now is that three years ago when you find something really good in the States, we would say, ‘can I potentially bring that to China?’ and vice versa. Now the mindset has become, ‘well, I see a very good idea for an explosive startup over here in this part of the world. Can I do something similar in a different part of the world?’ So that’s what we’ve been very intrigued to see.

Startups take a lot of pride just saying that ‘I’m this version of that in this particular part of the world,’ knowing that there’s actually a higher barrier since Covid because of some of the political environments. So I think that has also been a developing trend. I think that we will probably continue this for the next two, four, or even six years. 

Founded in 2014, crypto gaming developer and investor Animoca Brands has become one of the leading companies in the metaverse in the last two years, with the company’s portfolio growing to almost 400 investments in Web3-related projects, including Dapper Labs, Decentraland, and Axie Infinity.

Meanwhile, Animoca Brands’s valuation has soared from $10-20 million when it was delisted from the Australian Stock Exchange in 2020 to $6 billion today. Yat Siu, Animoca’s co-founder and chairman, talked about why they are bullish on Web3 gaming and whether the play-to-earn gaming model is sustainable at the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse.

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Jon Russell: How do you see “play-to-earn games” at the moment? Is that completely gone, or can it come back in the next ten years?

Yat Siu: The main point of “play-to-earn games” is that there’s financial value in the transactions that you do inside games that’s visible to the end user if they so choose. One important thing to understand is that the gaming industry today is almost a 200 billion dollar business, of which roughly a hundred and ten billion dollars is being spent on growing and advertising, basically growing these games usually through app installs and so on.

The other thing is that most of the revenue comes from the conversion of less than 3%, I think it’s about 1.9% to 2.7% as the industry average at this point, that means all of you here were probably playing games on a regular basis, but the vast majority never paid for these games. So how is it possible that a game company that never charges can make money? Well, that’s the model, 97% never pay anything for the 3% that do.

And that’s one of the magic elements that rewards the 97% of players who play for free because they contribute to the network effect. Imagine you’re going to Call of Duty and you’re the only player on the field, you’re not going to pay right? You need people to shoot right? So who are the people who shoot the ones who play for free who are having fun and enjoyment, but actually, they’re working inside the game providing entertainment for the other people. And so the question then becomes how much is that worth?

In 2021 when the value increased the way that it did, people got very excited and started to run ahead of themselves in terms of market value, which by the way in all capitalist market economies happens to be the same, whether it’s real estate market overheating or when those commodity prices are overheating. Historically, you do get that element coming through when there is an open market that doesn’t mean that just because real estate prices are overheating in certain national economies that real estate as a whole is a fad, it’s a fundamental business. But people at one point were actually making almost multi-years of their annual salaries in the Philippines, but they weren’t working, so yes that’s wonderful but is that sustainable? Probably not, I mean now they’re back to something maybe more realistic, relative to the economic size that economy provides, which doesn’t mean they’re not making anything, and also more importantly, it’s a useful choice, but I can still play something, have fun and if I wish to cash out I can do so as well.

And then I go back to the example of the 110 plus billion dollars spending app installs and that’s what’s so superior about Web3 games and why we’re so bullish about the long-term future, is that money is being spent right now entirely on Facebook, Apple, Google. All these platforms that basically extract from the network. How much are they putting back into the very industry – in this case gaming – that they take profit from? Almost nothing.

Now here, the model in Web3 gaming is you’re not paying Google that money, you’re paying your players the money to stay and play the game. And maybe you cash out, but the chances of you re-contributing back into the gaming ecosystem are far, far higher. The major conglomerate whose sole purpose is to extract value from you, then the macro is that there are only millions of players in Web3 gaming today, and the trend of player growth is definitely going to continue, that’s one of the reasons why we are so bullish because from our perspective we haven’t even scratched the surface yet.

Jon Russell: Is it realistic to believe that companies in the Web3 space can overturn the kind of dominance that Facebook and Apple have? How’s this going to happen?

Yat Siu: We think that’s going to happen because it’s the better outcome for the end user.

When you think about Web2, everything was centered around user experience because the paradigm was zero value, so in a world where you’re competing with a zero cost of playing a game, zero cost of entry social network, zero cost of whatever, the only battle to be fought is based on user experience: how can we get smoother, faster, easier to enter.

And in Web3 that paradigm has somewhat come in as well, where people are like it has to be a much better user experience than Web2. How do we do that? I think the short answer is you don’t, of course, you have to make it a good experience, but the paradigm is user value. In other words, if I’m making more value from this one it doesn’t have to just be monetary value, but this value is an experience, then I will go to that option instead.

Look at a place like the Philippines for instance, where you have millions of people who have been on board, they don’t have a bank account or a credit card, they are financially excluded, and here they are using a crypto wallet that completely defeats the argument that this is so complicated. 

Despite all these complications I haven’t found anyone who’s gone in and then comes out saying, “oh my goodness, this is rubbish I should never go back in there again.” Maybe there’s a few, but the vast majority of people I know are going into that rabbit hole never to come out for that very same reason: it is just a better experience and more of a value generator.

Jon Russell: I guess based on the investments that you’ve made, gaming is going to be the big bridge for Web3. 

Yat Siu: I think gaming has already been a big bridge and will continue to be so. We’re also really bullish on education, but with gaming in particular there are billions of people who already have an assumption that they should own their virtual goods and that’s why it seems to be such an easy one.

And Asia as a whole is going to lead that charge, much like Asia led free-to-play because many people in Asia and the gaming world are very welcoming to it. For instance, in the West, there are quite a few gaming companies who wish to enter that space but there’s been resistance from the players. 

And I think the resistance from the players comes from a different lens, which is what we’re witnessing in places like the US: a rising tide of broadly anti-capitalist sentiment. So NFTs and crypto has been viewed as sort of this capitalist rich-get-richer type of tool which is not a fair statement, but it is the belief at the moment. Whereas in Asia, it is viewed as an opportunity—it’s another avenue of capitalism, it’s another avenue of growth. I’m excited about that prospect and I think that this region could very well lead in this space in the mid-term.

Although the Covid-19 pandemic, ongoing US-China trade tensions, and an imminent global recession are already hitting technology firms in both China and the US, some investors see new opportunities emerging for today’s technology and startup markets. 

More realistic views of the opportunities and challenges could fuel innovation and there can be beneficiaries in uncertain times. TechNode talked to venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Gobi Partners about how private investors adapt to new changes at the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse. They also discussed how current economic downturns and geopolitical tensions are affecting their investment strategies and the markets they are active in.

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Connie Chan, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz

In the last several months, you see many companies across almost every industry have had to take a real look at their priorities and investments. Many teams, not just small startups, but large companies, are evaluating their runways and trying to figure out how they can make the capital, the cash they have in the bank last longer. Thus, they have more time to reach their milestones, so that they can fundraise in a more favorable environment down the line.

In terms of what large tech companies are doing, if you see what they’ve announced over the last couple of months, you’ve seen large consumer companies kind of pull back from a lot of the experimental things they are doing. So Instagram announced that they’re going to de-prioritize commerce as an example. Or Snap de-prioritized several things, including their accelerator, games, and original content effort during their layoff.

Our deal flow on the consumer side is a little slower than last year, but overall, we’re still making a lot of investment. I’m always excited about companies that are using video first or artificial intelligence first as a way of rethinking how to solve a problem.

I’m also very excited about cross-border trends that already had a mainstream adoption in China, figuring out how we can import that over to the US. In the US, for example, we’re still in the earliest days of live shopping. Video shopping is still yet to be a very big mainstream trend, but to me, it’s inevitable. That kind of thing will happen and be a big trend next year.

The US-China tensions are not looking like they’re on a great trajectory. The most obvious near-term impacts are supply chain issues for companies with physical merchandise across borders. However, I think one of the silver linings is that talent is still talent, and there are still great founders everywhere. Many of them, rather than building just for their respective countries, they are building with a global mind. If you’re a founder in China, you can dominate China, but you can also grow and expand outside of that region. That’s really a great silver lining.

Thomas Tsao, co-Founder of Gobi Partners

I know it’s bad out there. The sentiment is not good. However, over time I think the venture capital industry has always come out and demonstrated its resilience from previous downturns. We are seeing a perfect storm of really big trends all coming together, and it’s going to be painful for everybody in the short term. Still, in the long term, I think it will also power through because of the entrepreneurs, what they bring to the table, and the problem-solving they continue to demonstrate. That’s what’s going to get us all through.

From a macro standpoint, what’s been going on is really allowing the entire venture capital mindset to shift and distribute to other parts of the world. VC and this tremendous innovation culture have largely been kind of concentrated in China and the US. The two countries have taken up so much of the spotlight. I think what’s been going on is that it’s allowed some of that spotlight to shift to other regions and bring in more entrepreneurs into this global ecosystem.

There is also a growing realization after the Covid outbreak among venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to solve ESG [environmental, social, and corporate governance] problems because the world is increasingly interconnected. We don’t live in little pockets of prosperity. When one part of the world suffers, we all suffer. Covid knows no borders. There are also no borders for climate change. I know parts of the world want to go back to more nationalistic tendencies or go back to silos, but pollution and healthcare are cross-border problems. It’s going to take a new mindset.

One of the beneficiaries or silver linings [of the US-China tension] is that Southeast Asia is getting a lot of attention because it is a very culturally diverse region with connections to China, India, and the US. Southeast Asia can draw upon so many of these influences, and it’s still relatively open. Also, the governments may not directly bridge, but people still want what’s convenient. So we’re seeing many interesting solutions coming out and that’s going to create opportunities for entrepreneurs.

As the world faces an array of challenges and consumers and citizens become ever more conscious of the social and environmental impact of the companies that dominate their lives, having a robust economic, social, and governance (ESG) policy in place has become an essential component for any company looking to IPO. 

At the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online in the BEYOND Metaverse, Joe Lai, co-head of APAC IBCM and Credit Suisse; Allen Lau, Capital Market Services Group – National Leader at Deloitte; and Winnie Han, Senior Vice President of HKEX, discussed whether it’s a good time to go public in the current climate and why ESG has become mainstream.

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Allen Lau, Capital Market Services Group – National Leader at Deloitte

I think ESG is one of the hot topics in the market. It’s not just a local, but a global agenda and ESG has become an increasingly important investment area for the global investment community.

The Chinese government has a 2060 target for decarbonization, which also drives the importance of ESG in the market as well. That’s why we expect more ESG companies are coming up and drive more potential listing of ESG companies in the future.

Regarding how ESG creates challenges or perhaps helps companies when it comes to going public, ESG is at the beginning of its popularity in the global capital markets, but the professional investment community is now more familiar with the business models of these companies’ investment products and portfolios, and also impact the value of ESG on the company’s valuation, so these should be the factors that we consider during the IPO process. 

However, ESG is relatively new to a number of retail investors, and in markets like Hong Kong and the mainland, which are still quite dominated by retail investors, it might take more time for them to understand and get familiar with the business models of these companies and the impact and the related investment risk.

Besides, the market doesn’t have many of these ESG companies with their shares yet, so being able to identify comparable stocks in the secondary market to conduct evaluation exercises for those potential issues will also be challenging, which also means that there still remains some uncertainty about how these companies or ESG elements will be valued when they go public. 

But on the other hand, there’s actually another opportunity for these ESG companies to take advantage, being the first batch of ESG companies listed.

Joe Lai, co-heads of APAC IBCM and, Credit Suisse

With the new ESG rules on all these new disclosure requirements, I don’t think it will impact the type of company that would be qualified to list in Hong Kong or people’s willingness to list in Hong Kong, because the Hong Kong market is very internationalized with ample quality, so I wouldn’t think any kind of incremental ESG requirement would actually impact the issuer’s willingness to come to Hong Kong. Therefore in terms of the types of companies, ESG disclosure rules won’t create any change to the kind of industry or the geographical origin of the listing applicants that we see here in Hong Kong. 

But one thing is important: all the listing applicants will probably need to have a very strong ESG mindset because, at the end of the day, a lot of these disclosures are basically disclosing what you have done to promote the ESG concept, but what’s fundamental is actually what kind of governance the company has in place to ensure the company is compliant and can fulfill the international ESG standard.

Overall, people who wanted to come to the Hong Kong market are already aware of the importance of fulfilling certain ESG requirements, so I think we’re making a lot of progress. At least from my end as an underwriter, we don’t feel it creates any difficulty for us to pitch our client to list in Hong Kong versus other markets.

Winnie Han, Head of China Issuer Services, Senior Vice President, HKEX

As a regulator, we have been promoting ESG among our more than 2,500 listed companies. We also introduced the ESG reporting guide back in 2013, then revised the guide in 2020 to require ESG commitment and disclosures for all environments and social PPI on a comply or explain basis.

We also provide a detailed online director training program, guidance materials, and webinars about ESG to help our listed companies build a more sustainable business sense and put their ESG principles into practice.

So the above measures continue to upgrade our market quality and show our focus on building a sustainable business and investing long-term. We have already welcomed some leading EV brands to list here in Hong Kong, for example, Xpeng and Nio. We are seeing more from the sector and the industrial value chain, including upstream players, and we think you will see more ESG-related issuers listing in Hong Kong as soon as later this year.

As developers struggle to overcome a long list of challenges after years of research and with billions in cash burned, the autonomous vehicle sector is entering a new adjustment phase.

While some investors are rethinking their initial optimism for the autonomous vehicle sector, industry players argue that the technology is finally closing in on some kind of mass adoption. Qcraft and Cowarobot, two Chinese self-driving car companies, talked to TechNode about the challenges and bottlenecks for vehicle autonomy at the BEYOND Expo 2022 tech conference, held online at BEYOND Metaverse. 

The text below has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Yu Qian, co-founder and CEO of Qcraft

I think the biggest issue affecting the large-scale adoption of self-driving cars is the difficulty in handling various unexpected and possibly dangerous situations – we call them corner cases. Once you operate self-driving cars in a broadly defined ODD, the number of corner cases will grow, which could be significantly complex to address.

(Note: Tech companies and car manufacturers typically define an Operational Design Domain (ODD) to indicate where their self-driving car systems can operate safely. Common ODD factors include but are not limited to the time of day, weather, and road features, according to definitions set by the Society of Automotive Engineers.)

2025 could be a very crucial year for the global self-driving space, as we’ve seen some top players quickly expand their robotaxi projects in the US. I expect a fully driverless ride-hailing service will be launched in San Francisco by 2025 or 2026, when the operator will be allowed to charge fares for rides on a large scale, and its revenue could go up relatively quickly. That could be an important milestone for the entire industry and boost the adoption of AVs here in China.

Looking ahead, I also expect more measures and support from the Chinese regulators that will help remove barriers to the deployment of robocars, such as the formal legalization of AVs on public roads and the publication of a government catalog specifically for AVs. Currently, the license plates for AV testing in China are only temporary, meaning full registration is unattainable for highly autonomous cars.

(Note: China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has developed a catalog of electric vehicles. The EVs listed are allowed to go on sale and are deemed eligible for subsidies. The Chinese authorities have not issued legislation that officially authorizes self-driving cars on the country’s roads.)

He Tao, founder and CEO of Cowarobot

If you operate AVs on a very limited ODD, current algorithms in artificial intelligence can deal with traffic situations at the human performance level. And yet, you have to avoid many unexpected corner cases as well as those that are predictable but can’t be resolved at the moment, which means self-driving cars will be limited to fixed routes or a restricted area, and where the weather is stable.

In other words, Level 4 autonomy is now achievable when it comes to specialized uses such as shuttle buses, intra-city delivery, and public sanitation services. In such cases, massive data sets are essential for artificial intelligence innovations. The key question is: how to acquire a large enough amount of data over a long period, and at what cost? 

(Note: Level 4 refers to a fully autonomous system where vehicles travel from point A to point B without requiring human intervention, according to the Society of Automotive Engineers.)

Autonomous driving has been a famously capital-intensive startup business at a time when many players were used to raising outside funds to train their AV systems on huge data sets while being unable to make profits in the near term. The industry, however, is facing investor slowdown, especially in the post-pandemic era this year, as venture capitalists are seeking out those who could provide real business value with the technology.

The trend is that fundraising will be a lot more challenging for highly autonomous driving companies, or more specifically robotaxi projects, as many investors are no longer patient and will look for something more certain with a greater focus on profitability and cash flow. 

Having said that, I believe self-driving car operations for commercial use could help to improve investors’ confidence and extend their patience for the entire industry.

READ MORE: Drive I/O | Meet the Chinese self-driving car startup with Google roots

China is still lagging behind competitors in building up cutting-edge research capacity in higher education institutions, according to Shi Yigong, a renowned scientist and the president of a private Chinese university often dubbed “the Caltech of China.”. More effort is needed to turn the country’s college education system into a truly global hub of leading talent, Shi added as part of a speech at the BEYOND Expo 2022. 

On Wednesday, the BEYOND Expo 2022 opened online at BEYOND Metaverse. The tech event will have more than 40 talks and panel discussions where leaders and experts across sectors dive deep into the topics of consumer tech, health tech, global investments, sustainability, and Web3.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Shi Yigong, president of Westlake University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Hello, everyone. I’m Shi Yigong. It’s such a pleasure for me to have the opportunity to share my views on the future development of China’s technology at the International Technology Innovation Expo.

Today, I’d like to share my views on the theme of “Exploring China’s Future Innovation-driven Development Model.” Since we are talking about technology innovation it’s related to our education, technology, and talent. These three elements – technology, education, and talent – ultimately constitute the main axis of innovation-driven development.

First of all, let’s talk about education, especially higher education. It’s safe to say that China is the world’s leading country in terms of scale and is on its way to becoming a world power in higher education. By the end of 2020, China had more than 40 million students enrolled in all 2,000 institutions of higher learning.

The quantity is surely the largest in the world, and the quality is also steadily improving. For example, by 2021, both in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings, Chinese universities had been advancing up the list in the world, with six to seven Chinese universities making the top 100.

But there are some problems with higher education in our country. We have a high educational attainment rate, but we lack cutting-edge researchers. We generally pursue a general and comprehensive education but have no significant advantages or distinctive features. We emphasize knowledge and practicality, but there’s still a gap between us and other countries regarding innovation. We’ve developed far more general talents than the most outstanding and innovative ones. There have been numerous academic achievements but relatively few breakthroughs.

Second, let’s briefly talk about the current situation of China’s technology. Over the past 20 years, thanks to the long-term steady investment in technology, China is now among the top three countries in the world regarding technology indicators. Whether it’s the number of articles, times cited, or the number of patents applied for, approved, granted, etc., all our technology indicators have steadily entered the top three in the world.

Third, let’s briefly talk about China’s talent. In 1978, the 3rd Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the CPC ushered in the Reform and Opening-up era of China and opened the door for Chinese students to study abroad. On December 26 of the same year, 52 scholars from mainland China departed for the United States. It was the first group of students to study abroad after the reform and opening-up started, with an average age of over 42.

By the end of 2019, more than 6 million Chinese students had traveled abroad to study in other countries in the world, and more than 4 million of them had returned home after their studies, bringing great impact and changes to all aspects of Chinese society. It’s safe to say that China has the largest talent team in the world. Of course, although we have a wealth of talent, when it comes to being No. 1 in the world, there’s still a problem with our talent team. That is, the cream of the crop; the top talent is relatively scarce.

To sum up, in terms of higher education, technology, and technological talent, China is one of the top countries in the world and is on its way to becoming a world power. However, there’s an innovation index that reflects the innovation ability of a country, and so far, China is still ranked outside the top 10 in the global technology innovation index.

In other words, although China has become a big power in technology, higher education, and talent cultivation, and is on the way to becoming a world power, we haven’t become a big power or a world power worthy of the name in terms of innovation ability. We still have a long way to go.

Therefore, judging from such an analysis, China’s future development can only rely on high-end leadership and innovation-driven development strategy. And the core of this strategy is the top talent. The top talent we’re talking about isn’t only the core talent in basic research, applied research, core technology, and cutting-edge research, but also the top talent in all fields, in all aspects, from the law, to finance, to social governance, to national management. I think the top talent will be the most crucial factor in a country’s high-end leadership and innovation-driven development strategy.

I’d like to give you an example, which is Westlake University. The founding of Westlake University was designed with the high-end leadership and innovation-driven development strategy as the premise and goal. As early as 11 years ago, a group of returned scholars in the Western Returned Scholars Association were discussing the future of technology and education in China.

They reached a consensus to establish a new type of university which would be small but exquisite and research-oriented, gathering first-class teachers, creating a first-class curriculum, educating first-class talent, and producing first-class results. They would adopt a new model to create a new type of world-class university. Such a university has been successfully established in Hangzhou, and is called Westlake University. It was officially approved by the Ministry of Education in February 2018 and was officially established in Hangzhou in October of the same year.

Westlake University is a new type of university. What’s new about it is that it received great support from the country and was established by social forces. Westlake University was founded to help technology grow, implement innovation-driven development, develop talent, and make some exploratory reforms in science education. Such a positioning of the university was strongly supported by the country in all aspects, as well as by all walks of life, including individuals, enterprises, and local governments.

After four years of hard work, Westlake University now has 201 PhD supervisors. Most of them are world-leading scientists in their respective fields of research. The purpose of having a top-notch faculty is to develop top-notch students. With the active support of the Ministry of Education, Westlake University has been actively reforming and innovating in all aspects of admissions and ability training.

After years of hard work, there are now more than 1,200 PhD students at Westlake University.

With the support of their PhD supervisors, these students are conducting innovative scientific research on major research topics and core technologies, striving for breakthroughs.

Today, as a brand-new concept, the new research university has been gradually incorporated into the top-level design of the country and is increasingly accepted and recognized by the whole of society. In the future, there’s no doubt that Westlake University will become a first-class university that reflects Chinese wisdom and is held in high esteem worldwide.

This university will have the most outstanding scientists in the world, be able to develop the best young talent to undertake the most advanced basic and applied research, explore the mechanism and system of scientific research and education that fits China’s national conditions, and provide a model that can be used for the sustainable development of high tech in China, and make a contribution to the human civilization that makes the Chinese nation proud.

I think maybe 10 to 15 years later, Westlake University will fully represent the wisdom and competence of Chinese people and rank among the best universities in the world.

Thank you.

Charles Li, former Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Exchanges and founder of Micro Connect, spoke at the BEYOND Expo 2022 about how he sees a wave of disruption on the horizon for traditional financial services in the Internet era. He also explained how Micro Connect is set to ride that wave, helping global capital access China’s small business sector in the hopes of gaining sustained growth, opportunity, and quality.

The BEYOND Expo 2022 opened online in the BEYOND Metaverse on Wednesday. As Asia’s largest and most influential tech event, the Expo will have more than 40 talks and panel discussions where leaders and experts across sectors dive deep into the topics of consumer tech, health tech, global investments, sustainability, and Web3.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Charles Li, Chairman and founder of Micro Connect. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Hello, everybody, my name is Charles Li. I’m Chairman and Founder of Micro Connect. I’m really very pleased to be able to speak at the BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo in Macau, and on the subject of what’s next, I’ll be very happy to share some of the experiences and insight that we have developed over the last couple of years since I left the Hong Kong exchanges.

I have been in finance for more than 25 years now, including 11 years running the Hong Kong stock exchange. And I think that experience gave me tremendous insight as to how the financial system works in our economy and in our society.

I think that the modern Wall Street model, which has worked wonderfully for over 100 years now, is probably one of the most important human innovations in our society because we try to organize capital into big corporations and then divide them up into stocks and shares so that they can be held by the public.

On the one hand, you concentrate finances so that centralized markets are able to allocate them to important, large corporations to develop the economy. On the other hand, the shareholding system allows that capital to be distributed and held by the general public. That model works for the industrial age, because the economy at the grassroots level is unclear, and very difficult to gather information from, so you need a centralized, institutionalized, professionally staffed Wall Street to organize everything together so that information can be discovered, price can be discovered, and execution can be delivered in the traditional financial market sort of systems.

But I think what’s next is the most interesting question: whether or not what we have seen happening in e-commerce, in social media, whether the revolutionary changes and disruptions that we have witnessed over the last two decades could potentially similarly disrupt the traditional Wall Street model.

I think we all know that in the Industrial Age, we all needed to go to a department store, because the department store aggregated all the goods and merchandise together, so that we all went to the central market to buy what we needed. But in the Digital Age, the Internet Age allows that distribution and commerce to be conducted online via digital technologies, and then allows logistics to be developed so that we are able to actually shop at home and have our goods delivered, and have marketplaces, online marketplaces, to allow money and goods to be exchanged. That’s a fundamental disruption of traditional finance and traditional commerce.

And I believe that we are now coming to the age where similar disruption is going to happen to financial services as well. Because at least in China today, the entire economy has largely become cashless. What that means is that most of the financial activities in China, even at the smallest business level, are completely digital, which means that they’re completely transparent. With the digitalization of the businesses at the grassroots level transparent and digital, the question becomes do we still need to force the little guys to organize into big corporations?

And many of them never will. Millions of them never will.

China has 17 million small businesses, and I think it is time now for us to actually have the opportunity to completely change the face and change the structure of financial services, to allow finance for the first time to be actually connected as sustainable capital to provide growth, and a firm growth and CapEx and development at a small businesses level.

And more importantly, that allows the global investment community to be able to finally access the longest sustained growth opportunity and quality returns from a blue ocean of small businesses that have not yet currently been available because of the concentrated nature of our financial services. So at Micro Connect, we’re trying to innovate a complete new way of delivering financial services.

Instead of using the traditional product, the traditional discovery processes, and the traditional delivery processes, we actually adopted a completely new way of doing it. It’s what we call a new operating system, a micro star, and has five key elements. It’s a new product. There are two arms, and there are two maps. That really is the new micro star operating system to do finance differently.

First of all, why did we want to focus on small businesses? It is very clear, small businesses largely reside in the consumer sector. And that entire sector and the small businesses contribute to close to 60% of China’s GDP, 70% of government revenues, and close to 80% of employment. So it is clearly the sector where the most vibrant part of China’s economy currently exists and grows, and capital needs to find a way to access that tremendously important sector.

And we set up our mission to achieve that. The way to do so is, as I said, a new system that we call micro star, which consists of five key elements: one product, two arms, and two maps. The one product is called a daily revenue contract, DRC. This is not debt, because as investors we have to share the downside.

And it’s not equity, because equity is not economically feasible for us to execute the small levels on a large scale. But it is a daily direct contractual arrangement to pay back your revenue, in exchange for an upfront CapEx investment. So it’s called a daily revenue contract, DRC.

It’s a completely new asset class that is fit for purpose, and very helpful to small businesses. Meanwhile, the daily recovery of returns allows the investors to take transparent, distributed, reliable, risk-managed and diversified high-quality returns.

So it’s really a win-win for all, kind of a new product.

But that product’s unique nature requires two very different systems of ensuring delivery, and on that distributed level we have to be able to collect on the investment.

So there are two arms, one arm is in charge of collecting money digitally, directly from the revenue from the little businesses. And that sort of a digital account split system in the various consolidated payment systems in China is highly advanced and highly feasible and is actually being practiced by many industries, so we just intend to utilize the existing technology and systems to allow our investors to be able to secure the daily digital connection of returns.

On the other hand, when the money is collected, we want to make sure that we have a modern new kind of exchange, where the underlying infrastructure is a blockchain, allowing us to authenticate that every single dollar that is collected every day into the system is irrevocably recorded in the blockchain, and belongs to the investors who choose to invest in any particular segment, in any particular store, for any particular period.

So that ultimate penetrated regulatory oversight, through technology, is the way that we are able to do this on scale, with efficiency, with very minimal human and costly management and delivery, monitoring, and enforcement systems, which would not be feasible economically for the small businesses.

The newest micro star system also has two what we call maps, basically navigation. And those two maps are specialized terms, essentially describing an engine that allows us to deploy such huge numbers of a small investment individual size on a large scale with efficiency; the other map is allowing us to find ways to make sure that we are able to accurately project economic and financial performances of particular kinds of businesses and particular locations so that investments can be rolled out not only with scale and efficiency, but with accuracy and quality, so that the investment can continue on a sustainable basis.

This new way of doing things has never been tried before but because of the digitalization of China, it is highly feasible.

We have started the journey, we have invested in over 1,000 stores in China across over 100 different sectors, largely focused on the four large industries: retail, consumer, services, and cultural activities. Those are the sectors where it’s the basic needs of everyday life of the Chinese consumers, despite all the challenges and despite all the perceptions that small businesses in China are risky individually and may not necessarily be investable.

As a whole, if we’re able to build a portfolio large enough, diversified enough, distributed enough, we will truly be able to find a new way of investing, a new paradigm of financial services, that is transparent, distributed, diversified, and sustainable. Most importantly, because the fact that we are able to do so in such a distributed manner – impacting potentially hundreds of thousands, and potentially millions of small businesses – our aspiration is that in the next 10 years, we are able to create and fund a million small businesses with a million annual revenues, which in turn will be able to create and maintain at least 10 million jobs.

This sort of an investment, new investment paradigm, will likely allow us to promote impact investing, ESG mapping, so that through investing, we’re not only doing good, we can also do well.

And that is really, is our dream and that is something that we’re now on the journey to achieve, and I think that is only possible because of the deep and widespread digitalization and technology evolution in China particularly in the payment industry. I think with that, we can see that China’s consumer sector, which may be the furthest away from Wall Street in the traditional financial services methodologies, thanks to technology, probably will become the closest and most likely going to become the most successful, because they are able to give us a way to invest simply, more efficiently, more equitably, and more inclusively.

And I hope that we will be back again to update you on our progress, and I hope that we will be able to travel on that journey together with many of you who have similar dreams and aspirations.

Thank you very much, we really appreciate the opportunity to speak at this great expo.

Society has long faced public health challenges in developing better drugs at a lower cost, preparing for future pandemics, and preventing diseases. During the opening day of BEYOND Expo 2022, Dr. Roger Kornberg, the 2006 Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, shared several new tech approaches, such as quantum mechanical calculations and RNA therapies, aimed at solving long-standing health sector challenges. 

On Wednesday, the BEYOND Expo 2022 opened online at BEYOND Metaverse. The week-long Expo will have more than 40 talks and panel discussions where leaders and experts across sectors dive deep into the topics of consumer tech, health tech, global investments, sustainability, and Web3. 

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Dr. Roger Kornberg, laureate of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Good day, I am Roger Kornberg, and I will speak to you about what’s next in human health.

I’ll speak to you about something old and something new. What is old are the longstanding challenges, three of which I’ll address today. What’s new are emergent technologies that offer potential solutions to these important problems.

The long-standing challenges include the development of better drugs at a lower cost more rapidly, and secondly, future pandemic preparedness. And finally, prevention, which is, of course, better than cure. 

There’s a saying: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. There’s no question that if a disease can be prevented, that’s far better than allowing it to occur and then trying to treat it.

In regard to the first challenge, better drugs more rapidly at lower cost, I will explain that the best current approach for drug development entails the solution of the molecular structure of a drug candidate bound to its protein target.

Based on the structure, the drug candidate can be redesigned to improve the fit to the target.

The improved design is then subjected to chemical synthesis and testing. The process is repeated to enhance further structure determination, molecular design, synthesis, and testing.

It is repeated many times. The process is expensive and laborious. It costs a lot of money.

It takes a long time. And the process is limited by time and money, as a result of which, drugs are often produced that fail clinical trials.

The solution to the problem is advanced computation. It has long been hoped that computer-aided drug design would enhance the process. The problem is that until now, that was not possible, or at least not to the extent that was hoped for. The strength of interaction between a potential drug and its target was limited by the capacity for computation.

Ideally, one computes using the full power of chemistry, one computes using quantum mechanics. Unfortunately, a full computation by that approach takes at least a trillion years for a single molecular design. The available methods are much more rapid. They can be accomplished in minutes, but they don’t achieve the accuracy required. 

What is new is a method of quantum mechanical calculation that is sufficiently rapid and achieves the desired accuracy.

With this new approach, only beginning to be applied, it will be possible to make molecules that are much more potent, much faster, in much less time. And ultimately, without any requirement for synthesis or testing at all.

The second longstanding challenge that I wish to address is future pandemic preparedness. Obviously, of great importance in light of all our recent experience.

The solution to this problem will come from RNA therapy. I speak not of messenger RNA to produce vaccines, but rather, RNA molecules that are 100 to 1,000 times smaller, only about 20 to 25 RNA building blocks or nucleotides in length.

These are called small interfering RNAs. If introduced in cells, they lead to recognition of a gene sequence in a messenger RNA, corresponding to that in the small interfering RNA and a perfect match leads to the destruction of the messenger RNA.

In this way, by introducing a small interfering RNA into cells, one can stop the progress of a viral infection, or interfere with a pathway leading to unrestrained cell growth or cancer, and so forth.

The problem with this approach has been that small interfering RNAs approximately 20 to 25 nucleotides in length are nevertheless too large, and also too high and electrically charged to enter cells. They are unable to cross the surface, the bounding membrane that surrounds every cell.

The problem was solved by the recent discovery of a very small modification, a small molecule that could be attached to a small interfering RNA, that would enable its rapid penetration and accumulation in cells where the destruction of the protein of a virus or of another offending molecule is desired.

This approach has been applied to the development of SARS-CoV-2, a Covid drug with great success. It has resulted in 99.9% elimination of the virus from an infected animal.

The importance of this approach is not only how well it works, in the case of others that I might mention, but that the emergence of any new virus or a variant of an existing virus can be dealt with immediately. The genome sequence of the virus can be determined overnight. And the corresponding sequence of a small interfering RNA is created automatically actually on a machine. So the whole process from the appearance of a new virus to the availability of a drug is accomplished within a matter of days. 

It’s further important to mention that small interfering RNAs persist in cells for a long time. So small interfering RNA drugs are not only therapeutic but also preventative. They are prophylactic. They will immunize an individual against infection for a period of weeks, if not longer. This is clearly a solution, not only to the problem of future pandemic preparedness but to viral disease and very many other conditions, in general. This is a wonderful, new approach that’s only just begun to be applied. 

Finally, we come to prevention. Of course, that may take many forms. 

I’ll cite one example of particular significance that has recently been developed. It pertains to air pollution, which, as you know, is a pressing problem everywhere in the world, and which is responsible for millions of deaths every year, for hundreds of millions of days lost from work or other activity due to disease, an economic cost to the world economy estimated at several trillion dollars a year.

The solution to this problem was developed for detection to warn an individual of exposure to air pollution. So a new, I should say extraordinary software was created that can be installed on any cell phone, the simplest of cell phones, which utilizes only the audio and visual capacities of any phone to measure very accurately every environmental parameter that includes the concentration of particulate matter in the air, especially so-called PM2.5, 2.5 micron particles, which pose the greatest hazard from air pollution.

But equally, the software I have mentioned can measure temperature to within 1 degree centigrade in the immediate vicinity of an individual with his or her phone.

It can measure the humidity. It can measure the wind direction. It can measure everything you might like to know. It will estimate ultraviolet light exposure and exposure to sounds that may be harmful.

This device will represent a warning system against every possible environmental hazard.

When carried by an individual, it will protect against conditions that would otherwise lead to disease or disability or what have you.

It may also be useful to conserve energy, a pressing problem around the world as well. So it won’t be necessary for the air-conditioner to be on in a house, or even part of a house or of a building, but only in the immediate vicinity of the individual whose exposure to heat or cold is of concern.

Finally and not less important, when installed on hundreds of millions, if not billions of cell phones, this technology will create an extraordinary data warehouse, an enormous data bank of information of very great value for human health, for insurance, against disease and other consequences of environmental conditions, for municipalities to design smarter cities and so forth.

To summarize then, I have described three long-standing challenges. They are the development of better drugs, future pandemic preparedness, and finally, the prevention of disease in the first place without having to resort to better drugs.

The solutions are at hand. The three examples I gave are fully developed and ready to apply. In the years to come, much better drugs will be made more rapidly at a much lower cost.

There should never be another pandemic. And finally, we should be well protected through a personal warning system from dangers inherent in the environment.

In his speech during Wednesday’s virtual event, Allan Gabor, president of Merck China and executive vice president of Merck Electronics, shared his insights on the AI and biomedicine industry and further explained how the firm uses AI to accelerate the biotech industry in healthcare, life sciences, and electronics.

On Wednesday, the BEYOND Expo 2022 opens online at BEYOND Metaverse. As Asia’s largest and most influential tech event, the Expo will have more than 40 talks and panel discussions where leaders and experts across sectors dive deep into the topics of consumer tech, health tech, global investments, sustainability, and Web3.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Allan Gabor, president of Merck China, and executive vice president of Merck Electronics. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Hello, my name is Al Gabor. I am the President of Merck China. I am also leading our Electronics business here in China. Thank you for inviting me to the BEYOND MetaExpo. Pleased to meet you all on this innovative new platform BEYOND.

I am delighted to share with you some insights on artificial intelligence and the biomedicine industry and hopefully also share some of the excitement that we at Merck China feel about this new frontier in healthcare. As a global leading science and technology company, Merck embraces Artificial Intelligence both in our daily operations and in our R&D efforts.

This comes natural to us, because with our three business sectors – healthcare, life sciences, and electronics – we have a broad portfolio that is ideally suited to identify and use synergies. Merck is very interested in learning from nature and AI is helping us to achieve this better than ever before. Biology is converging with engineering sciences like chemistry, artificial intelligence, and material science. Having expertise in all of these fields, Merck is ready to connect the dots and be a reliable partner for your business.

AI has the potential to accelerate the discovery of the next generation of drugs and therapies. This is exciting because it holds the promise of more personal and targeted therapies, which can make them more effective and more accessible for patients.

For Merck, our scientists see AI´s capability to analyze pre-clinical data and literature for drug discovery and biomarker identification. We regard the application of AI as a key digital strategy to unlock great benefits for our medicinal R&D, especially for compound optimization, molecule & compound testing, and processing.

And we are not only harnessing the power of AI in our own research – Merck´s Life Science business also empowers the research & production partners. We support new biomedicine research with innovative materials, equipment, and new AI-powered technical solutions.

Merck is applying the advancements in AI to the compound screening of hundreds of millions of drug candidates. With the support of AI learning and data, we help our customers and partners to save time and optimize their own drug discovery and manufacturing. 

In our electronics business, a fast-growing part of the Merck business matrix, we are actively involved in further innovating existing computer architectures. And with our innovative materials, we enable the new semiconductors and future technologies that are needed for this AI revolution in healthcare.

We are proud to provide critical materials for Neuromorphic chips and quantum computing. They are among the more than 150 products we provide to around 100 chip makers across China, covering their entire wafer fabrication and packaging processes.

Merck China is more than doubling its investment in our Electronics business, with at least another RMB 1 billion ($140 million) before 2025, with a focus on the chip manufacturing industry. Globally, our Merck Group will invest more than 3 billion euros ($2.98 billion) by 2025 in this same area.

At Merck, we are already using AI in many fields and deploying it to an increasingly greater extent. We’ve formed a partnership in the field of AI-based active ingredient research with Iktos of France to accelerate drug discovery by automatically designing virtual novel molecules with the desired activity to treat a certain disease.

Here in China, Merck was a launch partner of Insilico’s AI-platform Chemistry 42. It is ground-breaking, as small molecule discovery becomes much faster.

In collaboration with major industrial companies, renowned research institutes and universities, Merck has established an innovation platform called KEEN. Under KEEN, specific applications have been developed that are applying AI. For example, self-optimizing production units.

We also invest in smart AI technologies in our own production. We currently have a pilot project running in collaboration with Siemens.

As you know well, Biomedical Sciences has a very broad range and deals with various disciplines of medical research such as genetics epidemiology, clinical epidemiology, clinical virology, and medical microbiology.

Natural and engineering sciences are converging at a fast pace in our quest to better understand human health and diseases – like the fields of anatomy, cell biology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, molecular biology, immunology, mathematics, statistics, and bioinformatics.

All this interdisciplinarity results in the creation of huge data sets, and that makes AI so immensely helpful for biomedical science and for the development of the new treatment technologies that are currently emerging.

One example: our scientists are actively experimenting with Organs-on-a-Chip solutions. While research is moving from in-vivo to in-vitro, complex algorithms help to process the huge amount of data generated.

While scientists and human know-how continue to be needed, AI has the fascinating capability to estimate lots of results without direct human interaction. It can help with text mining, patient-centric information retrieval, biomedical text evaluation, diagnostic assistance, clinical event forecasting, and many other tasks.

At Merck, we believe that artificial intelligence is poised to broadly reshape medicine and improve the experiences of both clinicians and especially patients. Still, tremendous challenges remain for all of us actively starting to use AI. The biggest one is to create the necessary user trust in AI systems and how the training data sets are composed.

That is why Merck is also actively involved in developing the proper management systems to use data responsibly and equitably, including ethnic monitoring. At Merck, we have confidence in the power of artificial intelligence and we believe that it will contribute to a brilliant future. 

On the opening day of BEYOND Expo 2022 on Wednesday, Zheng Xuexuan, chairman and president of China State Construction Engineering Corporation, shared his ideas on the approaches to high-quality innovative development, contributing to China’s carbon neutral goals, and how his firm has demonstrated the benefits of rapid construction in the building of Covid-19 facilities across the country.

The BEYOND Expo 2022 opened online at BEYOND Metaverse on Wednesday. The Expo will have more than 40 talks and panel discussions where leaders and experts across sectors dive deep into the topics of consumer tech, health tech, global investments, sustainability, and Web3.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day keynote speech from Zheng Xuexuan, Chairman and President of China State Construction Engineering Corporation. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Hello, everyone! 

BEYOND is one of the largest and most influential international technology fairs in Asia, and it is a great honor for me to be invited to participate in this technology event.

First of all, on behalf of China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCEC), I would like to extend warm congratulations on the opening of this expo!

I would like to take this important opportunity to express my sincere appreciation to all the friends from all sectors of society who have cared for, supported, and helped CSCEC for a long time.

Innovation is the primary driving force for development.

Since the 18th CPC National Congress, General Secretary Xi Jinping has placed innovation at the core of China’s overall development, attached great importance to scientific and technological innovation, and put forward a series of new ideas, new judgments, and new requirements.

CSCEC insists on following the important discussion of scientific and technological innovation put forward by Xi. We have fully implemented the new development concept, thoroughly implemented the strategy of innovation-driven development, accelerated technological innovation in construction, and worked hard to promote high-quality development.

Tackling core technologies in the construction field

Engineering construction is an important activity for human beings to make use of nature, transform nature, and create life.

We always regard advanced construction technology as the foundation of our existence and our business. Persisting in meeting the urgent and long-term needs of the industry, we will push forward key and core technologies and strive to build the strong core competitiveness of enterprises. 

We have mastered the world’s leading construction technologies such as single building translation, large roof sliding, and complex steel structure production and construction. We have successfully developed major construction equipment such as aerial building machines, vertical shield machines and 10,000-ton press, and have taken the lead in breaking through kilometer-level super high-rise construction technology. The domestic three-dimensional engineering image software independently developed by us has been promoted in the market, and the carbon fiber thousand-ton anchor cable system has been successfully applied in bridge engineering construction.

Thanks to these accumulations, we have invested in more than half of the world’s super tall buildings over 500 meters, more than 90% of the world’s super tall buildings over 300 meters, three-quarters of key airports and satellite launch bases, one-half of nuclear power plants, and one-third of urban integrated management corridors, ranking the top of ENR global contractors for seven consecutive years.

Vigorously developing new building industrialization technologies

Construction industrialization is an important trend in the development of the construction industry, which is of great significance to the improvement of construction efficiency and construction quality. 

We have taken construction industrialization as an important development direction, planned layout in advance, gathered superior resources, and given full play to the leading and exemplary role of central construction enterprises.

We have pursued a new generation of industrial construction technology, including a series of building industrialization technology systems and product systems and Modular Integrated Construction (MiC). The total production capacity of prefabricated building design exceeds 5 million cubic meters per year, and more than 90% of processes can be integrated into factories, truly realizing “building houses like cars”.

Prefabricated buildings and rapid construction technology have played a key role in the national fight against the Covid-19 epidemic.

We built the 1,000-bed Huoshenshan Hospital in 10 days and the 1,600-bed Leishenshan Hospital in 12 days and completed the construction task of the Hong Kong Infection Control Center project of North Lantau Hospital, assisted by the Central government in four months, according to permanent construction standards. This year, we have completed the construction of 10 anti-Covid-19 projects in Hong Kong at the fastest pace. For three years in all parts of the country, we accumulated construction of more than 700 anti-epidemic facilities.

Firmly developing green and low-carbon construction technology

At the General Debate of the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, General Secretary Xi Jinping announced China’s goal of achieving a carbon peak by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060.

Urban and rural construction is one of the main areas of carbon emissions, and effectively reducing the carbon emissions of the whole industrial chain in the construction field is an important link to achieving the “double carbon” goal. 

We adhere to the concept of “ecological priority and green development”, which is deeply integrated into the whole process of investment, planning, design, construction and operation.

We have led the formulation of more than 10 national and industrial green construction standards, participated in the formulation of a number of policy documents, and developed a series of innovative products such as ultra-low energy consumption and zero-carbon buildings. It has promoted more than 100 green construction technologies in the industry, vigorously promoted the emission reduction and resource utilization of construction wastes, and basically formed a technology research system covering the whole construction process and the application service capability of the whole industrial chain.

In recent years, we have invested in the construction of green and low-carbon buildings represented by Xiongan Citizen Service Center and an ecological new city represented by Xi ‘an Happiness Forest Belt. Overseas, in the construction of the Brunei Tamburong Cross-sea Bridge project, the “non-landing” construction process was created to solve the problem of environmental protection of local primitive forests, swamps and wetlands.

Exploring digital technology in the construction industry

With the continuous penetration and wide application of a new generation of information technology, the competition rules of the construction industry may change dramatically, and traditional construction enterprises must accelerate on the road to digital.

We adhere to the transformation and development of digital empowerment, strive to build the Internet of the construction industry, and deeply explore the integration and innovation of big data, artificial intelligence, 3D printing and other technologies in the field of construction. We have realized the practical application of building information model (BIM), smart factory MES system and smart site platform, and built the world’s first digital production line for building curtain walls and the first intelligent manufacturing production line of heavy steel structure.

We have vigorously promoted industrial digitalization, laid out construction industrial robots, smart parking, smart venues and other fields, and cultivated and built an e-commerce platform called “Cloud-building-network” with an annual transaction volume of over one trillion yuan, ranking first in the centralized procurement business of similar central enterprises.

Science and technology lead the era, and innovation builds the future. 

From this new starting point, we will earnestly learn and make good use of the important achievements of this Expo, focus on frontier areas, increase innovation efforts, strive to provide more high-quality construction products and services to society, strive to expand a broader space for happiness, and contribute to the wisdom of CSCEC for high-quality economic and social development.

To conclude, I wish the expo every success, and I wish you all good health and all the best!

Thank you very much.

As more and more people pay attention to long-term investment, investing in ESG has become an important trend in the era of sustainable development, Hillhouse Capital founder Zhang Lei said on Wednesday during the BEYOND Virtual event. Zhang added that sustainable investment not only requires investment institutions to consider ESG in their investment targets but also requires long-term capital to support outstanding companies.

On Wednesday, the BEYOND Expo 2022 opened online at BEYOND Metaverse. As Asia’s largest and most influential tech event, the Expo will have more than 40 talks and panel discussions where leaders and experts across sectors dive deep into the topics of consumer tech, health tech, global investments, sustainability, and Web3.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Zhang Lei, founder and CEO of Hillhouse Capital. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Good morning! It’s my great honor to meet all of you at BEYOND Expo, 2022. The theme of the expo is “What’s Next”. I’m invited to share my opinions about the future. In the face of current changes and uncertainty, everyone hopes to find the “gold key” to solve the problems.

We actually see more and more people pay closer attention to long-term development, climate change, and social responsibility. ESG has become a certain future. According to the data statistics, the global ESG investment scale in 2020 reached around $100 trillion, a 14-fold increase compared with that of the year 2006.

Hillhouse Group, as an innovative industrial investment institution, is always insisting on the philosophy —“to invest for a better world.” On the one hand, by exploring optimized resource allocation, we pursue environment, justice, society, and other long-term values. On the other hand, we choose fellow travelers with great insight to achieve a win-win result of social value and economic value through sustainable innovation.

I believe the most sustainable ESG investment will surely become a more important trend and create great value. So, in this era of sustainable development, what can we institutional investors do? I’d like to share my ideas with you.

First, the foundation should be strengthened. Just like the basic support of new infrastructure, the entire internet networking and data center, for example, to the digitization of industrial manufacturing industry and intelligent industry, the ESG also needs the support of infrastructure, including the establishment of data quantification, information disclosure, and valuation systems.

Institutional investors can, during the management of investment process and the selection of investment targets, take the ESG into consideration, and through self-build capacity and investment cooperation, especially the digital capacity, to build the ESG infrastructure in your investment ecosystem and the sustainable database.

We can introduce a digitized ESG performance system for many corporate investees, which will help relevant corporate investees to collect their ESG data and do industrial benchmarking. Thus, an information disclosure system that meets international standards will be established to help investees lay a foundation for sustainable development by leading investees to collect and accumulate data.

Meanwhile, as an Asian framework to strive for evaluating carbon emission reduction performance, we at Hillhouse also adopt the quantification method. As for reducing carbon emissions, based on the carbon criterion of product and technology, taking the growth prospects and our carbon emission anticipation, the whole carbon emission reduction pattern is formed. By estimation, our understanding about each carbon emission reduction path and efficiency helps the group discover the industrial value and promote new perspectives.

And under the background of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, only by making the carbon emissions clear can we shoot the arrow right at the target of its reduction.

Hillhouse invested in the first provider in China who focuses on the solutions to carbon emission management software and consulting, deploying infrastructure service of carbon neutrality to help more enterprises make carbon emission reduction plans with a high input-output ratio, to realize efficient tracing and disclosure of carbon emission reduction results.

Second, innovation should be insisted on. We always believe that technology is an ultimate solution to sustainable development. During this process, what institutional investors should do is to support technology innovation and green technology with long-term funds in terms of key domains and key phases of sustainable development, to encourage and attract more institutions to play a role in and support technology development. Thus, an assembly effect of innovation will be formed to finally solve social and environmental problems during the development process.

In terms of carbon neutrality, for example, by comprehensive research and profound insight and selection of industries with key influence on and significance to the promotion of carbon neutrality, we discovered those excellent companies that can solve their key problems by technology and business model innovation. We invest in them, empower them, and continuously help them to grow.

We recently invested in a company developing perovskite and gold laminated photovoltaic cells. We help the group overcome the “Death Valley” of primitive technology innovation from 0 to 1.

And based on our DVC, Deep Value Creation, a low-corruption after-investment service system, we support their R&D engineering talent expansion and help their connection of industrial resources so that they will indulge in the industrialization of photovoltaic industry.

Finally, talents should be focused. Talents are always precious resources. The booming ESG market will surely trigger heavy demands for ESG talents. To my knowledge, the total number of American companies that hired Chief Sustainability Officers in 2020 exceeded that of the previous three years. 

As for industries, we published a research report to list investment opportunities in 8 key industries realizing carbon neutrality, including electricity, transportation, industry, new material, architecture, agriculture, negative carbon emission, information communication, and digitization.

Numerous professionals are needed. According to International Energy Agency, up to 2030, clean energy investment driven by carbon neutrality will create 14 million working posts. As the data show, in the past 5 years, recruiting numbers for green skills globally increased by 8%, several times that of the GDP growth rate, while obvious vacancies show in terms of talent supply.

In the future, like finance and HR departments, the carbon management department will become a basic functional department. We need to pay special attention to the topic of sustainable development and put forward new requirements to the talents.

The ESG involves climate, society, governance, technology, and even finance, so it’s not enough to master the knowledge of only one industry. Talents shall have international insight. Those compound innovative Carbon Talents with multi-subject knowledge and insight will definitely become the real core in the process of sustainable development.

Last year, Hillhouse, together with more than 10 investees, including CATL, LONGi, BYD, and Carbonstop, which are also representatives in the field of carbon neutrality, held special carbon neutrality job fairs in several universities across the country.

This year, we will join hands with 42 manufacturing companies to hold joint on-campus job fairs. We hope that with our talent empowering service, we can help investees find better Carbon Talents to provide core impetus to the sustainable innovation of enterprises.

Sustainable development is related to the future of every one of us. Hillhouse is willing to play a key role in the promotion of prosperous sustainable development and be a partner in the practice of ESG.

Thank you!

CATL founder and chairman Zeng Yuqun detailed on Wednesday how his electric vehicle battery powerhouse could help reduce greenhouse gas emissions for Macau and potentially revolutionize many sectors, from public transportation to urban electricity, in the special Chinese administrative region.

On Wednesday, the BEYOND Expo 2022 opens online at a 3D metaverse space. As Asia’s largest and most influential tech event, the Expo will have more than 40 talks and panel discussions where leaders and experts across sectors dive deep into the topics of consumer tech, health tech, global investments, sustainability, and Web3.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Zeng Yuqun, founder chairman of CATL. The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

It is my great honor to participate in the opening ceremony of the BEYOND EXPO 2022 and share my thoughts on the future with you.

CATL is a new energy innovative technologies company. We are committed to taking electrochemical energy storage as well as renewable energy power generation as the core to replace stationary fossil energy, thus reducing dependence on thermal power generation in energy production; taking EV batteries as the core to replace mobile fossil energy such as petroleum; taking electrification and intellectualization as the core to promote the integrated innovation of market applications, providing sustainable, affordable and reliable new energy solutions for all walks of life.

The three topics of this year’s BEYOND: healthcare, sustainability, and consumer tech, are actually closely related to CATL and the new energy industry we are engaged in.

Life sciences are the eternal theme of human beings. Environmental degradation is putting unprecedented pressure on all human beings and our earth. Disasters caused by global warming have threatened the survival and health of human beings. Therefore, it is the responsibility of every citizen of the earth to spare no effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Last year, we supplied 40% of the world’s energy storage batteries, helping to greatly improve renewable energy consumption efficiency. In the first half of this year, our EV batteries accounted for 34.8% of the global market, providing electrification solutions for 57 countries and regions worldwide. Behind this data is a huge amount of carbon emissions reduction.

On average, the entire life cycle of a pure electric vehicle contributes about 14.1 tons of carbon emissions reduction. I believe that our batteries can facilitate the electrification of more sectors and make a greater contribution to global carbon neutrality.

High quality is the key to sustainable development. The new energy industry must work hard in two directions. One is that the products must be perfect so consumers can use them confidently; the other is that the batteries must be low carbon for consumers to protect the environment.

CATL has been making efforts in these two directions for a long time. Our extreme manufacturing has improved the defect rate of battery products from PPM to PPB level, reducing it from one in a million to one in a billion. Our Ningde production base has also become the only lighthouse factory in the battery industry recognized by the World Economic Forum. Our Yibin production base achieved carbon neutrality in 2021, becoming the world’s first zero-carbon battery factory.

We are also committed to sharing our high-quality, sustainable development experience with upstream and downstream partners to help reduce carbon emissions in the entire industry chain.

The third topic is consumer tech. As electric cars continue to penetrate the market, batteries as the core power source are becoming a typical consumer technology. Over the years, CATL has been committed to leveraging innovative technologies to solve consumers’ pain points regarding range, safety, low-temperature performance, and charging speed. With the continuous improvement of battery performance, more and more consumers have joined new trends championed by battery technologies.

For example, supported by our pioneering CTP (cell to pack) technology, Qilin battery has achieved the highest integration level globally, offering 1,000 km (621 miles) range and 4C fast charging. Many OEMs received inquiries from consumers about purchasing Qilin-powered models right after our Qilin battery was launched. The first model powered by Qilin batteries will be launched in the first quarter of next year. Friends in Macao are welcome to stay tuned.

Macao is a beautiful and vibrant city. What’s next? I think in the near future, Macao can take the lead in becoming a zero-carbon city, a global model of comprehensive electrification and carbon neutrality.

In the process of “electrifying” Macao, CATL intends to facilitate Macao in three aspects. The first is the electrification of transportation. In recent years, the Macao SAR government has actively responded to the country’s call to achieve the goal of peaking carbon emissions and achieving carbon neutrality, advocated green transportation, plus a strong awareness of environmental protection among Macao residents, all of which have provided favorable conditions for Macao’s electrification.

As an experienced player in this field, CATL has the world’s leading solutions for the electrification of various transportation facilities. For the urban characteristics of Macao, CATL’s EVOGO modular battery swapping solution has outstanding advantages. The battery can be adapted to different brands and models. It only takes one minute to swap a battery block.

Our battery swap station solution highlights high compatibility, need-based battery rental, and complementarity with charging services. There are up to 48 batteries in one station, which can fully meet the high-frequency demand for a battery swap. Not only that, our battery swap station can also become the city’s UPS, ensuring the uninterrupted supply of electricity in a certain region.

Secondly, Macao boasts a well-developed water transportation network, and the development of electric ships is at the right time. CATL is the first EV battery company that has passed the approval and inspection of the latest testing guideline of the China Classification Society “Inspection Guidelines for Battery Electric Ships.” Our batteries have been widely used in electric passenger vessels, sightseeing ships, governmental maritime vessels, scientific research ships, yachts, etc., and have accumulated many solutions. Once Macao realizes the electrification of water transportation, it will be able to bid farewell to diesel smell and noise.

Also, we are poised to support energy conservation and carbon emissions reduction in Macao’s electricity consumption. Macao’s commercial electricity accounts for about 80%, and most of the electricity is not supplied locally. Therefore, improving the efficiency of urban energy utilization is an inevitable requirement for carbon emissions reduction, and energy storage can play a huge role in power transmission and distribution, as well as power consumption.

Featuring long service life, a high level of integration, and substantial safety, our energy storage system EnerOne can achieve a service life of 10,000 cycles and is compatible with converters ranging from 600V to 1500V. It covers an area of only 1.69 square meters, which is especially suitable for the application of industrial and commercial energy storage. The energy storage system can facilitate frequency regulation and a peak load of the power grid while enabling large commercial facilities to reduce electricity costs effectively.

At present, there are more than 5 million new energy vehicles in the world equipped with CATL batteries. We will innovate to develop the aftermarket, have established the world’s largest after-sales service network, and have a large number of after-sales product solutions.

Dear leaders and friends, technology creates a better life, and electrification helps achieve energy freedom. I believe that electrifying Macao will help Macao become a zero-carbon garden that shines in the world. CATL will go all out to increase investment in innovation and use the most advanced new energy solutions with the lowest carbon emissions consumption to contribute to the high-quality and sustainable development of Macao and the world.

Thank you!

On Wednesday, BEYOND Expo 2022, co-organized by TechNode, opened online in the BEYOND Metaverse. The Expo will run until Sept. 27 and focuses this year on healthcare tech, sustainability tech, consumer tech, global investment, and Web3. 

The opening speeches featured seven top tech leaders and investors, sharing insights on the future focal points of China’s tech sector in climate tech, health tech, and the nurturing of top talents.

Please find below selected quotes from the opening day speeches. The text has been condensed and edited for clarity: 

Tech and investments to support carbon neutrality

Zeng Yuqun, founder chairman of CATL
Environmental degradation is putting unprecedented pressure on all human beings and our earth. Disasters caused by climate change have threatened the survival and health of human beings. Therefore, it is the responsibility of every citizen of the earth to spare no effort to reduce carbon emissions.

The new energy industry must work hard in two directions. One is that the products must be perfect so consumers can use them confidently; the other is that the batteries must be low carbon for consumers to protect the environment.

CATL has been making efforts in these two directions for a long time. Our extreme manufacturing has improved the defect rate of battery products from PPM to PPB level, reducing it from one in a million to one in a billion. Our Ningde production base has also become the only lighthouse factory in the battery industry recognized by the World Economic Forum. Our Yibin production base achieved carbon neutrality in 2021, becoming the world’s first zero-carbon battery factory.

Zhang Lei, founder and CEO of Hillhouse Capital
We actually see more and more people paying closer attention to long-term development, climate change, and social responsibility. Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) has become a certain future. According to the data statistics, the global ESG investment scale in 2020 reached around $100 trillion, a 14-fold increase compared with that of the year 2006.

Institutional investors can, during the management of investment process and the selection of investment targets, take ESG into consideration, and through self-build capacity and investment cooperation, especially the digital capacity, build the ESG infrastructure in your investment ecosystem and the sustainable database.

We can introduce a digitized ESG performance system for many corporate investees, which will help relevant corporate investees to collect their ESG data and do industrial benchmarking. Thus, an information disclosure system that meets international standards will be established to help investees lay a foundation for sustainable development by leading investees to collect and accumulate data.

Zheng Xuexuan, chairman and president of China State Construction Engineering Corporation
Urban and rural construction is one of the main areas of carbon emissions, and effectively reducing the carbon emissions of the whole industrial chain in the construction field is an important link to achieving the “double carbon” goal. 

We adhere to the concept of “ecological priority and green development”, which is deeply integrated into the whole process of investment, planning, design, construction and operation.

We have led the formulation of more than 10 national and industrial green construction standards, participated in the formulation of a number of policy documents, and developed a series of innovative products such as ultra-low energy consumption and zero-carbon buildings. We have promoted more than 100 green construction technologies in the industry, vigorously promoted the emission reduction and resource utilization of construction wastes, and basically formed a technology research system covering the whole construction process and the application service capability of the whole industrial chain.

New frontiers in health tech

Allan Gabor, president of Merck China, and executive vice president of Merck Electronics
AI has the potential to accelerate the discovery of the next generation of drugs and therapies. This is exciting because it holds the promise of more personal and targeted therapies, which can make them more effective and more accessible for patients.

Natural and engineering sciences are converging at a fast pace in our quest to better understand human health and diseases – like the fields of anatomy, cell biology, biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, molecular biology, immunology, mathematics, statistics, and bioinformatics.

All this interdisciplinarity results in the creation of huge data sets, and that makes AI so immensely helpful for biomedical science and for the development of the new treatment technologies that are currently emerging.

Dr. Roger Kornberg, laureate of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The three long-standing challenges in public health are developing better drugs at a lower cost more rapidly, preparing for future pandemics, and preventing diseases.

The current best approach for drug development entails a solution that is expensive and laborious. Advanced computation can change that. A method of quantum mechanical calculation is sufficiently rapid and achieves the desired accuracy. 

The solution to the second challenge of pandemic preparedness will come from RNA therapy. I speak not of messenger RNA to produce vaccines, but rather, RNA molecules that are 100 to 1,000 times smaller, only about 20 to 25 RNA building blocks or nucleotides in length.

Small interfering RNA drugs are not only therapeutic but also preventative. They are prophylactic. They will immunize an individual against infection for a period of weeks, if not longer. This is clearly a solution, not only to the problem of future pandemic preparedness, but to viral disease and many other conditions in general. This is a wonderful new approach that’s only just begun to be applied. 

Higher education innovation and tech disruption in finance

Shi Yigong, president of Westlake University and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
China has become a big power in technology, higher education, and talent cultivation, and is on the way to becoming a world power, but we haven’t become a big power or a world power worthy of the name in terms of innovation ability. We still have a long way to go.

There are some problems with higher education in our country. We have a high educational attainment rate, but we lack cutting-edge researchers. We generally pursue a general and comprehensive education but have no significant advantages or distinctive features. We emphasize knowledge and practicality, but there’s still a gap between us and other countries regarding innovation. We’ve developed far more general talents than the most outstanding and innovative ones. 

Therefore, China’s future development can only rely on high-end leadership and innovation-driven development strategy. And the core of this strategy is the top talent. The top talent we’re talking about isn’t only the core talent in basic research, applied research, core technology, and cutting-edge research, but also the top talent in all fields, in all aspects, from the law, to finance, to social governance, to national management. I think the top talent will be the most crucial factor in a country’s high-end leadership and innovation-driven development strategy.

Charles Li, chairman and founder of Micro Connect
I have been in finance for more than 25 years now, including 11 years running the Hong Kong stock exchange. And I think that experience gave me tremendous insight as to how the financial system works in our economy and in our society.

I think that the modern Wall Street model, which has worked wonderfully for over 100 years now, works for the industrial age, because the economy at the grassroots level is unclear, and very difficult to gather information from, so you need a centralized, institutionalized, professionally staffed Wall Street to organize everything together so that information can be discovered, price can be discovered, and execution can be delivered in the traditional financial market sort of systems.

And I believe that we are now coming to the age where fundamental disruption is going to happen to financial services as well. Because at least in China today, the entire economy has largely become cashless. What that means is that most of the financial activities in China, even at the smallest business level, are completely digital, which means that they’re completely transparent. With the digitalization of the businesses at the grassroots level transparent and digital, the question becomes do we still need to force the little guys to organize into big corporations?

Millions of them never will.

Large-scale commercial operation of highly autonomous vehicles (AVs) could become a reality “sooner than expected” in China, Baidu’s CEO Robin Li said on Thursday at the 2022 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.

“I think it would take a longer time to commercialize Level 3 autonomous vehicles, because there remain questions about who is liable in the case of accidents involving these vehicles,” Li said (our translation).

Level 4 vehicles, however, make it clear that the manufacturer or the owner, rather than the driver, is responsible in a crash, Li added.

Level 4 refers to a fully autonomous system where vehicles travel from point A to point B without requiring any human intervention. In Level 3, also called the semi-autonomous level, the driver is still required to take over the vehicle in emergencies, according to definitions set by the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE).

After operating Apollo Go (Luobo Kuaipao, in Chinese), its autonomous ride-hailing service, for the last two years, Baidu said on Tuesday that it has offered more than 1 million public robotaxi rides in a dozen of major Chinese cities as of July. The search engine giant currently operates around 500 self-driving cars in China, with plans to expand that fleet to 3,000 vehicles in 30 cities by 2023.

Baidu may be a pioneer in autonomous cars, but rivals are catching up. Chinese automaker GAC Group plans to begin piloting autonomous ride-hailing vehicles along with human-operated taxis via its mobility platform OnTime in Guangzhou later this year, General Manager Feng Xingya told investors on Tuesday. The carmaker, which produces vehicles in tie-ups with Toyota and Honda in China, has been testing robotaxis with self-driving upstarts WeRide and Pony.ai.

Although excitement over self-driving vehicles has been wearing somewhat thin globally since last year as the technology gets stuck in the slow lane, China is ramping up efforts to support the sector. In August, the central government released its first national rules for commercial autonomous ride-hailing services, while Shenzhen became the first Chinese city to establish a defined legal landscape where legislators can impose a degree of liability for car crashes involving AVs.

Li called for more uniform policies with regards to driverless cars, such as a universal standard that allows companies to remove human safety drivers in more driving scenarios, as the industry continues to face multiple regulatory hurdles to mass deployment. “The window of opportunity is fleeting,” Li added. “More efforts need to be made to push forward legal reform and open the bottleneck on AVs.”   

TechNode is excited to announce a content collaboration with RADII, a Shanghai-based online media focusing on Chinese society and youth culture stories. Through the collaboration, we will bring more human interest stories shaped by the country’s tech companies and innovations, as well as new tech trends embraced by Chinese youth. 

Founded in 2017 by former Alibaba VP Brian A. Wong, RADII is an independent media platform whose mission is to captivate the world through stories that transcend boundaries. RADII is a multinational group of artists, writers, and creators who are passionate about telling human stories from the center of Chinese youth culture. The online publication covers all things culture-related, from music and nightlife, food and drink, fashion and design to digital life and society.

Founded by Dr. Lu Gang in the early 2010s, TechNode is one of the leading tech media in China, providing news and in-depth coverage of China’s tech and startup community in English and Chinese. TechNode specializes in giving readers an authentic view of the fast-moving landscape of China’s tech sector by focusing on the country’s tech majors, mobility industry, e-commerce, consumer electronics, games, and social media platforms.

Both sides also strive to build bridges between China and people worldwide: TechNode by supporting and bridging the tech and startup ecosystem between China and the rest of the world, and RADII by sharing engaging stories that cut through preconceived notions and strengthen cross-cultural understanding. From where we’re standing, this alignment of goals is more important than ever in an increasingly polarized global political environment.

In the near term, TechNode readers can expect a regular selection of RADII’s content sitting at the intersection of tech and society, art, and entertainment. RADII readers will also see a steady flow of TechNode’s latest tech industry coverage. 

We hope to expand this collaboration as we advance also to include joint events, video content, and collaboratively researched and written articles created by members of both publications’ editorial teams.

We’re confident this partnership will help expand the horizons of global followers of both publications, and we’re excited to invite you along for what’s sure to be an insightful and exciting ride.

BANGKOK, March 9, 2022–True Digital Park officially announces its strategic partnership with TechNode Global. Through our partnership, we can open up more opportunities and interactions between the tech startups across Thailand, China, and Southeast Asia, as well as breakthrough innovations and technologies that will drive a positive impact on the startup ecosystem.

This collaboration will promote the integration of science and technology innovations across Thailand, China and Southeast Asia, and the partnership is expected to further enhance cooperation between the startup ecosystems between these regions, with both parties having vast networks and resources in the technology and innovation industry.

As part of this partnership, we co-hosted an event on the topic of “Building Connections and Capabilities Before You Land in the Thai Market.” During this session, we shared advice, experiences, and best practices relevant to expanding into the Thai market. Thailand’s economy has been growing rapidly and has made remarkable progress in social and economic development, moving from a low-income country to an upper-income country in less than a generation. Bangkok has become an important regional hub for startups.

​​“We are delighted to partner with TechNode Global to strengthen both of our networks to create a stronger and wider startup ecosystem. True Digital’s goal is to attract startups, talents, and VCs from other countries to tap into the Thai market and exchange knowledge access to infrastructure and customer groups in the region. We sincerely hope that this cooperation will lead to the sustainable development of the digital economy,” says Dr. Tarit Nimmanwudipong, General Manager, True Digital Park.

With a vast network in global innovation and entrepreneurship, China-based TechNode is at the center of a unique worldwide tech ecosystem of startups, venture capital firms, industry resources, and corporate partners. In 2018, TechNode expanded its core offerings to include six business units: TN Media, TN Inno (corporate innovation services), TN Global, TN Events (branding and event services), TN Data (startup ecosystem database), and TN VC (venture capital and financing services). Through these initiatives, TechNode Global supports and connects the startup ecosystem between China and the rest of the world.

“TechNode Global’s partnership with True Digital Park builds on our respective strengths, in-depth knowledge, and expansive connections across China and Southeast Asia,” says Dr. GANG Lu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of TechNode Group. “We look forward to serving as the trusted platform with our international events and conferences, complemented with our media to deliver timely news and insights, as well as being the connector for global entrepreneurs, investors, corporates, and other partners as we continue to level up the region’s innovation ecosystem.”

About True Digital Park

True Digital Park is Southeast Asia’s largest tech and startup hub, spanning over 200,000 sqm. The park is a critical driver for the development of the startup and innovation ecosystem in Thailand. All under one roof, startups, entrepreneurs, tech companies, investors, accelerators, incubators, academies, and government agencies co-exist in our interconnected ecosystem.

For further media information, please contact:

True Digital Park
Puyada Sawasdikosol, Assistant Director
puyada.saw@truedigitalpark.com
+66-95-556-5154

About TechNode Global

TechNode Global is a Pan-Asia tech platform offering premium tech news, industry insights, events, and tailor-made marketing solutions for startups, VCs, corporates, and other industry pioneers. With a vast network in global innovation and entrepreneurship, TechNode Global facilitates cross-border partnerships and businesses. TechNode Global is a spin-off of TechNode, China’s leading innovation and entrepreneurship platform.

For further media information, please contact:

TechNode Global
Stanley Chong, Head of TechNode Global
stanley@technode.com
+65-9690-1079

As the concept of the metaverse – a virtual world where people gather to socialize, play, and work – becomes increasingly popular in China and around the world, companies are thinking about how to benefit from it. 

As part of the Beyond Expo tech conference, held at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center in Macau, TechNode talked to tech experts about the best ways to enter and make money from the burgeoning metaverse ecosystem.

The text below has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Shi Chengqiu, Senior Technical Marketing Manager at Nvidia China

“We at Nvidia consider ourselves the builders of the metaverse at this stage. We want to focus on working with our partners, including virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) device makers, cloud companies, and computing companies, to build a healthy ecosystem. Maybe in the future, we will be a participant in the virtual space. 

“China has 1.4 billion people and a vast internet user base. Many people have one or two devices to get online. So if we build a metaverse ecosystem that Chinese people find convenient to use for work, socializing, and entertainment, we might be able to make money from that.

“I think it will be a three-step process for Nvidia to position itself in the metaverse. First, be a builder, then a participant, and lastly, a business making money from the metaverse.” 

Angela Pan, CEO of Eyexpo Technology 

“Top internet giants are moving quicker than others in reacting to the metaverse concept. Next year, many mid-sized companies will start to lead the moves. Those companies provide solutions to connect the giants with smaller suppliers. 

“The simple first step to enter the metaverse for most companies is to create related content. For example, many live broadcast events are now using virtual characters and virtual intellectual property (IP), creating metaverse-related content. Smaller companies should cultivate unique IPs and find mid-sized solution companies to help them build a small metaverse environment rather than building the metaverse themselves since most of the metaverse infrastructure will need to be made by specialized technological companies.” 

Yang Xiaokang, Executive Chairman of the Artificial Intelligence Institute at Shanghai Jiao Tong University

“From the perspective of academia, the metaverse is a problem of fusing the virtual world and the natural world and doing it more efficiently. AI researchers are looking into how AI can calculate faster and improve this fusion. For example, we often use the phrase ‘AI empowerment’, but empowerment still means AI is dependent on others instead of AI as an independent product. I think AI may have its own independent product in the metaverse. 

“The metaverse will be using a lot of AI technologies in the future. Take the identification issue, for example. We need AI to authenticate people’s real identities and their virtual identities.

“Another example is linking one’s social groups and behavior. Efficiency will be essential if we need to map the real-world organization in the virtual world or even create new organizations. If we want to create lots of content and organizations, we need to rely on AI to improve efficiency. 

“We are also making virtual humans. I have shown Angela Pan some examples. For instance, if we upload a picture of our face, we can generate a very detailed and realistic digital face. We can also generate a three-dimensional match from a highly complex movement of a rotating figure-skater. The metaverse is very exciting for us AI researchers, and I hope to work with everyone here.”

Once known as the world’s factory, China is hoping to transition from a manufacturing hub relying on cheap labor and abundant resources to a country driven by technological innovation and automation. TechNode talked to leaders from three robotic companies on the automation needs in Chinese factories and the construction industry. 

This conversation took place during an open panel discussion on Dec. 4 at the Beyond Expo tech conference, held at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center in Macau.

The text below has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Zhang Chaohui, Founder and CEO of Youibot

Chinese manufacturers face an urgent dilemma: they are expanding production when China’s population is aging, and more young people are choosing service jobs over factory jobs. This dilemma means we have to transition to smart manufacturing to avoid hollowing out.

In the last two years, many of our semiconductor clients have seen demand rising rapidly, sometimes by two or three times. But at the same time, they have a hard time finding people willing to work in factories. For example, one of my clients in a top chip factory said the factory has a 30% turnover rate every month, which is a common phenomenon in electronics factories.

People have seen robots as production tools in the past decade, but now more people will see robots as a production force. The way I look at the relationship between robots and people is that by using robots to automate some jobs, people will be liberated to do more high-level creative work, increasing people’s happiness.  

Xiong Junjie, Deputy General Manager of Hangzhou Shenhao Tech

We found that as the scenery and atmosphere of factories and other facilities changes with the seasons, some robots can get confused and lost if they’ve only been programmed for one time of year. This problem inspired us to customize our robots to suit different environments and needs. As a result, we have made robots that can move on wheels, rails, and via other forms of mobility. 

As Chinese manufacturers transition to meet the country’s goal of reaching peak carbon emission in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060, the inspection industry is working to provide inspection robots to new energy producers, such as solar power stations, wind power stations, and power storage stations. We are also working to have robots inspect carbon emissions so clients can get a more detailed read on emission data and trade redundant carbon emission quotas on the market.

Han Li, CEO of Fab-Union

Construction robots have only started to develop in the past two years, and it’s a new growth area in the industry. While we replace some traditional construction processes with automation, we also know some of those processes will slowly disappear as China tries to cut down carbon emissions. So not all current construction processes need to be automated, such as pouring reinforced concrete, which emits large amounts of carbon dioxide and might be replaced in the future by use of steel structures and wooden structures. 

It might take a while for the construction industry to reach a higher automation level. We might get a breakthrough in five to ten years. Automation in the construction industry will take more than robots replacing some human work. It will require a rethink in design, material, and crafts. I will use the 3D-printed chair we brought to the exhibition hall as an example. The chair is customized based on each person’s body; in other words, each of our chairs is different. If the chair is produced in a traditional industrialized way, it will take a lot more time, as every design change will change the production. But with 3D printing, we can build a customized chair in three to four hours.

“Logistics robots will become standardized parts like motors, ready to be used in various industries in the next five years,” said Xia Huiling, founder and CEO of intelligent sorting robot developer Libiao Robotics, at the Beyond Expo tech conference held in Macau on Friday.

In agreement was Zhu Junda, CEO of smart warehouse systems and equipment developer HC Robotics, when asked to predict the five-year outlook for the industry. “Warehouse and logistic robots should be widely-used tools with low thresholds for adoption,” he said. 

The panel was co-organized by GLP, a global investor and business operator in logistics, real estate, and infrastructure.

The robotics industry always looks to the future, but the panelists adopted a very practical approach in judging the present success of a company: whether its products will create value for clients, in very concrete and quantitative ways. 

“The pursuit for efficiency is our foremost principle in making all decisions when developing a product,” said Xia. 

She explained her points with the case of Uniqlo. After adopting sorting robots developed by Libiao Robotics in a warehouse with daily shipment capacity of more than 400,000 parcels per day, the Japanese garment retailer shortened the time from receiving an order online to delivering it from warehouses from eight hours to three hours. The number of staff was reduced by 75% and all the new warehouse employees only need one day of training before starting to work. 

“Value creation is only meaningful through these figures,” she said.

“The robotics industry may have a fancy aura surrounding it. But in essence, it’s still a business about moving things around. The core problem we are addressing now is how to move goods from one place to another at higher efficiency and lower costs, and to store more goods within fixed space,” said Zhu of HC Robotics. The company develops automated and modular storage shelves and warehouse management system solutions.

He Wenzhong, new energy special assistant to CEO at GLP, said the key for future success in logistics robots will be building a decentralized logistics network in order to remove the repetitive work resulting from a system that relies on big and centralized distribution hubs. 

Zhao Yue, chairman of smart logistics solution provider Seer Group, said the key for success is to build an ecosystem that connects every link along the industrial chain to create synergistic effects. Zhao’s company develops software solutions including controllers, logistics digitalization, and visual AI. Zhao referred to Seer’s products as the “smart brains” for logistics robots. Seer’s software solutions are used by more than 600 automatic hardware companies worldwide, said Zhao.

Space travel will only be “a game for rich people” if its cost can not be reduced, said a founder at a Chinese rocket launch startup on Friday.

“If every trip to space costs $1 million, it won’t be a commercial market,” Cheng Wei, founder of Chinese space company Rocket Pi said at the Beyond Expo event held in Macau on Friday. (our translation).

Cheng said that the first step for the commercial exploration of the universe would be sending animals into space.

“We first have to develop the ability to send lifeforms other than humans, like cells or primates, to travel in space to gather data before human exploration can be fully achieved,” said Cheng.

Companies in the emerging market also have to consider regulatory challenges, the entrepreneur said. “This is a long march and we still have a lot of hurdles to overcome,” he added.

Co-founded by Zhuang Fengyuan, an academic at the International Academy of Astronautics, Rocket Pi is among the early movers in the private space exploration sector in China, developing and operating space launch systems for in-orbit experiments for biopharmaceutical studies.

The company is currently on track to launch a biological payload carried by a satellite, called Sparkle-1, later this month, and put several more into orbit next year, Cheng told TechNode. It has set a long-term goal of building a space lab to enable human space travel after 2025.

China has just started constructing its own space station and the country’s research in space life sciences is still at an early stage, Cheng said. He added that there is significant work to be done in helping commercial space travel become a reality, such as reducing the acceleration load for less experienced space travellers so that they can have a safer, smoother ride.

In April, China began building its first permanent space station, Tiangong-1. SpaceX, the aerospace company founded by Elon Musk, made history in September by successfully launching the first orbital flight with four amateur space travelers, marking the first time that an all-civilian crew reached space.

Beyond Expo has been underway at the Venetian Convention and Exhibition Center in Macau since Thursday. The three-day offline tech summit and exhibition has attracted more than 300 exhibitors promoting everything from artificial intelligence and biotech to smart cities. Giant firms such as Tencent, China Telecom, Alibaba, and Huawei joined with upcoming vertical unicorns to showcase their latest technological developments and products.

Here are some highlights in case you missed out.

Innovations from giant firms

At Tencent’s booth, the company demonstrated 15 ways its technologies are applied in smart cities, industrial chains, and healthcare, mainly concentrating on commercial applications in the Greater Bay Area, which consists of nine cities in the southern Guangdong province, Hong Kong and Macao.

One example was Tencent’s cooperation with the Macao Water Supply Company. Tencent’s productivity app, WeCom, has greatly improved the working efficiency of his company, according to Hu Jianchao, head of the water firm’s pipeline management department.

Before adopting the app, the company relied on phone calls to learn about water pipeline emergencies. Lack of real-time updates often led to miscommunications. WeCom has streamlined the emergency treatment process by digitizing case details such as the location of the emergency, onsite pictures, and the staff in charge of the case, Hu explained.

Telecom carrier China Telecom has developed a smart city transportation platform for Macao by integrating technologies including IoT, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data. The app, which claims more than 100,000 daily active users in the city, supports major features like route management and bus stop reporting.

The company’s 5G-enabled robot dog drew a large crowd at the event. The dog can be useful in various scenarios such as accompanying and guiding visually-impaired people in emergency rescues, said Chen Zhanhong, a representative from the Macao subsidiary of China Telecom. 

Robots at work

Service robots are well on track for commercial applications as traditional sectors turn to automation to increase efficiency and slash labor costs. The trend got a strong boost from the pandemic, which gave rise to the new concept of “non-contact delivery.”

Now, service robots are giving directions at malls, supermarkets, museums, and hotels, as well as delivering food in restaurants, taking care of the elderly, and assisting with medical treatments.

Cars take to the air

As electric vehicles and autonomous driving become more familiar concepts to Chinese consumers, entrepreneurs are exploring the future of daily transportation.

Developed by Chinese drone maker EHang, EHang 216 is a dual-seat passenger grade autonomous aerial vehicle designed for short- to medium-range air transportation. The passenger drone can travel at a maximum speed of 130 km/h. It can fly for 21 minutes with a full-load capacity of 220 kilograms.

Xpeng Huitian, an autonomous aviation unit of electric vehicle maker Xpeng Motors, showcased its “flying car” prototype Voyager X2 at the event. With eight propellers on four axes, the passenger drone could carry two adults. It has a maximum load of 200 kilograms. The electric drone can travel 35 minutes at between 80 and100 kilometers per hour on one charge.

On Friday, Dec. 3, TechNode talked to three venture capitalists about investment trends and opportunities in the metaverse, a popular concept referring to the next iteration of the internet. This conversation took place during an open panel discussion at the Beyond Expo tech conference, held from this past Thursday to Saturday at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center in Macau.

The text below has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Ken Xu, partner with CMC Capital headquartered in Shanghai: 

It would be exciting to see who can formulate this system and establish the virtual world’s economic system. That’s why many people are investing in blockchain technology. 

Ken Xu

If we’re following a common investment logic, most investors will think about investing in devices that will allow people to access the virtual world. For example, one would think of investing in computer equipment in the past because people needed a computer to access the internet. 

However, if you think of this question from the bottom up, there should be many investment opportunities for components integral to those devices and hardware, such as circuits for AR and VR devices. 

Secondly, I think there are opportunities in setting up new business models and new economic models. For example, a virtual world like the metaverse will need an underlying structure to support the operation of the world. It would be exciting to see who can formulate this system and establish the virtual world’s economic system. That’s why many people are investing in blockchain technology. 

Thirdly, there are opportunities in business-to-business applications. Businesses in tourism and logistics will have many needs for metaverse-related applications. We may find opportunities worth investing in these areas. 

Jia Ke, founding partner of Creation Venture Partners headquartered in Shenzhen: 

I think of investment opportunities in three key places: immersive, entry point, and real-world spaces. 

We have invested in one of China’s biggest chain stores offering VR devices for people to try out and play with. There are opportunities in that area. 

Another is investing in entry points, which I think lies in interactivity. Good interaction will bring more people into the virtual world. 

Lastly, I think there are opportunities in physical spaces. For example, we recently invested in a company that excels at doing interactive art space in the real world. The company collaborated with a Chinese public company to build a digital art museum last month, which is located near the pier in Shenzhen. They remodeled an abandoned factory into an art space that offers viewers some virtual experiences. 

Chen Wensi, partner with Hongtai Aplus headquartered in Beijing: 

We have been investing in the metaverse for a while. Some of our previous investment cases can also be put into the metaverse category now. For example, we invested in the AR glass maker Nreal around 2015 and 2016. We also invested in Corigine, a company that focuses on DPUs (data processing units), and brought us eight times in investment returns since last year. 

I’m also working on my own startup called Yika, a metaverse company for the cultural sector. I started thinking about the idea two years ago. I was thinking of displaying arts and creative things in 3D and giving viewers a more immersive experience. The idea sounds like part of the metaverse. We are building it from the bottom up. We have made a consortium blockchain, and we are the exclusive platform working with the Copyright Protection Center of China … We offer a full service in intellectual property protection (for digital cultural products), including trading, displaying, and protection.

Airbus predicts that the first commercially available flying taxi route will be operational by around 2025, said Philipp Visotschnig, chief financing officer of Airbus China, told the Beyond Expo event held in Macau on Friday.

Below is the full text of Visotschnig‘s speech at the Beyond Expo event. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity: 

For half a century Airbus product line of commercial aircraft has transformed the way we live and interact with the world. By truly opening borders, connecting cultures, and changing the way we think and feel about our global neighbors. commercial aircraft have a major role to play in breaking down barriers and uniting people around the world. 

Partnering with over 400 operators and customers on flying more than 48,000 routes worldwide, the 12,000 Plus Airbus aircraft in service today connect people each day. Keeping our gaze on the future is in line with our core beliefs. The next challenge for Airbus is to lead the way in making zero-emission commercial aircraft a reality. I will discuss this point and then later. 

At Airbus, we are proud of how our products and services contribute to communities around the world every day. Our satellites and tracking systems have made the ocean safer, with solutions that monitor and protect naval roots at maritime assets. Airbus built aircraft instrumental in firefighting, public safety, and maintaining energy services. Airbus products and services are used for some of the most critical missions through human humanitarian aid. We support our partners in times of crisis providing aircraft satellite imagery and other services when relief teams are literally fighting against the clock. Our aircraft help transport patients for urgent medical care and the assistance of relief efforts at sea. That’s what we do. 

With the very fast development of his aerospace aviation industry, China’s on track to become the world’s largest aviation market. Today we have more than 1900 aircraft commercial jetliners in service in China and deliveries to this country represent more than 25% of annual deliveries under the annual production volumes of Airbus. What has been making this possible are more than 1900 employees in China that work for Airbus and its joint ventures and commercial aircraft in multiple locations across the country. 

Airbus has also been the number one helicopter partner for China for more than 50 years. This is a long-lasting relationship that began in 1967. Today Airbus helicopter is a leader in China with a 40% market share. Traditionally, our helicopters activities are based here in the Greater Bay Area. This is also where our general Innovation Center in Shenzhen is leveraging China’s innovative advantages. Here we are focusing on connectivity, cabin experience, and manufacturing technologies. 

At Airbus, we believe that the future of aerospace is autonomous, connected and zero-emission. So our world is changing. And so we are. At Airbus, we want to be known not only for our exceptional products and services but also for the positive impact that we have on the world, our society and on its citizens. 

Aviation has given us the possibility to explore all four corners of the world, to connect with friends, and to meet new ones, virtually every day, to feel the thrill of seeing the world, from 30,000 feet above. 

But today, we know that the love for travel comes with a price. It comes with a cost. The aviation industry represents today roughly two and a half percent of global human-induced CO2 emissions. But aviation is not the problem, emissions are the problem. So how to address that? 

Climate change is the greatest challenge of our generation. At Airbus, we understand that, and we also understand that society expects us to rise to this challenge. This is why we are leading this journey towards clean aerospace. The aviation industry with Airbus at its forefront has committed to industry-wide decarbonization. It includes the following two key targets carbon-neutral growth, and net-zero CO2 emissions by 2050. 

We at Airbus expect to make the necessary decisions by 2025 to see what is the best combination of technology. China, being at the forefront of the hydrogen economy will be part of the strategy. More short-term in the development of sustainable alternative fuels. Soft sustainable aviation fuel has the potential to drive significantly down CO2 emissions. 

We have seen tremendous activity in the past few years in urban air mobility (UAM). While the industry is still in its early stages, new players continue to enter the market, and the number of UAM pilot projects involving conventional helicopter or aircraft types as electric vertical takeoff, and landing aircraft continue to rise. And until now, almost all vehicles designed for UAM rely totally, or at least partially, on electric propulsion. So that’s one of the trends that we see is electric propulsion. 

As more and more operational UAM use cases take to the skies and public publicity increases, you see confidence rising, that’s also important, there’s confidence rising and a higher probability that developers will meet their development targets. As such, we predicted the first commercial UAM routes will be operational by around 2025. They may even start a little earlier. 

There is a Chinese autonomous urban air mobility developer that is already operating flights and has received approval from the Chinese authorities to pilot cargo operations. Indeed, the first production facilities and supply chains are already built up for them. Similarly, when we looked at the US, there is also a maker that is already producing or setting up its production site in California with the help of a Japanese auto giant.

Most new models are designed to serve particular purposes. That’s also a trend that we see there’s a design for particular purposes, there are typically city flying taxies, which will fly within very densely populated urban areas covering distances from 15 to 50 kilometers. We see airport shuttles, which will transfer passengers from transport hubs or points of interest to airports within 15 and 80 kilometers. And we see inter- or intra- city flights, which will fly commuters routes up to 250 kilometers. 

At the same time, more and more players have entered the wider UAM market. From part suppliers, traffic management providers, infrastructure suppliers and software producers. We see this ecosystem is building up. This is creating an ecosystem with a varied value chain collaboration is becoming an increasingly important aspect. Regulatory authorities must also be involved very heavily. 

UAM could become a game-changer for mobility, but there are still many open questions that we need to address. I personally believe that the key to success is collaboration and the right business model. 

I think OEMs should build on their experience and find the best fit UAM model. startups need to focus on public acceptance and proof of concept and suppliers and hardware providers to select value chain targets. Then we are there are we on the path to get to this $90 billion market.

Chinese artificial intelligence company Sensetime on Thursday announced several partnerships with state-owned conglomerate Nam Kwong Group, among others, which will bolster its business in Macau, as the gambling center is rushing to become a tech innovation hub in Asia.

Why it matters: The partnerships, in part a reflection of Sensetime’s ongoing investment in Macau, are expected to enhance the artificial intelligence giant’s outreach in the city and prop up the local economy.

Details: Sensetime is teaming up with Nam Kwong Group, a Chinese state-owned enterprise specializing in infrastructure and transport services, and expanding partnership with Macau’s Kiang Wu Hospital to support the city’s digital transformation efforts, the company announced Thursday at the Beyond Expo Macau 2021 event.

• State-owned Nam Kwong Group will work with Sensetime to adopt the AI technology in various applications including hotel management, public transport, and electric power grid, among others with a goal to improve urban safety, governance efficiency, and environmental protection, according to a statement. 
• The Chinese AI unicorn claimed that its algorithms could improve the accuracy of detection of benign and malignant lung nodules by 20% and increase the efficiency by 50% compared with human doctors. Kiang Wu Hospital has been using Sensetime’s assisted diagnosis and treatment technologies such as chest x-ray software starting 2020. 

Context: Chinese AI companies have been thriving with surging demand for their image recognition software, as local governments are adopting the technology to fight against the pandemic.

• Sensetime last month had reportedly secured approval from the Hong Kong stock exchange for its initial public offering, seeking to raise at least $1 billion. The company was valued at more than $10 billion in a 2020 funding round.
• The company’s revenue nearly doubled to RMB 1.65 billion (around $260 million) in the first half of 2021, with a net loss of RMB 3.7 billion in the same period. It is currently Asia’s biggest AI software provider by revenue, according to a Frost & Sullivan report commissioned by SenseTime in its prospectus.

On Thursday morning, Beyond Expo (Beyond International Technology Innovation Expo) kicked off at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center in Macau.

The event features 10 heavyweight speakers to share thoughts on China’s technology innovation.

Please find below selected quotes from the opening day speeches. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity: 

Rising tech investment opportunities in China

Wu Yibing, head of China in Temasek:

Driven by China’s goal of reaching a carbon peak in 2030 and carbon neutrality in 2060, the country is about to see a massive transformation in its energy industry and great transformations in the electric car industry. 

We will see significant rising demand for energy services and energy solutions. For example, industries such as centralized energy storage systems, smart grids, and charging infrastructure might see growth in the future. 

Temasek is investing in low-carbon and decarbonization technologies, including energy storage, nuclear fusion, geothermal, and 3D manufacturing. We hope to use our ecosystem to help every partner and member form a (global decarbonization) ecosystem. 

Ni Zewang, party secretary and board chairman of state-affiliated Shenzhen Capital Group: 

What trend would China’s capital market embrace in the next couple of years? We have seen opportunities in key and core technology, information technology, smart manufacturing, and others. 

In information technology, we see opportunities in digital infrastructure, which includes 5G and industrial internet of things, and digitization in daily lives and production. In smart manufacturing, the keys are transformation and upgrading…we have solved the problem of not making enough products in the past couple of decades. Now, we are hoping to solve the problem of making better, more competitive products. 

Company’s social responsibility

Ma Weihua, chairman of China Alliance of Social Value Investment and former president of China Merchants Bank: 

We have discovered that economic development also brings economic and environmental problems (such as inequality and climate change). So we can start weighing both the economic benefits and social impacts at the beginning of every economic activity, at the start of every investment decision, we might minimize these problems.

The Chinese government has asked people to strive for common prosperity. The most important thing in the next 100 years is to keep growing the economy and make sure the gains are better distributed. 

Companies should strive to be great companies, not just good companies. A good company can provide good products and good services to society, but a great company makes the world a better place and provides good products and services.

Macao aims to become a tech event hub

Note: China’s Greater Bay Area consists of nine cities in the southern Guangdong province, Hong Kong, and Macao. 

Hugo Shong, founding Chairman of IDG Capital: 

When we talk about entrepreneurship, most of us will think of silicon valley an entrepreneurship heaven. Silicon Valley is in San Francisco Bay Area. There are many bay areas in the world; they share some similarities but also have their own unique characteristics. I think Macao and the Hengqin area (an area neighboring Macao and Guangdong province and part of a government-led project to develop the Greater Bay Area) are vital and could borrow some of the lessons from the Bay Area in the US. However, this area still lags in terms of investment and education, but it also means huge growth potential. For example, we invested in a solar power company headquartered in Hengqin, Zhuhai. It has already generated about RMB 2 billion in revenue since we invested last November.

Dong Mingzhu, chairwoman of appliance maker Gree Electric: 

Gree Electric is based in Zhuhai, neighboring Macao. We are already a family with Macao, the Greater Bay Area family. I hope that Gree Electric will continue to serve the development of the Greater Bay Area and attract young people in Macao to come to Zhuhai, come to work at Gree, and come to the Greater Bay Area. 

Qi Faren, space technology expert and chief designer of “Shenzhou” manned spacecraft:

When I visited Macao more than a decade ago, the region was an observer of the space tech. Now, Macao’s tech sector has already taken part in China’s aerospace projects, participating in a scientific exploration satellite project that will be launched next year. I hope we can attract more young people to join China’s space projects.

Singapore’s state-owned investment firm Temasek will continue seeking long-term investment opportunities in China, especially in the technology sector, the company’s China head said in a keynote speech at TechNode’s Beyond Expo in Macau on Thursday.

Temasek spent more than RMB 500 billion (around $78.47 billion) on investing in the Chinese market in the fiscal year ended on March 31, or 27% of its global investment volume, said Wu Yibing, Head of China at the Singaporean state investment firm.

Wu’s remarks came amid media reports that Temasek is shying away from China’s tech sector due to the country’s regulatory climate. 

In November, Nikkei Asia reported that Temasek was “holding off on new investment in Chinese tech companies for the time being due to uncertainty over Beijing’s crackdown on the sector.”

The same month, Bloomberg reported that Temasek had sold shares of several Chinese tech companies including Alibaba and Didi Chuxing. The investor cut 16% of its stake in Alibaba and 11% of its shares in Didi, according to Bloomberg.

Wu, who joined Temasek as its China head in 2013, told the Beyond Expo that the holding firm had had a long position in China since it entered the country more than 20 years ago, and that it will continue to do so.

However, Wu said Temasek is experiencing a transitional period in its China investment from bankrolling the country’s major internet and consumer tech players such as Alibaba, to funding startups in what he called the “new tech” and “new economy” sectors. He said the focus of Temasek’s investment strategy in China would be technological innovation.

Temasek will look at digital transformation as a key trend when investing in China tech, Wu said. The company has been investing in areas such as marketing tech, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and semiconductors as part of the trend, he added.

China’s declared aim of being carbon neutral by 2060 is creating a trillion-dollar investment opportunity in sectors like electric vehicles and low-carbon manufacturing, said Wu.

“As China pushes for carbon neutrality, it is about to usher in a huge change in the energy industry,” said Wu. “China’s decarbonization goal will also promote a series of significant changes in green energy, electric vehicles, green manufacturing and other industries.”

BEYOND Expo kicked off with its nearly month-long online conference, BEYOND Virtual Opening, on November 9, 15:00 (GMT+8) with entrepreneurs, scientists, global investors, and tech experts. The opening was broadcast live on the BEYOND Expo website, BEYOND App, and simulcasted on CGTN, Forbes, and Pheonix New Media’s social media channels.

We are honored to have Dr. Song Xiao, Global Executive Vice President and President and CEO of Siemens Greater China; Jessica Tan, Co-CEO and Group Executive of Ping An Group; Mr. Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in China; Scott Beaumont, President at Google Asia Pacific; David Liao, Co-Chief Executive, Asia-Pacific at HSBC; Dr. William A. Haseltine, Founder, Chairman and President of ACCESS Health International, and Raymond Teh, Vice President at NVIDIA, APAC, spoke on this year’s theme of BEYOND Expo – “What’s Next?”, as well as our special guest, Terry Gou, Founder of Foxconn.

Many of our speakers at BEYOND Virtual Opening touched on digitalization and how it can transform economies. Dr. Song Xiao, Global Executive Vice President of Siemens and President and CEO of Siemens Greater China, believes that digital transformation is imperative for all markets, industries, and societies to achieve high-quality growth, carbon neutrality, and resilience.

Digital technologies are expected to further loosen geographical restraints and blur the industrial lines, even for professional industries, said Jessica Tan, co-CEO and group executive of Ping An Group, as she shared her thoughts on how the pandemic has accelerated digitalization trends and opened up new opportunities; while David Liao, Co-Chief Executive, Asia-Pacific, HSBC said when the COVID pandemic struck, it became very clear that digital transformation was no longer a choice for businesses, but a necessity.

The future for the Asia Region with technology is incredibly bright, said Scott Beaumont, president at Google Asia Pacific. As countries find a path to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, Macau, a special administrative region on the south coast of China, could serve as a key platform, connecting traditional industries with emerging industries, said Foxconn founder Terry Gou.

In terms of technology and its environmental impact, Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in China, stressed the importance of sustainability and sustainable development in doing business. For large enterprises, small businesses, or government organizations, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals can be considered a blueprint for success in unlocking new markets and ensuring longevity in business operations. As a global corporation, Google made a statement that they want to be carbon-free by the end of the decade, said Scott Beaumont, president at Google Asia Pacific, although with some nervousness and some excitement, it is important to try and possibly set a standard for others to follow.

William A. Haseltine, founder, chairman, and president of ACCESS Health International, said he expects the next 20 years to become an era of enormous innovation, not just in one country but around the world, followed by Raymond Teh sharing his insight on NVIDIA’s insights on AI, metaverse, and his observation on how a substantial digital revolution is taking place all over the world.

Global Investment Hotspots panel

Apart from the opening speeches, there was an opening panel on “The Global Investment Hotspots: The Next Blue Ocean” with Amir Gal-Or, Founder and Managing Partner of Infinity Group; Christine Tsai, CEO and Founding Partner of 500 Global; and Hans Tung, Managing Partner at GGV Capital. At the opening panel, we learn about the current trends in innovations, investments, and capital flow–particularly the industries and regions that are emerging as hotspots.

The panel’s participants are no stranger to finding the right trends and timing, having invested in companies young and early, with at least a hundred Unicorns in their portfolios. We learned how alternative sources of capital can become both challenges and exit/partnership opportunities. The panel discussed how investors are growing more open to investing outside of their primary markets. VCs are bound to miss out on opportunities if they don’t invest outside of their comfort zones.

While the pandemic has proven to be a challenge in terms of finding opportunities for founders to travel to network with VCs, the new trend in remote meetings and distributed teams has proven to be a good opportunity for founders and investors to build relationships globally. References and relationships are important.

Stay tuned for more

In the following weeks, BEYOND Virtual will offer 18 panels, featuring 40 distinguished speakers from around the world. The virtual panels will provide deep-dive discussions on trending and critical topics in the tech sector. Follow us on our BEYOND LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook accounts to be notified of upcoming sessions. The Expo will host an on-site event from December 2 to 4, 2021, at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center. 

If you have missed the previous content, you can log into your BEYOND account to watch the replays on-demand.

The BEYOND Virtual Opening presents world-class entrepreneurs, scientists, global investors, and tech experts to share with us the trends of technology, investments, and the impact of each industry in shaping the world we live in today and the future.

In his opening remarks, William A. Haseltine, founder, chairman, and president of ACCESS Health International, said he expects the next 20 years to become an era of enormous innovation, not just in one country but around the world.

The biological sciences are leading the way in many different fields, not just in health and agriculture and understanding the natural world, but in physics, in chemistry, in nanomaterials, he added.

The major advances that are coming are not just from the fields alone, such as chemistry and physics, and mathematics but it is a combination of all of them.

Looking ahead to the next 15 or 20 years, he said he sees many more opportunities arising.

ACCESS Health International is a nonprofit think tank, advisory group, and implementation partner aiming to improve access to high-quality and affordable healthcare for people everywhere. It works closely with governments, the private sector, development partners, and researchers to improve health financing systems and the quality of healthcare services.

Below is the full text of his speech at the BEYOND Virtual Opening. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity:

Allow me to thank the organizers of Beyond Expo for inviting me to speak today. I’m very sorry not to be able to join you in Macau. It’s a beautiful part of the world, which I’ve had the pleasure of visiting many times.

Macau is a particularly fitting locale for this conference, not because of the leading role in the Asia Pacific region it plays in both scientific and technological innovation, but because Macau is in a unique position reaching the United States and China, supporting the expansion of some of the most forward-looking thinking companies in both countries.

In my opinion, there’s no more exciting time than to be working on science and technology today. Advancements over the past 15 to 20 years have allowed scientists like myself, the opportunity to explore new ideas in ways I could not even imagine when I was beginning my career.

When I look ahead to the next 15 or 20 years, I see many more opportunities arising.

First, let me say the biological sciences are leading the way in many different fields, not just in health and agriculture and understanding the natural world, but in physics, in chemistry, in nanomaterials, we are learning to manipulate the atomic world.

The same way life does, i.e. engineering new devices, new products at the molecular level, at the atomic level. That is how life is built and that is what we are learning.

In addition to that, the major advances that are coming are not just from the fields alone, such as chemistry and physics and mathematics. It is a combination of all of them.

We have never seen such a flowering of innovation from cross-cultivation, cross-pollination of the different technologies.

I expect the next 20 years to be one of enormous innovation, not just in one country but around the world.

One of the most important things about science is collaboration. Science is a universal language, spoken by every scientist no matter where they live, and critical to the progress of science.

It is that uninterrupted communication amongst our leading thinkers and it’s extremely important for young people to travel to different countries to understand that their language is the language that others speak.

I can tell you from my own experience, my early travels around the world were essential to my understanding of what science is, how it’s practice, and a source of infinite new ideas.

But science and technology alone will not get us where we need to be. These two past two years have shown us the critical importance of strong and dynamic healthcare systems that make the best use of limited pools of resources.

Studies have shown us that people living in countries with weak and overburdened healthcare systems, suffered much more dramatically than those who did not. Strengthening our healthcare systems and improving their resilience will only become more important in the months to come.

That’s why I’m so pleased to have had the success that we’ve had with Access Health International, a group that works on improving the health system, strengthening health systems worldwide.

We consult with the best thinkers everywhere in the world. We study what works the best, and then we help policymakers who have opened to innovation adapt those innovations in healthcare reform, healthcare systems, healthcare strengthening, not least of which is financial technology and information technology, fields that have formally been thought to be foreign from the idea of healthcare service and healthcare delivery.

In closing, I’d like to offer a few words of advice. One of the things that at this point in my career I’m interested in, is making sure that there are future generations that are dedicated to improving the lives of others.

In a book that I’ve written for young people, Science, as a Superpower, is intended to inspire them to realize that in science, one person, one mind, can really save the world.

My life has been saved by such super scientists, the man who invented penicillin. I was one of the first civilians ever to receive penicillin as a young child. I remember quite well the restrictions in my life that polio imposed very similar to the restrictions that young people have today, and we all have today as a result of COVID that change with two great scientists.

One is Salk and the other one is Sabin. They made a great difference. And today as we face COVID, it’s really important to have the best scientists in the world.

If children’s lives will be made better, if young people’s lives will be made better, if all of our lives will be made better in this time of COVID, it’d be because we have great health system and great scientists to help save us from what is a new scourge of humanity.

So again, I close this by thanking the organizers of BEYOND Expo for inviting me to take part in this important event. I look forward to the possibility of joining you in person in the years to come. In the meantime, I send you my best wishes for a fruitful exchange of ideas.

There will no doubt lead us to new and better opportunities and innovations for the future.

Thank you very much.

The BEYOND Virtual Opening presents world-class entrepreneurs, scientists, global investors, and tech experts to share with us the trends of technology, investments, and the impact of each industry in shaping the world we live in today and the future.

In his opening remarks,  David Liao, Co-Chief Executive, Asia-Pacific, HSBC said when the COVID pandemic struck, it became very clear that digital transformation was no longer a choice for businesses, but a necessity. The pandemic has an impact on payments.

He also shared how the pandemic accelerated the growth of e-commerce and how the banking group is doing to help its clients adapt and how it scales its digital transformation.

Below is the full text of his speech at the BEYOND Virtual Opening. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity:

Hello, I’m David Liao, Co-Chief Executive of HSBC, Asia Pacific. I’m delighted to join the BEYOND Expo conference today.

It’s been a challenging couple of years. We’re all of us here looking, planning and moving forward. So what’s next for us at HSBC?

Technology has always been a driver of change. Even before COVID, artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain, just to name a few, we are already revolutionizing the landscape we operate in. 

Then the pandemic struck. It became very clear that digital transformation was no longer a choice for businesses, but a necessity. COVID-19 triggered a decade’s worth of change in just a few short months.

The biggest impact: payments, specifically cashless digital payments, is in play.

The pandemic accelerated the growth of e-commerce. The way people spent their money and the things they spent it on changed radically. An example would be a certain online US retailer’s second-quarter results in 2020, which recorded 40% year-on-year growth and was boosted by a tripling of grocery sales.

And overnight, volumes of food delivery services skyrocketed. Across Southeast Asia, 85% of consumers now use cashless payments. The digital payments market in the Asia Pacific is growing by more than 30% a year.

The technology and expectations are changing so fast. You might have been a digital bank yesterday and still be a dinosaur today.

So we’re running hard to stay in front. It’s challenging, but it’s also exciting.

We’re rolling out dozens of new digital products. We’ve even started taking out patents for the first time on a new technology we are developing.

But the pace of change creates new complexity for businesses. Organizations -big and small- are trying to figure out how to get ahead of the changes and understand the technologies that can help them.

In a post COVID environment, where everyone is a buyer and a seller, and a consumer and vendor at the same time, businesses need a trusted partner in their digital transformation journey in order to help provide end-to-end solutions, implement real-time capabilities for processing transactions and information at scale, gain transparency on transactions, grow their business by having ecosystem linkages connecting them to their buyers or suppliers and all this while, protecting customer data.

It’s a monumental task, but one that HSBC is well-positioned for. We were already deeply invested in digital and real-time payment infrastructure before the pandemic, and we’ve stepped up the pace and scale of our digital transformation in the months since it hit.

We’ve been working with regulators and investing in Real-Time Payment platforms available in 12 markets across Asia and APIs. We’ve built applications that help businesses make and collect real-time payments easily and efficiently. This enables companies to quickly transition from a physical to a digital storefront.

When COVID struck, we were able to use our digital payments expertise to help our clients adapt quickly.

Take KPJ, a Malaysian healthcare company. When the pandemic hit in 2020, KPJ became one of the private hospitals approved to conduct COVID-19 testing in Malaysia.

As social distancing practices and movement restrictions set in, KPJ needed to establish safer payment options for patients. Leveraging Malaysia’s national real-time payment service, DuitNow, HSBC helped KPJ implement a payment option that enabled real-time, instant, and contactless payments from a patient’s bank using the QR code.

Also, HSBC is helping the delivery service Foodpanda to revolutionize the way it pays its workers. Today, a Foodpanda rider can use the company’s app to get paid instantly after finishing a delivery shift.

That’s money earned straight into their digital pocket, ready to go back into the community and create growth.

Real-Time payments volumes were up 90% year-on-year in the first eight months of 2021 and we expect this trend to continue over the next couple of years. So we’re pushing on with cutting-edge payments innovations as we move into a post-COVID world.

Our challenge is to make them faster, cheaper, and even more secure. Payments now are digital, on-demand, and real-time. By improving the way cash flows into the economy, we’re contributing to growth and prosperity. This is the future. And it’s now.

Thank you.

The BEYOND virtual event kicked off on Tuesday as a preview of the BEYOND EXPO Macao 2021 that will be held from Dec. 2 to Dec. 4. In his keynote speech during Tuesday’s virtual event, Raymond Teh, sales & marketing vice president at NVIDIA, APAC, shares the US AI giant’s insights on a wide range of topics from Artificial Intelligence (AI) computing, metaverse, to startups.

Below is the full text of Teh’s speech at the BEYOND Virtual event. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity: 

Hello, I’m Raymond Teh. I’m responsible for NVIDIA’s business in the Asia Pacific region. It’s a pleasure to meet you at the Beyond Virtual conference and share with you some of NVIDIA’s insights. 

So what’s next? A substantial digital revolution is taking place all over the world. Innovation, agility, and market development, are all accelerated by technological advancements. The digital transition will continue. Technology is evolving faster than ever. Advanced technology will continue to change our lives and how we operate, opening up enormous opportunities for businesses worldwide. Many businesses have adopted disruptive technologies and modified their business models. Let me now share some of the exciting innovations at NVIDIA. 

AI computing

NVIDIA’s purpose is to advance this form of computing, called accelerated computing. We are an accelerated computing platform company. AI is a watershed moment for the world. We are in the process of automating intelligence so that we can augment ours. 

The thing that’s really cool is that AI is software that writes itself and it writes software that no humans can. These software-defined, hardware-accelerated stacks will take advantage of data processing units (DPUs) to accelerate networking, storage, security, and management applications. DPUs are an essential element of modern data centers. In this model, the data center is the new unit of computing in which central processing units (CPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs), and DPUs combine into a single computing unit that’s fully programmable, AI-enabled, and can deliver greater levels of security, performance, and efficiency. 

NVIDIA hardware will enable the creation of high-performance 5G RAM and AI applications to manage emerging use cases like robotics manufacturing, autonomous vehicles, drones, and surveillance. 

AI, and specifically deep learning, has become a vital tool for the production of next-generation automated vehicles, particularly because of the need to recognize and handle the nearly infinite number of scenarios encountered on the road. It is expected that the vehicles of tomorrow will be packed with more technology than any computing system today. NVIDIA’s mission is to stay rooted in developing this self-driving technology, known as NVIDIA Drive.

NVIDIA is a full-stack computing company. We love working on extremely hot computing problems that have a great impact on the world. NVIDIA is dedicated to advancing accelerated computing. Enabling developers’ success on our platform is core to everything we do. 

Omniverse

Humans have been exploiting how we perceive the world for thousands of years. We have been hacking our senses to construct virtual realities through music, art, and literature for millennia, interactivity, and the ability to collaborate. Better screens, head-mounted displays like Oculus Quest, and mixed reality devices like Microsoft’s HoloLens, are all steps towards fuller immersion. 

All these pieces will evolve, but the most important one is here already. A high fidelity simulation of our virtual world to feed the display. Omniverse is a shared virtual 3-dimensional world of worlds that are interactive, immersive, and collaborative. Just as the physical universe is the collection of worlds that are connected in space, the platform is not tied to any one app or any single place, digital or real. 

And just as virtual places will be persistent, so will the objects and identities of those moving through them, allowing digital goods and identities to move from one virtual world to another, and even into our world, with augmented reality. Omniverse is in use across a growing number of industries for projects such as design collaboration and creating digital twins, simulations of real-world buildings and factories. 

Startups

Building an innovation network to support the accelerated growth of startups is a continuous initiative at NVIDIA. A great resource for startups is NVIDIA Inception. 

Inception is an accelerated platform for startups. We leverage NVIDIA technologies, resources, and innovation networks to support startups at various stages of their journey. 

Today, over 8500 Inception startups are growing, of which China is a strong representation, ranked second in the world, and first in non-English speaking countries with over 1000 startups, 35+ industries, and more than 40 cities. 

Our focus is on supporting a global community of innovators to deliver tremendous innovation for the next decades. Join NVIDIA inception and meet our inception members in BEYOND. 

These are just some of the innovations from NVIDIA’s lenses, looking into what’s next in AI. I would like to thank BEYOND for the invitation to speak and the opportunity to present NVIDIA’s thoughts and glad to be here to join this wonderful event. 

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of the day and wish the event great success. 

Thank you.

As countries find a path to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, Macau, a special administrative region on the south coast of China, could serve as a key platform, connecting traditional industries with emerging industries, Foxconn founder Terry Gou said on Tuesday during the BEYOND Virtual conference.

On Tuesday, the BEYOND Expo opens online with BEYOND Virtual, a nearly month-long online conference. BEYOND Virtual will offer 18 panel discussions, featuring 40 distinguished speakers from around the world. The panels will provide deep-dive discussions on trending and critical topics in the tech sector. The Expo will host an on-site event from Dec. 2 to Dec. 4 at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center.

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Terry Gou, founder of Foxconn. The following transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity:

First, I would like to congratulate the successful opening of BEYOND Expo 2021 in Macau. I wish BEYOND every success from Taiwan.

Due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have continued to pay huge amounts of social costs. The world is also facing the issue of transformation and is developing a new model of globalization. Therefore, at this critical moment, Macau will have the opportunity to play an important role in bridging the East and the West, linking traditional industries and emerging industries, and recreating Macau’s historical brilliance.

We have now entered the third decade of the 21st century. It is foreseeable that this decade will be a decade in which technological progress and innovation dominate economic growth and development. I think the Asia-Pacific region, mainland China, and its three regions will be one of the regions with the most potential for technological development, and it is also an important region that leads industrial tech innovation.

Therefore, we also believe that the Asia-Pacific region needs an international technology platform to promote Asia-Pacific innovation to the world, and to discover and gather global innovations.

Today, technology is affecting and transforming various traditional industries. Technological innovations that drive world progress could also contribute to the sustainable development of the global economy, society, and environment. We are on the cusp of transformation. Innovation will bring huge opportunities to various industries.

It is a pity that I cannot participate in the BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo in Macau. I believe that BEYOND Expo will bring the world’s attention to Macau, and to the power of innovation in Asia. I look forward to participating in the next BEYOND. Together, I will be working hard with you for a better future.

The BEYOND Virtual presents world-class entrepreneurs, scientists, global investors, and tech experts to share with us the trends of technology, investments, and the impact of each industry in shaping the world we live in today and the future.

In his keynote address, Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in China, stressed the importance of sustainability and sustainable development in doing business. For large enterprises, small businesses, or government organizations, the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals can be considered a blueprint for success in unlocking new markets and ensuring longevity in business operations.

Chatterjee stresses that sustainability enhances brand trust and investor support. It is not just a lofty ideal, but ultimately both good for humanity and good for business, and it is what impact investors look for.

Below is the full text of Siddharth Chatterjee’s speech at the BEYOND Virtual Opening. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity:

Greetings distinguished guests, friends, ladies, and gentlemen.

I wish to thank the Macao Technology General Association for the opportunity to address the 2021 BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo.

On behalf of the United Nations family in China, I congratulate the organizing committee and the co-founders, Mr. Jason Ho and Dr. Gang Lu, for their initiative in raising the question – “What’s Next?” and exploring the technologies that are critically needed to address our global challenges.

Today’s world faces a series of tests in fighting poverty, rising inequalities, the climate crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, adopted by all UN member states in 2015 remains our shared blueprint to achieve a better and a more sustainable future for all, leaving no one behind.

At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, representing a set of interconnected and complex challenges that recognizes that economic growth must go hand in hand with strategies that improve health, education, the participation of women and girls, the potential of young people, all while preserving our oceans and our forests.

With less than 10 years remaining to achieve these SDGs in this decade of action, global efforts must accelerate to deliver on the ambitious 2030 Agenda, demanding action and innovation from all stakeholders, including governments, individuals, and of course, the private sector.

The SDGs are not simply a lofty ideal or the right thing to do, but a formidable instrument for companies, including state-owned and small and medium-sized enterprises looking to unlock new markers and the longevity of their operations.

Corporate and organizational success requires stable economies and vibrant societies with healthy, skilled, and educated workers.

Sustainable companies experience increased brand trust and investor support with consumers today desiring more than just the cheapest goods and services. They demand sustainability and wish to take comfort in the knowledge that the goods and services they purchase do not create negative externalities and contribute positively to the world we all inhabit.

While legislation and regulation will catch up to companies who fail this test, those that state and prove their credentials in sustainability, time and time again, will be rewarded in the marketplace. 

Sustainability is good for humanity and good for business. That’s essentially what impact investors look for.

Companies here in China and the world already contributing, offering fresh ideas to make the SDGs their own. More than 14,000 business participants from around 170 countries are lining their strategies and operations with the SDGs and the 10 principles of the United Nations Global Compact, the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative.

Academia and civil society are answering the call, working closely with the UN University Institute in Macau to generate solutions to the 2030 Agenda through innovations and frontier technologies.

With your support, the United Nations in China stands ready to renew collaboration and multilateralism in new partnerships to achieve the SDGs.

I wish you all every success at this very important event. 

Thank you.

The future for the Asia Region with technology is incredibly bright, said Scott Beaumont, president at Google Asia Pacific, during his keynote address at Tuesday’s BEYOND Virtual event. The BEYOND virtual event is a preview of the BEYOND EXPO Macao 2021 that will be held from Dec. 2 to Dec. 4.

Below is the full text of Beaumont’s speech at the BEYOND Virtual event. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity: 

Hello, everyone. My name is Scott Beaumont, I’m the president of Google Asia Pacific.

Thank you to Gang Lu and the team for the invitation to speak today and congratulations on this BEYOND event.

I’m actually really happy and thrilled to see Asia host such an event at such an important time for technology. The impact of COVID has really been quite remarkable. From people’s needing to get the information that they need as quickly and as reliably as possible, to being able to use new services they’ve not used before to help deliver groceries or keep themselves entertained during COVID, or to small businesses looking for a way to engage with digital skills and find a way to survive, it’s clear that technology has been incredibly important to many.

Particularly when we look at the Asia Pacific, 270 million new people have come online for the first time since COVID began, which is really quite remarkable.

And so, the key things are to make sure that this technology is accessible and that people have the skills that they need to be able to use these new services. In fact, when we put partnerships in place, behind the scenes, we make sure that people know how to use the internet, know how to use these services in a way that suits and serves them.

Now, Google has actually been in Asia now for just over 20 years. In fact, we celebrated our 20th anniversary just a few weeks ago.

Our first international office was in Tokyo in Japan and since that time clearly, we’ve seen Asia take the lead in a number of really interesting areas, whether that’s payments or video or commerce, the influence of Asia can be deeply felt in the technology space. And I think that’s just going to increase.

I think the new generation coming through is going to create a groundswell in innovation and entrepreneurship. Computer science is here. The market opportunity is here. The finances are here and so for entrepreneurs in the region, there really hasn’t been a better time to come to market and there is a significant opportunity. Not just through these incredible demographics, but by the fact that the technology itself provides an opportunity for us to be able to create new services for end-users, corporate and individuals throughout the region.

Now one of the areas where I’m hoping to see technology take the lead is climate change. Google made a statement that we want to be carbon-free by the end of the decade, and we’ve done that with some nervousness but some excitement.

We’re not quite sure of everything that needs to happen to get us there. We see some of the steps but some of the steps will be revealed to us as we continue to progress.

But I think it’s important that we try and I think it’s important that perhaps we set a standard that others might have the confidence also to follow. 

We’re going to try and do our part too. We could be providing enterprises with the benefit of our cloud technology and AI and applied AI services behind that to help them get there.

We’re going to be looking with governments and some of our flood prediction tools or forest fire prediction tools as a way of helping governments respond better to crises.

We’re going to be looking at Search and Maps, for example, helping to provide consumers with better information to make better choices to enable them to be more climate aware as they think about their day-to-day.

This is an area where I think APAC can lead. Whether it’s climate change or whether it’s accessibility, or whether it’s how we deal with language, or whether it’s any number of the other potential opportunities that exist within the region.

I think the future for the Asia Region with technology is incredibly bright. Part of those demographics, part of that is the computer science capability, part of that is the natural positivity and entrepreneurship that I see around the region.

This is a great time to be embarking on the conversation that you’re having today at Beyond. I congratulate you on putting the event together and look forward to hearing some of the results of what comes out of the conversation.

Digital technologies are expected to further loosen geographical restraints and blur the industrial lines, even for professional industries, says Jessica Tan, co-CEO and group executive of Ping An Group, on Tuesday at BEYOND Virtual, an online conference leading to BEYOND Expo, an on-site event at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center from Dec. 2 to Dec. 4.

In the opening day speech to BEYOND Virtual, Tan shared her thoughts on how the pandemic has accelerated digitalization trends and opened up new opportunities.

Please find below the transcript of the speech from Jessica Tan, co-CEO and Group Executive of Ping An Group. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity: 

I think this pandemic has shown that there’s lots of opportunities for digitalization. From a consumer standpoint, I’ve always been really amazed by how the amount of time we spend on smartphones increases every year. It reached a peak of more than seven hours per day in 2020 during the Covid. And it is still above 6 hours per day this year.

It means that digitalization is no longer just about e-commerce and buying of normal goods. Everything can be digitized, even professional services, such as the heavily-regulated services like healthcare. This is a new trend that anything can be made online and offline together.

Furthermore, this trend will transcend boundaries. Services that were only good within one country are now accessible cross-border. The lines of industries are completely blurred.

Digital economy accounts for 38.6% of China’s GDP in 2020. That’s basically RMB of 39.2 trillion ($ 6.1 trillion), up from 34% and 36.3% in 2018 and 2019, respectively. 

Many of the core industries, such as healthcare, financial services, real estate are not very digitized and there are huge opportunities. Technology’s role now is no longer about commoditised AI or big data. The next  5 to 10 years opportunities for technological developments lie in the industrialization of these digitization tools and applying it deeply within the industries to dramatically change how they are being constructed. 

Supply chains will change, how we define traditional industries will change. If you can digitize each of the capabilities out, they could reconstruct the whole ecosystem. I think that is a completely new opportunity for lots of tech companies.

Ping An has been working on not just technologies transforming our own company, but also a digital ecosystem that’s open to all partners, especially in two areas: fintech and healthcare. 

Our fintech arm OneConnect, a software solution platform now serves more than 680 banks and more than 100 insurers as well as in 20 countries outside of Asia. The group’s smart healthcare unit Ping An Good Doctor now serves over a million doctors and over 32,000 health institutions. 

We believe technology is exportable. Hopefully what we have done successfully will be exported to other parts of the country, and in particular I think the Greater Bay region.

On Tuesday, the BEYOND Expo opens online with BEYOND Virtual, a nearly month-long online conference. BEYOND Virtual will offer 18 panel discussions, featuring 40 distinguished speakers from around the world. The panels will provide deep-dive discussions on trending and critical topics in the tech sector. The Expo will host an on-site event from Dec. 2 to Dec. 4 at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Center. 

Please find below the transcript of the opening day speech from Dr. Song Xiao, Global Executive Vice President of Siemens and President and CEO of Siemens Greater China. The text has been edited for clarity and brevity: 

Dear ladies and gentlemen, it is my great honor to address the opening plenary of BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo.

Humanity is facing huge challenges: the ongoing pandemic, urbanization, globalization, demographic change, and, of course, climate change.

To master these challenges, we need to unlock the potential of digitalization and transform the backbone of our economies. I do believe digital transformation is imperative for all markets, industries, and societies to achieve high-quality growth, carbon neutrality, and resilience.

The potential of digitalization is huge. Let’s take public transportation, for example. Fully automated signaling technology can increase capacity by 20% and reduce energy consumption by 35% without adding any infrastructure.

In industry, 60% of manufacturing tasks can be automated and digitalized, meaning we can do more with less. This is all about collecting the real and digital worlds, creating a digital twin of your products and manufacturing process to improve quality, productivity, environmental efficiency, and shortened time to market.

Talking about smart cities, for example, commercial buildings. Digital technologies can achieve a saving potential of up to 20% in operation and maintenance. Buildings can connect, learn, and benefit from each other. For example, at Expo 2020, 140 buildings are connected by a digital platform, which analyzes 200,000 data points in almost real-time to optimize energy consumption, lighting, cooling, and fire safety. This can be a blueprint for sustainable smart cities.

As the economic cooperation link between China and Portuguese-speaking countries, and the key region of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area, Macau is gaining importance with an open economy and a better innovation environment. This will support strong digital growth for Macau to grow into a modern international base with global influence.

Dear friends, we at Siemens, with our 174-year history, are grateful for the opportunity to grow here in the Greater Bay Area. We stand ready to contribute to further sustainable growth.

Today, no country or organization can unlock the potential of digital transformation on its own. We have to work very closely and openly together. This will lead to an open ecosystem, where everyone brings something in, and everyone is able to take more out. Let’s join our hands to build an open innovation ecosystem that benefits all.

Let’s transform every day together. Thank you again for the invitation. I wish you a successful conference.

BEYOND Expo is going hybrid this year!

To accommodate our international audience abroad who couldn’t participate in person at the BEYOND Expo in Macao this December, we would like to announce our upcoming BEYOND Virtual, which will take place from November 9 to December 4 on the BEYOND Expo website and app.

The BEYOND Virtual Opening, which will be held on November 9, 15:00 (GMT+8), will present opening remarks from world-class entrepreneurs, scientists, global investors, and tech experts including Dr. Song Xiao, Global Executive Vice President and President and CEO of Siemens Greater China; Jessica Tan, Co-CEO and Group Executive of Ping An Group; Mr. Siddharth Chatterjee, UN Resident Coordinator in China; Scott Beaumont, President at Google Asia Pacific; David Liao, Co-Chief Executive, Asia-Pacific at HSBC; Dr. William A. Haseltine, Founder, Chairman and President of ACCESS Health International, and Raymond Teh, Vice President at NVIDIA, APAC. Based on the theme of BEYOND Expo – “What’s Next?”, they will be talking about the trends of technology, investments, and the impact of each industry in shaping the world we live in today and the future.

We are also super excited to announce that our special guest, Terry Gou, Founder of Foxconn, will deliver a message on technology development in the APAC region.

Apart from the opening speeches, there will be an opening panel on “The Global Investment Summit: The Next Blue Ocean” with Amir Gal-Or, Founder and Managing Partner of Infinity Group; Christine Tsai, CEO and Founding Partner of 500 Global and Hans Tung, Managing Partner at GGV Capital.

A huge thanks to our global partners, including (in alphabetical order) BRINC, Business Angel Network of Southeast Asia (BANSEA), ChinaEU, FinStepAsia, IdeaSpace Foundation, Jumpstart Magazine, London & Partners, RevvX, Samurai Incubate, SmartFactory Kunshan, True Digital Park, WORQ, YellowBlocks, who have been supporting us at BEYOND since day one. We are co-organizing with our global partners to present 18 panels with over 40 distinguished speakers from Asia, the US, and Europe. The deep-dive virtual discussions will spotlight a variety of trending tech topics from the NFT boom to the future of retail; from SPAC to esports and gaming and will be released through November 25, leading up to the BEYOND Expo on-site event in Macao.

The agenda of the BEYOND Virtual will be updated in real-time on our BEYOND Virtual Programs.

To access all our BEYOND Virtual prime content, register a FREE account now. You will receive an email confirmation and signup guideline before the online sessions.

BEYOND Expo on-site event will be held on Dec 2 – 4, 2021 at the Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Centre.

QCraft, a Chinese startup co-founded by four former engineers of Google’s self-driving project, is developing a driverless vehicle expected to launch by the end of this year.

Called “Longzhou Space,” the autonomous shuttle will be “a hybrid between robotaxis and robobuses,” Da Fang, co-founder and chief scientist of QCraft, said on Sept. 17 on the sidelines of TechNode’s Emerge 2021 conference in Beijing. The vehicle is one of the two-year-old company’s efforts to expand its autonomous commercial fleet, which now numbers about 70 robobuses operating in six cities.

“It’s going to provide city bus services but, when the demand is not high, it also can fulfill the (function of) ride-hailing,” Da said. He added the latest product highlights the company’s thinking on the future of shared mobility, in which autonomous vehicles (AVs) will be seamlessly shareable among people and can be adapted to carry freight and for other purposes.

Da declined to reveal the name of its manufacturing partner. He told TechNode that the company is also developing assisted driving technologies for vehicles larger than minibuses and sedans in separate collaborations with automakers, without revealing further details.

Since its founding in 2019, QCraft has quickly become a rock star self-driving car company in China. Its co-founders include Yu Qian, a former team leader at Google Maps, as well as Da Fang, Hou Cong, and Wang Kun. All four are former software engineers at Waymo, Google’s self-driving unit that is widely considered a technical leader in autonomous driving.

Now employing about 200 in China and the US, the startup in August announced it had closed a $100 million Series A+ from new investors including YF Capital, a private equity firm founded by Jack Ma, and Longzhu Capital, food delivery giant Meituan’s industrial fund. This followed another major funding round of “dozens of millions of dollars” reportedly from TikTok parent ByteDance and other investors earlier this year.

TechNode took the opportunity at last month’s Emerge 2021 conference to interview Da, a former Waymo engineer in motion planning, one of the most challenging areas for autonomous driving. Da obtained a PhD in computer science at Columbia University where he focused on computer graphics and animation, developing simulation methods used in the modeling of liquids.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

TechNode: Behavior prediction is one of the hardest problems in autonomous driving. Companies including Waymo are training their driverless cars using simulated software to handle various unpredictable situations. How does that work?

Da: Behavior prediction is basically trying to model the world, including the agents such as the other vehicles and people, and predict how they are going to behave. The difficulty is that the future is not really certain. If you imagine a pedestrian standing on the side of the road and he is moving towards the middle of the road, a human driver probably knows how to react to it and to brake to let the pedestrian pass first. But there are uncertainties in the humans’ actions. The pedestrian may stop in the middle of the road or accelerate and speed through the road and reach the other side quickly. So your reactions need to change accordingly.

There are other difficulties as well. For example, negotiations. Sometimes prediction is not just about predicting what the other people or vehicles will move, but also about negotiating with them. If you imagine two cars merging into one lane and they approached the point at roughly the same time, one of them has to proceed first and the other has to brake a bit later. So this will definitely involve some negotiations in scenarios like this. Motion prediction is not only about predicting what other vehicles will do or will not do, but also about understanding how our actions will affect those predictions.

TechNode: There has been a significant debate over whether AVs should leverage multiple sensors or purely rely on cameras to navigate the environment. What is your take on that?

Da: Our view is that these different sensors are very complementary to each other. There’s just no reason to not use them at this stage of AV development. We know that right now, the most commonly used sensors are cameras, lidar, and millimeter wave radar. Lidar is really good at measuring distance. You can get lidar points that specifically, accurately pinpoint an object in a 3D space and know how far they are from us. That’s what cameras can’t do. With millimeter wave radar, you get speed measurement as well, but at a lower resolution.

READ MORE: DRIVE I/O | Lidar is hard—but it’s coming soon

There are many advantages to cameras in terms of high resolution. You can recognize textures. You can recognize small objects, like traffic cones and faraway pedestrians. That’s something you cannot do with lidar. But you will get a lot of negative impact in adverse weather like rains, snows, and frogs with both lidar sensors and cameras and that’s where radar sensors really shine. All of these sensors have their strengths and weaknesses. None of them by itself is going to be enough for dealing with all the scenarios. Basically, we have to use all of them together in order to build a really safe vehicle.

TechNode: But which one is better for AVs to detect and react to stable objects such as parked vehicles? That’s one of the major technical issues behind the recent Tesla and Nio crashes.

Da: We know that’s a very challenging problem for radar, mostly because of the low resolution. Radar sensors have reflections of these objects, but they have a difficult time telling them apart from backgrounds like the ground or buildings on the side of the road. Lidar will be much better because of a higher resolution. You can recognize objects directly apart from the background, even though it’s just a stationary point. With cameras, you can do the same, because you have much richer information in both resolution and color. I think right now lidar is proving to be the most important sensor of the three for highly autonomous driving.

TechNode: You and your founding team members worked at Waymo for a few years before setting up QCraft. What have you learned from that?

Da: One of the things that Waymo has done really well that we are trying to replicate here is that engineers do not just try to solve the problems, but try very hard to solve the problems in the right way. So, for example, the computation of the headway.

When you’re controlling the vehicle to follow the vehicle in front in the same lane at a comfortable distance, there’s this headway distance that you want to figure out. If an engineer is tasked with computing this optimal headway distance, how would he proceed? An average engineer will probably say, let’s put up a few driving logs, watch what human drivers have been doing, measure the distances, and maybe do some averages. They will get some numbers like 10 meters, 20 meters, 30 meters, depending on different scenarios, and then just use the numbers.

Obviously, that’s a really bad solution because it doesn’t generalize. Let’s say 20 meters may be good for a reasonably high-speed road, but it’s not good for expressways and urban areas as well. A better engineer would realize that it depends on the driving speed and the circumstances, such as the width of the road, but, most importantly, the speed of the two vehicles.

But that’s not good enough, still. If we have a really good engineer, who’s trying to always go one step further, he will think about when we are driving the car ourselves, why we will pick a different headway distance at different speeds. The answer is probably at a high vehicle speed, if we don’t leave enough room in front of our vehicle when the car in front of us brakes, we will not have enough reaction time.

That’s going straight to this concept called RSS, which stands for “responsibility-sensitive safety.” If we have a really good engineer who’s trying to find the right solution, they will basically discover RSS by themselves by solving this problem. That’s a really important thing that we would value. (Editor’s note: RSS is a mathematical model for AV safety framework developed by Intel’s self-driving division Mobileye.)

One of the biggest trends in China’s tech industry in recent years is that “Chinese entrepreneurs and startups are being born global,” David Aikman, former chief representative officer, Greater China, World Economic Forum, shared his thoughts on the current state of China’s tech development and innovation during TechNode’s Emerge 2021 conference held in Beijing on Sept. 19.

“Maybe 10 years ago, you had some Chinese startups that were very focused on a domestic play,” said Aikman. “And nowadays, I see a lot more companies who are saying that we’re starting in China, or maybe we’re starting in multiple locations, but the world is our market.”

Aikman also warned that the growing regulatory pressure Chinese startups face is a major challenge for them to expand overseas. “We’ve seen in recent months questions about delisting Chinese companies from the US markets. We’ve seen then responses on the Chinese side. Unfortunately, I don’t see the landscape getting better in the short term for tech companies in the space,” he told TechNode in an interview on the sideline of the event. “So I would say the biggest risk facing tech companies is this geopolitical or regulatory risk,” he said.

Creating robotic ride-hail vehicles capable of transporting people is proving a hard nut to crack, so Chinese self-driving companies are exploring other commercially viable paths to achieve mass adoption of the technology.

Robotaxi developers are “evolving into platforms” that enable a variety of vehicles for different user scenarios, Tu T. Le, managing director of consultancy Sino Auto Insights, said Friday during TechNode’s Emerge 2021 conference in Beijing.

“It is very difficult for autonomous vehicle companies to be profitable with the one single-use case of ride-hailing,” Le said. He added that applications in which autonomous vehicles (AVs) operate at low speeds with cheaper sensors and higher utilization rates could be “closer to commercialization en masse.”

Le’s comment highlighted the growing uncertainties surrounding the future of driverless ride-hailing services, or robotaxis. As a result AV players are shifting their attention to more practical applications.

A commercial robotaxi is the “holy grail” of autonomy, because it would address the most complicated traffic scenarios by offering timely and comfortable rides to customers in dense urban areas, according to Da Fang, co-founder and chief scientist of driverless technology startup QCraft.

The sector has been in a trough of disillusionment over the past few years, as Google’s self-driving unit Waymo and General Motors’ affiliate Cruise, both pioneers in AV research, suffered several setbacks in their much-hyped quests to launch a driverless ride-hailing service.

Waymo’s valuation in late 2019 was cut 40% to $105 billion by Morgan Stanley, followed by the departure of its CEO John Krafcik and several other executives earlier this year. The company’s vehicles had traveled autonomously for more than 20 million miles (32 million kilometers) on public roads as of early 2020, but Waymo’s fully driverless robotaxi pilot is still only available in certain areas of Phoenix, Arizona, after a couple of years of rigorous testing.

As capital is being reallocated into research and development of more promising applications,  autonomous bus service looks to be one of the more appealing bets. Backed by Chinese big tech firms Meituan and Bytedance, QCraft is one of the early movers in this sector. It has piloted a fleet of around 70 self-driving buses for public passenger transit in five domestic cities including Shenzhen and Wuhan since July 2020.

“There are several scenarios where we think AVs have actually become technologically viable and robobus is one of them,” Da said, adding that autonomous shuttles encounter situations similar to those faced by robotaxis in urban areas, but lower driving speeds and fixed routes reduce crash risks.

Chinese makers of the underlying technology, whether big tech companies or rising startups, are now training their sights on commercial vehicles, including trucks and vans for freight delivery. Toyota-backed Pony.ai has reportedly been testing its self-driving trucking technology in Guangzhou since December, while WeRide, Nissan’s bet in China, earlier this month announced moves to test driverless vans in everyday delivery scenarios.

Then came the news on Sept. 17 of Baidu’s entry into the logistics industry with the debut of Xingtu, the first heavy-duty truck model built upon Baidu’s “Apollo” autonomous driving system. Baidu, viewed as China’s answer to Google, had previously announced a seemingly ambitious target of deploying 3,000 robotaxis in 30 cities over the next three years. But that figure would mean  passengers in each city, on average, would have access to fewer than 100 robotaxis. 

“A pilot program with multiple model types of AVs also makes sense from a technology point of view. You simply need to collect data as much as possible by testing different types of vehicles in various kinds of scenarios,” said Da.

Overseas entrepreneurs are revaluing their business interests in China as the world grapples with a prolonged pandemic that shows no end in sight. During the Emerge 2021 conference held in Beijing on Sept. 19, TechNode talked to two foreign trade experts, Kiran Patel and José Roberto de Andrade Filho, on tech business collaboration between China, the UK, and Brazil.

Kiran Patel is the senior director at China-Britain Business Council. José Roberto de Andrade Filho is a counsellor and the head of tech and innovation at the Embassy of Brazil in Beijing.

The following conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Kiran Patel on UK business interests in China

TechNode: What are some of the rising opportunities in tech for the UK and China?

Patel: The tech sector is a particularly challenging sector, not least because of regulation, politics, data. There are so many challenges to overcome. But in terms of the real opportunities, for the UK and Chinese companies to work together, both for big industries and also with startups and SME (small and medium-sized enterprises), we are seeing actions in medical technology, healthcare, and life science. I would also cite other more specialized areas, such as advanced materials and composites. Graphene, for example, is one area where the UK and China have a partnership and a collaboration, as well as in AI and big data.

China is still the largest market in the world. I spoke earlier about a middle class of 400 million-plus people. That’s a phenomenal market to tap into. We spend our time trying to tell businesses that this isn’t just one market of 1.4 billion people. It’s a very nuanced market and a very specific market. 

Despite the challenge of the pandemic, the UK businesses are still very much looking towards China and the opportunities here. 

TechNode: Can you give us some examples of the collaborations that the two countries have been doing? 

Patel: I believe that since the two zones (free trade zones) have been rolled out as a key strategic policy, about 800 companies have invested. One-fifth of those are international companies. China has its own objectives to achieve, in terms of green growth, digitization, industry upgrading, so on and so forth…We find that our partners across the zones and across inward investment bureaus are very keen to work with the UK and also very keen to work with us to lead and drive events, do market promotion and guide companies to explore policy incentives, talent pool, savings on office spaces, and others. 

We have a wide range of partnerships and collaborations that enable us to put on platforms that you know a UK blockchain company or a company that’s developing AI algorithms for commodities trading, for example, can tap into. They can build partnerships and work together with their counterparts on the China side and develop commercial business partners. 

We ran a competition earlier this year in Tianjin, for example, that gave the winning British company a chance to speak at the World Intelligence Conference this year. 

José Roberto de Andrade Filho on China and Brazil tech collaboration

TechNode: What are some of the tech areas that China and Brazil are working together? 

Filho: On the level of government to government cooperation, we have been working a lot in promoting different areas such as the exchange of researchers. Smart cities and AI are key points of interest, and technology parks collaboration, which is a key element that has been functioning very well between the two countries. 

At the level of companies, the big Brazilian companies that trade with China are already present here. They have their own innovation departments. I would mention just a few, such as Embraer, the airplane company; Vale, the mining company; and Suzano, the pulp and paper company, one of the biggest in the world, actually. They have innovative collaborations with incubators, with universities. We support that to open new areas for joint projects and creating businesses. 

We are also working with a lot of universities. For example, in terms of agriculture, there is the CLAARI. CLAARI is a network of China-Latin America agricultural research institutions, led by the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou. This is a very recent network that was created a few months ago. And we have had the participation of more than 10 Brazilian universities right now.

TechNode: Why are Brazilian companies interested in coming to China, especially those from the tech sector?

Filho: China is undoubtedly recognized more and more as a key center for innovation. I see from other countries, many companies coming to innovate in China, and not necessarily for the Chinese market, but hiring engineers here, creating their own R&D centers and labs to produce products and services. Some companies are doing research for new products here in China.

I think it’s important to say in China can find talents. Every year hundreds of thousands of highly qualified engineers are graduated here in China, plus the overseas talents that come here. So you have people, you have capital. There are lots of investors. China’s the second biggest financial market in the world. So if you want to invest in your product. And you have the ecosystem, Beijing is one of the best examples, especially now with the two zones and Zhongguancun. 

The history of Zhongguancun is a very good example, renowned all over the world. It’s an ecosystem where you can find everything you need to make your business grow. Once you have a very good idea, or incrementally from the business you have today, you start thinking innovative ways. This is something that not only Brazilians but many foreigners have recognized.

The biggest challenges that Chinese investors should be well prepared for when investing in startups overseas is tightened regulations around the world, said Zhu Bin, a former director of Greater China investment advisory, at Business Sweden.

Corporates and investors who are looking to do outbound investment should try to engage or at least touch base with some advisors who are familiar with these regulators and the newest developments as they are constantly changing, Zhu told TechNode’s Emerge 2021 conference in Beijing on Sept. 19.

Chinese companies’ overseas investment activities are facing increasing regulatory pressure recently, especially in high-tech industries like semiconductors and sectors concerning privacy like social media. In late June, the US government halted a Chinese investment firm’s acquisition of South Korean chipmaker Magnachip. 

In 2019, The Committee on Foreign Investment in the US (CFIUS) forced Chinese gaming company Beijing Kunlun Tech to sell gay dating app Grindr, which is popular in the US, citing privacy concerns. The sale finally went through in March 2020. 

“CFIUS is increasing scrutiny of Chinese investment in the US. European countries are also on their way to produce their own regulations of what can be done and what should not be recommended in terms of investment,” said Zhu.

“These regulations are constantly evolving,” he said. “Unless you are a real expert and you are working on these areas on a daily basis, otherwise, you will be shocked perhaps every three months by how things have changed.”

Recent changes to US laws, including the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act (FIRRMA), expanded CFIUS’s ability to block investments that it deems a threat to US national security.

READ MORE: CFIUS doesn’t mean Chinese companies can’t invest in the US

Chinese tech giants invested heavily in the US between 2010 and 2018, but quickly scaled back investments in US startups beginning in 2019, TechNode reported last year. The drop-off is partly explained by increased scrutiny in 2018 when CFIUS was given more power to review investments in US companies. 

Since then, new Chinese investments in American startups have fallen dramatically. Contributions in the first quarter of 2020 dropped to $400 million, down by more than a third compared to the same period in 2019.

READ MORE: Before the bans, China tech investment turned away from US

“You have to satisfy governments,” agrees Edison Chen, director of investment at Plum Ventures at the Emerge panel with the theme “Cross-border investment in a global context”. “Entrepreneurs have to understand how America works and how China works.”

“If you can understand both of them[the US and China], you can be very successful in entrepreneurship,” said Chen.

Listening to market demands is a key component for innovation, a process that, by definition, turns ideas into solutions to add value for customers. Kapil Kane, director of innovation at Intel China, learned this lesson on the field as the head of the company’s corporate startup accelerator GrowthX.

Kane recalled that the six-year-old accelerator was focused on developing projects involving robots or drones in the first few years. These things “seemed very cool” but they are “difficult to bring to the market in a timely fashion,” he said, addressing a half-full audience attending TechNode’s Emerge 2021 conference in Beijing on Friday.

Through talks with such Chinese clients as Alibaba and Tencent, the US chipmaker gradually learned what kind of innovations are necessary from the users’ perspective. In some cases, changes made in response to customer demands would open a completely new market for the clients, he added.

Instead of going for the moon-shooting ideas, Kane and his team shifted their innovative approaches in pursuit of something they call “adjacent innovations.” “We don’t try to change or build a new thing. We try to use what we have and create new applications on top of that, which bring value to our customers in the industry,” he said.

Some believe big names like Intel have the edge in advancing innovations with abundant resources, financially or otherwise. Another cohort, led by Amazon’s billionaire founder Jeff Bezos, trusts that the nimbleness and flexibility in small teams are true propellers to unlock innovations.

An organization’s size doesn’t matter for Kane, however. Companies that aspire to encourage internal innovation should forge a platform or mechanism to facilitate idea flow and growth. “The key is to take that first step to get moving. And also to get some small wins step by step,” he said.

Co-working, as a relatively new working mode, has been linked with startups and entrepreneurship for allowing extensive cost savings and better opportunities for networking.

Sean Lim, general manager at real estate and co-working space operator TianRun Asset Management, takes a similar customer-concentric approach for running shared spaces, or modern hubs for startup and innovation culture. As space operators, it’s important to understand what are the challenges and requirements the startups face so as to support their development by creating an ecosystem that incorporates crucial factors, like funding opportunities, government support, and occasions to connect with similar-minded peers. 

Covid-19 has drastically changed the coworking industry, along with a series of businesses that are offline in nature. “It’s all about offline before the pandemic when everyone had a workstation”, said Lim. After the pandemic, companies are adopting a safer approach to utilizing space.

Since sales teams spend so much time outside the office anyway, many companies are thinking about moving them away from the office permanently to reduce staff density due to social distancing concerns. Some also are thinking about moving their R&D teams to more decentralized locations because of cost concerns. Others adopt a more hybrid approach, he explained.

TechNode has announced the winners of the first OTEC-Emerge Technology Awards. The awards were announced at the OTEC-Emerge Tech Summit held in Beijing on Friday.

Emerge is TechNode’s annual conference about emerging trends in China tech. It presents a strategic and forward-looking view of China’s tech sector in English with voices from experts and representatives of leading companies. The third Emerge conference features the theme of “What’s next for tech in the new normal?” This year, TechNode partners with the Overseas Talent Entrepreneurship Conference (OTEC) to present the OTEC-Emerge Tech Summit.

OTEC-Emerge Technology Awards shortlisted innovative tech startups in three areas of smart mobility, fintech, and e-commerce. 

QCraft, a US and China-based self-driving startup, won the Rising Star Award. Hangzhou-based vesoft Inc., a developer of China’s leading open-source graph database Nebula Graph, walked away with the Best Tech Innovation award. The Best Investment Value award goes to Evoke Electric Motorcycles, an electric vehicle maker.

“TechNode has long been an independent and reliable English media outlet focusing on China’s technology innovation. We launched the OTEC-Emerge Technology Awards by discovering startups representing China’s innovation from a professional and neutral perspective,” said Lu Gang, founder and CEO of TechNode. 

“Through this rare tech award selected by an English outlet, We hope to help the global tech industry better understand the latest technological innovation trends in China and promote more outstanding tech companies to an international platform by discovering startups representing China’s innovation,” said Lu.

Rising Star Award

QCraft – Chinese self-driving startup founded by Waymo alumni.

Best Tech Innovation

vesoft Inc. – Hangzhou-based startup devoted to developing China’s leading open-source graph database solution, Nebula Graph.

Best Investment Value

Evoke Electric Motorcycles – developer and manufacturer of light weight electric motorcycles.

Best Smart Mobility Startups

AutoX – Alibaba-backed self-driving car company with ride-hailing pilot services in a number of cities.

DeepRoute – Alibaba-backed self-driving startup focused on fully automation technologies for passenger transport and urban logistics.

Evoke Electric Motorcycles – developer and manufacturer of lightweight electric motorcycles.

Hesai Technology – Lidar sensing technologies developer for autonomous vehicles.

Horizon Robotics – startup company developing artificial intelligence chips for smart vehicles.

QCraft – Chinese self-driving startup founded by Waymo alumni.

RoboSense – developer of smart sensor systems incorporating LiDAR sensors, and perception software.

TuSimple – startup that creates autonomous trucks and advanced driverless vehicles.

UISEE – Chinese autonomous driving company focused on providing robot delivery services.

WeRide – Xpeng-backed smart mobility company creates leading L4 autonomous driving technologies.

Best fintech startups

AKTE – food safety platform leveraging automatic data collection and blockchain-based security technologies.

Hrfax – fintech startup that offers consumer installment loan-related services for financial institutions.

Ice Kredit – fintech company providing risk management solutions to both individuals and financial institutions.

imToken – multi-chain cryptocurrency wallet that allows users to use one identity to manage multiple wallets.

Kingsware – robotic process automation system committed to building an enterprise-level safe robot management platform.

Ningze Fintech – financial technology solution provider that connects banks, loan firms, and online financial platforms.

Nuanwa Technology – health insurance technology company offering customization services and risk control solutions for health insurance companies.

SphereEx – distributed data infrastructure that helps users to manage their fragmented database.

vesoft Inc. – Hangzhou-based startup devoted to developing China’s leading open-source graph database solution, Nebula Graph. The database has been widely adopted in the fintech sector.

XTransfer – fintech company that provides cross-border financial services for China-based small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Best Ecommerce and New Retail Startups

AiMall – AI company empowering traditional retail businesses by utilizing visual intelligence, emotional intelligence, and deep-learning algorithms to link customers, brands, and stores.

Benlai – Chinese fresh produce e-commerce platform.

Duozhuayu – WeChat-based second-hand book trading platform.

Floral & Life – lifestyle app offering gardening and planting tips.

ImageDT – AI retail solution offering services such as channel management, intelligent network management, and sales forecast analysis for retail and consumer goods enterprises.

Luxnow – Y Combinator-backed peer-to-peer marketplace to access luxury items.

Mmchong – Shanghai-based community group-buy platform targeting higher income groups.

SandStar– artificial intelligence company that applies computer vision technology in the retail industry to enable grab-and-go convenience, autonomous checkout, and big data analytics.

Wellcee – home rental & social platform targeting expatriates and youth in China.

Whale – digital marketing platform.

Due to the current state of the Covid-19 pandemic in various cities in China, many Chinese regional governments urged their residents to avoid all unnecessary travel. In response to the Beijing pandemic prevention measurements, the OTEC-Emerge Tech Summit, which was scheduled for August 15, 2021, will be postponed until further notice.

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this postponement and we look forward to seeing you at Emerge.

RUKA Hair Ltd is the winner of the OTEC Global Entrepreneurship Competition EU session that was held on July 28, 2021. They will continue to compete with other winning teams from other sessions at the grand finale.

The competition was held online with participants from the EU region sharing their products and services to the judges in attendance.

The judging panels consist of a select group of VC representatives, including Ms. Gu Tong from Accelerated Digital, Mr. Leon Ge from Partech Partners Ventures and Mr. Colin Tan from TusPark UK. The scoring criteria of this competition are based on project value, market potential, business and operations, team capabilities, and industry relevance.

The 9^th OTEC Global Entrepreneurship Competition was held on July 27, 2021, with live-conferencing from three locations: Singapore (the Asia Pacific session), Berlin (the Germany session), and Beijing (the Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan session).

Among the 24 shortlisted teams competing at this semi-final round, the three winning teams of their respective sessions will compete with other winning teams from other sessions at the grand finale. The winning teams are 8Chili Inc from the Asia-Pacific region; MXC-MatchX from the Germany session; and IPification from the Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan session.

The judging panels consist of a select group of VC representatives such as Gobi Partners, Cherubic Ventures, Plum Ventures, Kairous Capital, ZGC Group, CYZone, Vesalius Biocapital, Dachina Interchange Management, Headline Asia, and Plug and Play. The scoring criteria of this competition are based on project value, market potential, business and operations, team capabilities, and industry relevance.

The 9^th Overseas Talent Entrepreneurship Conference (OTEC) Global Entrepreneurship Competition is now open for application.

The Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan session of this year’s competition is co-organized by OTEC and TechNode to strengthen the connection between Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan entrepreneurs in Chaoyang District, encourage enterprises, investment institutions, and social organizations from mainland China to connect with entrepreneurs in Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan and to develop economic prosperity in the three regions.

The competition will focus on these four divisions: new consumption, health tech, data intelligence, and digital economy in the Beijing Free Trade Zone Chaoyang Area. Eight candidates will be shortlisted to present their projects at the Beijing Project Roadshow on July 27, together with two other editions: Berlin, Germany, and the Asia-Pacific region.

Eligibility:

Early-stage startup:

• The founding team must include at least one overseas returnee (need proof of working/studying abroad) or foreigner (passport).
• The company must be established not more than 2 years by January 1, 2020.
• The company must receive not more than A-round funding.

Growth-stage startup:

• No requirement for the nationality of the founder(s).
• The company must be established between 2 – 10 years by January 1, 2020.
• The company must be a growth-stage startup between A-round and B-round funding.

To apply, please complete and submit the application form HERE by July 23, 2021. We look forward to receiving your applications!

If you have any inquiries, please contact Wang Juan: wangjuan@technode.com.

Mainland China Division

1. New consumption such as lifestyle, education, culture and creativity, and new sports.
2. Healthtech such as biomedicine, medical big data, and medical AI.
3. Data intelligence such as artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, smart travel, smart hardware, industrial Internet, and cloud services
4. Digital economy in Chaoyang District of Beijing Free Trade Zone such as digital trade, cultural trade, business exhibitions, international delivery logistics, and cross-border finance

Overseas Division

1. Overseas Talents edition

2. Berlin, Germany

3. Asia Pacific (One Belt One Road)

4. Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan

5. The European Union and the U.K.

Special Invite Division

1. Big Data Application: Hong Kong Session

2. Algorithm Best Practice: Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Session

3. New Sports: Beijing Yanzhang Session (Yanqing, Zhangjiakou)

4. New Consumer Industry: Central China Session (Changsha)

5. One Belt One Road Session (Kunming)

6. Future City: Xiong’an Session

7. HICOOL Entrepreneurship Project Session

Each company can only participate in one session per division. The organizing committee reserves its rights to the final interpretation of the aforementioned terms and conditions.

TechNode announced Tuesday plans to hold its third annual Emerge conference in partnership with the Overseas Talent Entrepreneurship Conference (OTEC). The conference will include the first-ever OTEC-Emerge Tech Awards, which honor promising startups founded in China by international teams.

Emerge is TechNode’s annual conference on emerging trends in China tech, presenting a strategic and forward-looking view of the sector in English, with expert voices and representatives of leading companies. 2021 is Emerge’s third year and its first in Beijing. The theme of this year’s conference is “What’s next for tech in the new normal?”

This year, Emerge is part of the OTEC-Emerge Tech Summit, which includes a conference, a networking event, and a one-on-one VC meetup. Emerge and the Chambers Roundtable will take place on August 13 at the Chaoyang Museum of Urban Planning in Beijing while the VC Meetup will be held the next day on August 14.

The conference will include three panels, a keynote speech, and awards presentations. TechNode and OTEC will also organize an invite-only Chambers Roundtable networking event in the evening after the conference. The venue of the conference and the Chambers Roundtable, the Chaoyang Museum of Urban Planning, is a former factory located in Chaoyang Park. It is the only art museum in Beijing to combine the city’s industrial and Olympic heritages. The 17,000 square meter building’s old-meets-new architecture includes exhibitions about the urban development of Chaoyang District, Beijing’s CBD, the 798 art district, and the Olympic Green.

Admission to the Emerge conference is free with approval. To request a ticket, please register here. As seats are limited, please register early to secure your seat.

OTEC-Emerge Tech Awards

OTEC and TechNode will also launch a new tech award, aiming to recognize the work of international founding teams in China. The OTEC-Emerge Tech Awards will honor early-stage startups whose founding teams include at least one citizen of a country other than China or a Chinese overseas talent returnee. Startups up to the Series A level are eligible to apply in three categories: Smart Mobility, Fintech, and E-commerce/New retail.

Apart from the three tech vertical awards, OTEC-Emerge Tech Awards will also give out three other Best of Awards to recognize outstanding tech startups in China. The three best of awards are Best Tech Innovation Award, Best Investment Value Award, and Rising Star Award.

These awards will be judged by a selected group of editors and reporters of foreign media in China, international VCs, and corporate executives who are experts in their respective fields. All winners will receive opportunities to meet with investment institutions, enroll in a founders’ training workshop,  Phoenix Plan, and an onboarding program in Chaoyang, Beijing. The award winners will also be invited to attend the BEYOND International Technology Expo in Macau from Aug. 26-28, 2021 with a standard booth at the expo and two full professional passes. 

Nominations for the awards are open now on this website. The deadline to submit your nomination is by July 31, 2021, at 11:59 pm.

We look forward to welcoming the tech community in Beijing next month. Visit Emerge website for more updates.

About OTEC

Making full use of the Chaoyang District Government’s guiding role and properly allocating the market resources, the Overseas Talent Entrepreneurship Conference (OTEC) is a “one-step” innovation service platform for overseas talents and Chinese returnees. By organizing the annual Global Entrepreneurship Competition, Innovation Summit, International Startups Meetup, along with facilitating industrial policies, services, and space, OTEC aims to develop an international ecology of innovative startups and corporates for talents working in the Chaoyang District, Beijing.

Innovation relies on the support of venture capitalists (VCs). They have the power to affect the development and direction of tech innovation. The BEYOND Global Investment Summit will gather global A-list VCs to build a network with innovation at its core and advance the development of businesses with the help of their expertise.

The BEYOND Global Investment Summit consists of two parts: the Global Investment Forums and One-on-one Business Meetups.

Global Investment Forums

Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world has faced complex challenges including Sino-US relations, unemployment, and rising inflation. We need a humble attitude and perseverance to deal with the problems at hand.

At the same time, the post-pandemic world has the potential to usher in new waves of growth. It’s an opportunity for VCs to explore new directions and achieve breakthroughs in their respective fields. We need to embrace the future of innovation, and explore new ways to collaborate and break out of this pandemic together.

The Global Investment Summit Part I is currently scheduled on Aug. 26 from 2–6 p.m., while Global Investment Summit Part II is scheduled Aug. 27 10 a.m.–12:30 p.m. The two days will include deep-dive forums to exploring the following topics: global investment trends, Corporate VC (CVC), cross-border investment, private equity markets, and sovereign wealth funds.

One-on-one Business Meetups

After a capital trough in 2020, VC activity in China has warmed up significantly in 2021. A total of 2019 fundraising events occurred in the first quarter, according to research by Qichacha, with a year-on-year increase of 71%. The amount of financing disclosed in the first quarter totaled RMB 841 billion, representing 186% year-on-year growth.

As the pandemic abates, VCs are growing more optimistic. BEYOND Business Meetups will engage entrepreneurs, investors, and financing institutions in one-to-one conversations on-site and also via online video conferences.

Eligibility

Participating teams should meet the following criteria:

1. The entrepreneurial team should have produced a prototype.
2. The company’s product(s) should fall into one of the following tech verticals: Agricultural and food technology, Green economy/energy conservation and environmental protection, medtech/healthtech, life science, future mobility, smart city, 5G and the Internet of Things, financial technology, smart living, consumption upgrading, or future tech.

Confirmed speakers:

In addition to top investors from China to share the future of VC market trends and new investment strategies, a few influential global investors will also be invited to participate in the dialogue at BEYOND. We will also be working closely with the Macao Government to invite several highly distinguished international guests. From the perspective of international VCs, we will discuss the future development opportunities in China’s innovative economic industry and analyze the construction of the new world order.

We are honored to announce the following confirmed speakers to participate in panel discussions on investment opportunities in a post-pandemic era and cross-border investment trends.

Hugo Shong | Founding Chairman of IDG Capital 

In 1993, Hugo Shong launched and led IDG Capital starting venture capital investment in China. To date, IDG Capital has invested in nearly 1000 companies and made over 200 successful exits across the globe through IPOs and M&A. In the US and Europe, IDG Capital’s investments include Legendary Entertainment, Circle, Ripple, Farfetch, Moncler, Zoox, Acne Studio, Rossignol etc. In China, we have backed Tencent, Baidu, Pinduoduo, IQiyi, Meituan, Meitu, Xiaomi, Bilibili, CreditEase, Ctrip, Qihoo 360, Home Inns, etc. which have all gone on to become industry leaders. In other parts of the Asia-Pacific region, investments include Razer, Gentle Monster etc.

Hugo completed the Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program in the fall of 1996. He conducted graduate studies at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 1987-88 and earned his MS degree from Boston University’s College of Communication in 1987. He studied Journalism at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from 1984 to 1986 and he received a B.A. degree from Hunan University in 1981.

Among his many affiliations, Hugo has served as members of the Board of Trustees at Boston University, Harvard Business School Asia Advisory Committee, and the Leadership Board of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT.

About IDG Capital:

IDG Capital is a leading investment firm focused on developing extraordinary companies through our expertise in private equity, venture capital and mergers & acquisitions. Since its inception, IDG Capital has expanded into thirteen cities around the world, including New York, Boston, London, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Seoul, Hanoi, etc. Accumulated assets under management have grown to approximately $20 billion today. To date, IDG Capital has invested in more than 1,000 companies and made over 200 successful exits across the globe through IPOs and M&A. In the US and Europe, IDG Capital’s investments include Legendary Entertainment, Circle, Ripple, Farfetch, Moncler, Acne Studio, Rossignol, Coinbase, Zoox, Infront etc. In China, IDG Capital has backed companies such as Tencent, Baidu, Pinduoduo, IQiyi, Meituan, Xiaomi, Bilibili, Didi, Ctrip, Qihoo 360, Xiaopeng Motors, NIO, and Pony.ai, which have all gone on to become industry leaders.

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee | Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures

President of Sinovation Ventures Artificial Intelligence Institute

Dr. Kai-Fu Lee is the Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures and President of Sinovation Venture’s Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures, managing $2.5 billion dual currency investment funds, is a leading venture capital firm focusing on developing the next generation of Chinese high-tech companies. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Dr. Lee was the President of Google China, and senior executives at Microsoft, SGI, and Apple. Dr. Lee received his Bachelor degree from Computer Science from Columbia University, Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as Honorary Doctorate Degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong Kong. He is the Co-Chair of Artificial Intelligence Council for World Economic Forum Center for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Times 100 in 2013, WIRED 25 Icons, Asian Business Leader 2018 by Asia House, and followed by over 50 million audience on social media.

About Sinovation Ventures:

As a leading venture capital and entrepreneur-centric ecosystem builder, Sinovation Ventures focuses on developing early and growth stage companies in the areas of artificial intelligence & advanced tech, automation, education, consumer Internet, B2B enterprise services, and healthcare. To date, Sinovation has invested in over 400 companies with 18 unicorns. Well known portfolios include: Zhihu, Meitu, Megvii, 4Paradigm, Momenta, WeRide, XAG, UISEE, WaterDrop, Moji Weather, VIPKID, IT Cast, Aixuexi Education, VIPThink, MEWE Media, XYLink, Animo, Molbase, MediTrust, Wallaby Medical, Vedeng Medical, Insilico Medicine etc.

Stay tuned as more speakers will be announced soon. Meanwhile, secure your online tickets here by June 26 to secure your discount.

If you are interested in becoming our partners or exhibitors, please click HERE; if you would like to be a sponsor please email bd[at]beyondexpo.com.

Visit the BEYOND Expo website to learn more.

In recent years, the Asia-Pacific region has seen rapid developments in R&D, science and technological applications, producing innovations with huge market potential. Not only do these attract global companies to expand into the region, but they have also encouraged Chinese mainland companies to expand overseas.

With its geographical advantage in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Macao is positioning itself as the place for international innovators to connect in the Asia–Pacific region. The BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo, the first annual flagship event that will take place in Macao from Aug. 26 to 28, 2021, is one of Macao’s leading initiatives to gather tech and business professionals.

Calling for global partners

The BEYOND Expo is a three-day event curated by the Macao Technology General Association, TechNode, and Forte Inc, with an expected audience of 20,000 attendees. The audience will include tech professionals such as corporate executives, entrepreneurs, investors, government officials, and scholars from around the world. 

On behalf of the organizing committee, we are honored to announce our global partners. They are BRINC from Hong Kong, Finstep Asia from Hong Kong, Jumpstart Media from Hong Kong,  RevvX Ventures from India, SAMURAI INCUBATE from Japan, True Digital Park from Thailand, Women in Tech from Singapore, WORQ from Malaysia, and Yellowblocks from Vietnam. They will participate in the forums as well as organizing theme-based networking events.

We hope to make the BEYOND Expo one of the biggest and the most impactful events in promoting cross-industry and cross-border cooperation in Asia. We welcome all tech communities in the APAC region to join us on this mission.

To participate as a global partner, please contact Elina Tsao:

Email: elina.tsao@beyondexpo.com

Mobile: +86 156 1163 0333

Calling for Exhibitors

With an area of 50,000 square meters at The Venetian Macao Convention and Exhibition Centre, the BEYOND exhibition area will showcase four categories of technology: Impact Technology, Life Science, Infrastructure, Smart City and Living, and Future Technology. Organizers expect 20,000 on-site attendees, including more than 100 local and foreign companies in China in group visits. Also, 1,000 meetings and deal negotiations are expected on-site among investors, governmental officials, countries’ representatives, and corporates. There will also be networking activities to facilitate product launches, roadshows, and VC-founders matchmaking.

To book a standard exhibition booth, please contact: 

Email: contact.sh@technode.com

WeChat: +86 189 3984 9698

To book a customized exhibition booth, please contact Elina Tsao:

Email: elina.tsao@beyondexpo.com

Mobile: +86 156 1163 0333

Or apply HERE.

Tentative agenda

Following an opening ceremony, BEYOND will offer forums on emerging tech topics in the following four categories: Impact Technology, Life Science, Infrastructure, Smart City and Living, and Future Technology.

If you would like to partner with us on the following topics, please email us at bd@beyondexpo.com.

Grab your early bird tickets now at 70% off. This offer is valid until April 20. For more information about the event, please visit https://beyondexpo.com. See you in Macao!

The BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo in Macao will take place August 26-28, 2021. It has been postponed from its original June date.

As COVID-19 vaccines are being administered worldwide, the number of new confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 is in decline. However, experts say that the real “turning point” of the epidemic has yet to arrive. The postponement of the event will make it possible for international attendees to participate in the offline event in Macao.

In addition, the event has been extended from two days to three, giving attendees more opportunities to explore and connect.

The event is expected to attract more than 20,000 attendees from around the world, and more than 1,000 exhibitors including Fortune Global 500 companies, major multinational corporations, unicorns, and emerging startups. BEYOND has already begun talks with many international companies, including CP Group, Foxconn, BMW, Huawei, Mi, ZTE, AliCloud, and SenseTime.

Technology and its impact are the focus of the BEYOND Expo. BEYOND will highlight how technology disrupts traditional businesses and addresses global sustainability issues. The event will offer vertical tech forums, diving deep into the topics such as green economy, agriculture and food tech, medtech, healthtech, life sciences, future mobility, smart cities, 5G IoT, fintech, smart-living, consumption upgrade, and future tech.

BEYOND is meant to break boundaries across the global tech industry and to create a platform on which innovation from corporates, startups, universities around the world will be represented. With favorable trade and low-tax policies, international companies are also expected to be able to easily access the Asia-Pacific through Macao. Supported by the annual BEYOND Expo, the city aspires to become a new global tech hub connecting technology ecosystems across the world.

Grab your early bird tickets now at 70% off, offers valid until April 20, see you in Macao!

For more information about the event, please visit https://beyondexpo.com; for business, please contact bd@beyondexpo.com.

COVID-19 has brought major changes to the world. As the global economic environment was being reshaped, digitalization also experienced unprecedented acceleration.

The 14th Asian Financial Forum, to be held online from Jan. 18 to 19, 2021, will gather more than 160 economists, political and business leaders, and financial and investment experts from all over the world to discuss global economic trends in post-pandemic recovery, sustainable development, responsible and innovative investment, financial technology, 5G, venture capital, and asset and wealth management.

The “Dialogue of Tomorrow” session will discuss the impact of COVID-19 on banking, insurance, financial technology, healthcare, and tech giants. Blockchain technology, central bank digital currency, wealth management technology, green finance, and inclusive finance will be among topics discussed in panels and fireside talks.

The Asian Financial Forum will offer perspectives from major financial institutions including AXA, Credit Suisse Group, FWD, HSBC Holdings, Standard Chartered Bank, and UBS Wealth Management; venture investors 500 Startups, Gobi Partners, and Eli Lilly; investment firms Calvert Impact Capital, and Dao Capital; and experienced entrepreneurs.

Notable Speakers:

Paul Romer | 2018 Nobel Laureate for Economic Sciences

Paul Romer, economist and policy entrepreneur, is a co-recipient of the 2018 Nobel Prize in Economics Sciences and University Professor in Economics at New York University. He has spent his career at the intersection of economics, innovation, technology, and urbanization, working to speed up human progress.

Romer received the Nobel Prize for his work “integrating technological innovations into long-run macroeconomic analysis,” which integrated ideas and innovation into economic models for the first time, making clear the societal benefits possible when people join together and collaborate in new ways.

Stephen A. Schwarzman | Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Blackstone

Stephen A. Schwarzman is Chairman, CEO, and Co-Founder of Blackstone, a leading global investment firm with $584 billion in AUM (as of Sept. 30, 2020) and businesses in private equity, real estate, hedge funds, credit, infrastructure, and life sciences.

In both business and philanthropy, he dedicates himself to tackling big problems with transformative solutions. His major gifts have helped establish a new center at the University of Oxford to redefine the study of the humanities for the 21st century, create a college at Massachusetts Institute of Technology dedicated to the study of artificial intelligence, build a first-of-its-kind student center at Yale, renovate and expand the New York Public Library, and found an international fellowship program, Schwarzman Scholars, at Tsinghua University in Beijing to educate future leaders about China.

Lei Zhang | Founder and CEO of Hillhouse Capital Management

Lei Zhang is CEO of Hillhouse Capital Management. In 2005, Zhang founded Hillhouse, an investment platform that partners with visionary entrepreneurs to build businesses and position them for long-term success. Hillhouse works with companies in the technology, healthcare, consumer, and business services sectors.

Zhang is deeply involved in educational endeavors. He earned his M.B.A and M.A. in International Relations from Yale University and is a member of the Yale Board of Trustees. He also serves as Chair of the Yale Asia Development Council. Before attending Yale, he earned his B.A. in Economics from Renmin University in China, where he is Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees. He is a founding Trustee and Chairman of the Development Council of Westlake University, China’s first graduate-level university dedicated to advancing research in the basic sciences. Zhang was also a founding donor of the Westlake University Endowment.

Alexis Ohanian | Co-founder of Reddit & Seven Seven Six

Alexis Ohanian is the co-founder of Reddit, Initialized Capital, and a bestselling author based in San Francisco, California.

After graduating from the University of Virginia in 2005, Alexis and his co-founder Steve Huffman started the Reddit website. The site quickly took off. In 2006, the two sold it to Conde Nast. In 2015, Ohanian returned as executive chair of the newly-independent Reddit and helped lead a turnaround. It is now the third-largest US website, and sixth largest in the world. In June 2020, in solidarity with the national outcry for social justice, and in an unprecedented act of leadership, Ohanian stepped down from his seat on Reddit’s Board of Directors and urged his company to seat a Black candidate in his place.

In 2016, he and Garry Tan co-founded Initialized Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that has over $500 million under management and a portfolio with $36 billion in market value so far. In mid-2020, Ohanian left Initialized Capital to work more closely on pre-seed investment efforts.

Click here to learn more about other speakers.

Business matchmaking opportunities and fintech zone

The AFF Deal Flow Matchmaking Session will provide investors and project owners from all over the world with a one-on-one meeting platform. The InnoVenture zone will support startups by building a platform for startups, as well as connecting international investors and potential partners.

The “Fintech Showcase”  and the FintechHK Startups Zone will introduce the latest financial innovation development and new-generation business concepts from more than 100 global financial technology solution providers and startups, covering financial management technology, payment technology, insurance technology, regulatory technology, quantitative and computational transactions, personal finance, artificial intelligence, blockchain technology, big data, cloud computing, and network security.

Use promo code JBE284 to redeem your discount at registration checkout. Link to register: https://register.eventxtra.com/9bdb1402-cca9-4bbd-ac20-d21cd4d13b11

MACAU Dec. 28, 2020—Today, TechNode and Macau International Grand Event Promotion Association announce that the first BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo will be held in Macau next year.

As an emerging center of the global economy, the Asia–Pacific region needs an international event that can display its most cutting-edge technologies to the outside world and attract more investment and collaboration from the international market. The BEYOND International Technology Innovation Expo is that promising event.

The first BEYOND Expo will kick off on June 17, 2021 at the Venetian Macau. The two-day event is expected to attract more than 10,000 attendees from around the globe, and more than 1,000 exhibitors including Fortune Global 500 companies, major multinational corporations, unicorns, and emerging startups. They will show technologies ranging from life sciences to new infrastructure, smart city applications, and future technology. The organizers will also invite more than 500 global investment firms and international media outlets to attend the event. In addition to exhibitions and conferences, the BEYOND tech expo will offer side events such as forums, innovation tours, product launch events, startup demos, VC meetups, and afterparties.

BEYOND has already begun talks with many international companies, including CP Group, Foxconn, BMW, Huawei, Mi, ZTE, AliCloud, and SenseTime.

Technology and its impact are the focus of the BEYOND Expo. BEYOND will highlight how technology disrupts traditional businesses and addresses global sustainability issues. BEYOND is meant to break boundaries across the global tech industry and to create a platform on which innovation from corporates, startups, universities around the world will be represented.

“We believe that the global technology industry needs a new platform to showcase changes in the industry, including the transformation from consumer electronics to industry digitization, and from Silicon Valley innovation to global innovation,” said Dr. Lu Gang, founder of TechNode. “We believe BEYOND will become an exciting technology event where people around the globe can gather and exchange ideas.”

“I believe that they will bring different perspectives and inspirations to Macanese youth and entrepreneurs, while exploring the future of business in a forward-looking manner,” said Lo Tak Chong (卢德忠), president of the Macau International Grand Events Promotion Association, which will co-host the first BEYOND exhibition.

“BEYOND will help attract different tech companies to participate in the activities in Macau, create an atmosphere for tech exchanges, encourage market innovation, and promote the development of technology in Macau,” said Agostinho Vong (黄伟伦), acting president of the Macau Trade and Investment Promotion Institute.

With favorable trade and low-tax policies, international companies are also expected to be able to easily access the Asia-Pacific through Macau. Supported by the annual BEYOND Expo, the city aspires to become a new global tech hub connecting technology ecosystems across the world.

For more information about the event, please visit beyondexpo.com, or subscribe to its Facebook page at facebook.com/beyondtechexpo.

On Dec 10, TechNode Global and TechNode co-hosted five sessions on Day 4 of Singapore’s SWITCH conference. 

Jointly organized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Enterprise Singapore, and IPI Singapore, the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) x Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology (SWITCH) took place from Dec. 7-11. 

In line with this year’s theme “People and Talent,” TechNode and TechNode Global spotlighted the faces of the Chinese tech innovation ecosystem, inspiring budding entrepreneurs and innovators.

The following are the highlights of each panel co-hosted by TechNode Global and TechNode:

The Southeast Asia dynamic with Chinese investments and partnerships

At SWITCH Connect, Elliott Zaagman, co-host of the China Tech Investor Podcast, moderated a panel discussion with Kay-Mok Ku, Managing Partner for Gobi Southeast Asia, and Yi Pin Ng, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Yunqui Partners.

On the topic of Chinese investments and partnerships in Southeast Asia, the panelists went over several dynamics in the region, including maturity of markets, fragmentation, barriers to innovation, localization, bifurcation, and the future of innovation in the region.

Notable is the difference in maturity of markets between China and Southeast Asia. China is considered to be mature in terms of infrastructure and innovation, while Southeast Asia is host to emerging markets, which are rapidly catching up. This leads to so-called “low-hanging fruits” or markets ripe for innovation, particularly with a fast-growing internet base.

“In Southeast Asia, I see a lot of these startups actually focus more on policy and execution side of technology. So, for example, the infrastructure side, a lot of logistics companies are being funded and more and more private equity will start to come into this market as well,” shared Kay-Mok. “The question is: What are some of those barriers and what are the ones that have been overcome and what are the ones that are still not yet overcome fully.”

Read more.

Mobility insights in China – Is China’s EV industry thriving or diving?

China has done all it can to encourage manufacturers and consumers to consider electric vehicles (EVs). EV manufacturers such as Xpeng Motors have been planning to take it a step further and bring their EVs to global markets. In this panel, moderator Simon Hui of Baker McKenzie discussed the current market positioning and different opportunities for EVs in China and unchartered waters with Brian Gu, the Vice Chairman & President of Xpeng Motors.

Hui said that EV sales in China have regained momentum in the past couple of months after suffering a drought earlier this year, and Gu credited this rebound to a couple of different factors that have been in play for a while now.

Over the past couple of years, the Chinese government has offered subsidies and favorable policies for manufacturers and consumers to bring more growth to the EV industry. Players who have entered the industry early on were able to foster the environment, and this has definitely played a big role over the past couple of years in building the infrastructure needed and convincing consumers to make the change.

Even with everything the government has done to push EVs and what the pioneering companies have done to foster a more appealing environment and product, people remain doubtful about making the change from Internal Combustion vehicles to EVs. The two biggest hindrances were range anxiety and the general cost of an EV.

Read more.

China’s shoppertainment craze: Is the social commerce livestream hitting its ceiling?

We have seen e-commerce grow and reach places and heights that we would never have imagined. One of the more recent strategies that have been integrated with e-commerce is adding a social aspect to your online shopping. In this panel, Chinaaccelerator Managing Partner Oscar Ramos moderates a conversation on Social Commerce Livestreaming with Pinduoduo Executive Director for Sustainability and Agriculture Impact, Xin Yi Lim.

Pinduoduo is the pioneering interactive e-commerce platform that brings a social aspect to your online shopping experience. They aim to give you a fun experience and with friends as all of you save money together. Founder Colin Huang Zheng said that they want Pinduoduo to be like CostCo and Disney combined: savings and fun put into one package.

Social commerce livestreams open up a channel for consumers to reach merchants. One of the more significant hindrances for people to buy online is not seeing the product in person. This allows the merchant to answer any questions or concerns these consumers may have. Lim brings up clothes as an example, wherein customers are always unsure about what size they should get. Having this livestream channel allows the customer to see how it actually looks and how big a small would look next to a medium.

In the bigger picture, consumers who were foreign to e-commerce were forced to adapt due to the lockdown. The pandemic has brought an entirely new wave of users who rely on e-commerce platforms to get products such as daily essentials from FMCGs and fresh produce, which consumers would usually purchase in physical stores. Lim does not see this as a trend and explains how the sales for fresh groceries in e-commerce have been steadily increasing. This sudden boom in sales for these necessities is most likely here to stay, and some physical stores may have to restructure in the future to include fulfillment of online sales as one of their new services.

Read more.

Up close with tech veteran Lei Ming: The Baidu and Kuwo Music Founder on the next breakthrough

Lei Ming was one of the first senior engineers for one of China’s biggest social media platforms, Baidu. He joined the team early on, right after graduating, to work with Baidu’s research and development team. He described his experience back then as very different from his classmates, who decided to join big corporations. With start-ups, you would be learning on your feet and based on experience rather than learning from elsewhere. Fresh from graduation, he was forced to step up and handle teams of engineers and develop products and features from prototypes to final release products. This is where he realized that he was truly an entrepreneur at heart.

With the experience and success under his belt, Lei Ming decided to take on completely new challenges in the tech world after letting go of Kuwo. His next focus was investing in the future and artificial intelligence. Lei Ming is one of the founding partners of AIBasis Ventures. He has invested heavily in artificial intelligence and has multiple incubation and innovation centers focused on developing AI products.

Lei Ming emphasized that the opportunities come with change. One of the biggest game-changers that we have seen is the continuous advancement of the internet. From slow and expensive, the internet has suddenly become fast, cheap, accessible, and reliable. These conditions made opportunities for new businesses ripe for the picking. We have seen how our means of communication have changed from text to voice, to picture, to video, and even live high definition video chats. This is all made possible due to faster internet connections.

When deciding what to do, Lei Ming advised that entrepreneurs consider finding the right thing to do at the right time. You need to make sure that you are addressing a problem, and you need to see whether or not you have missed your window to enter that opportunity. He mentioned that as early as 2005, there were thousands of video streaming and e-commerce sites competing with each other. Unless you can guarantee that your product can deliver the best quality compared to the rest, then you might end up experiencing more problems than you would like.

Read more.

HealthTech innovations post-COVID-19

Healthcare systems are changing really fast. Christopher Udemans, TechNode Senior Reporter, moderated a conversation on innovation in healthcare delivery and how COVID has changed the landscape with Chang Liu, ACCESS Health International Regional Director for Greater China & Southeast Asia.

One of the biggest tools that have been utilized to help ease the burden on the healthcare system is telemedicine. Through these platforms, users or patients can access healthcare by accessing an app and receiving consultations from a doctor remotely. However, it isn’t as simple as just putting up an app. Healthtech, as a whole, has to be applied to the entire system. This means access to essential medicine, proper training, sufficient financing, government support, and health data.

COVID-19 has definitely played a critical role in adding attention and value to integrating technology when it comes to healthcare delivery systems. Liu enumerated three magic ingredients to ensure that health tech will work: social acceptance, government support, and enterprise innovation. Cooperation between private companies and the government needed to come together to generate a holistic solution that would address the problems COVID had brought out.

Liu said that there is a lot that other countries can take note of when it comes to how China, as a whole, has handled the virus so far. Several low/middle-income countries have already studied and adapted systems and protocols that China has already put in place.

Read more.

The Blockchain Services Network (BSN) is one of the Chinese government’s most ambitious global blockchain projects. But can it succeed in its goal to become a global “internet of blockchains” in the face of rising tensions between the US and China?

“The BSN has already achieved this critical mass and it will have a snowball effect, as a lot more of worldwide technology infrastructure companies will want to come to it. The challenge is mainly geopolitical. Because of the current climate, this is going to be framed as the China Chain,” said Michael Sung, founding co-director at the Fanhai International School of Finance at Fudan University in Shanghai, at a panel discussion recorded on Nov. 16.

Moderated by TechNode’s blockchain and fintech reporter Eliza Gkritsi, three scholars and entrepreneurs from China, Singapore, and Hong Kong discussed what the future holds for the BSN—and whether its connection to the Chinese government will prove a blessing or a curse.

Making interoperability really work will be a real technical challenge, said Wai-shun Lo, adjunct professor The Chinese University of Hong Kong and partner at a Hong Kong angel investment fund. There is also a business challenge for portal operators around the world “to work in their own communities to really get people on board to develop dapps [decentralized applications],” said Lo.

The technology challenge will be overcome, “given time,” said David Lee, who teaches blockchain and fintech as a professor at the Singapore University of Social Sciences. But convincing “governments and incumbents to see the potential of BSN” might also be difficult in the short term, Lee said.

Blockchain Services Network (BSN)
What: A platform for blockchain development, bringing together cloud services and different chain protocols on city nodes.
Why: To reduce the cost of blockchain application design and deployment while powering communication between chains. It will be made available around the world through local cloud providers, ultimately creating a global internet of blockchains. The BSN is aligned with Beijing’s ambition to position China as a global blockchain leader.
Who: The BSN is led by the China State Information Center, China Mobile, China Union Pay, and Red Date Technology.

Speakers

Michael Sung

Michael Sung is the chairman of Carbonblue Innovations, a tech-transfer and commercialization platform focused on rapidly scaling internationally-sourced high-tech innovation, the founding co-director of the Fintech Research Center at the Fanhai International School of Finance at Fudan University, and a member of the faculty at the Chinese Institute of Economics and Finance, a national-level think tank focused on developing finance innovation policy for the central government in China.

Sung has served in advisory roles over the years for the Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China governments on international tech transfer, innovation ecosystem building, AI, blockchain, and fintech policy.

David Lee

David Lee Kuo Chuen owns Blockasset Ventures, a blockchain- and cryptocurrency-focused investment company. He has founded several companies, including Dlee Capital Management, Left Coast, and Ferrell Financial Group.

Lee is also a professor of fintech and blockchain at Singapore University of Social Sciences. He is an advisor to several blockchain organizations, including the British Blockchain Association, and was the director of the Sim Kee Boon Institute for Financial Economics (SKBI) at Singapore Management University (SMU). His research interests include digital and internet finance, digital banking, Asia, finance, impact investing, blockchain, financial inclusion, and asset allocation. 

Wai-shun Lo

Lo is an adjunct professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and a visiting Professor at Peking University’s School of Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Lo is currently a general partner of DL Capitals, an angel investment fund focused on disruptive and exponential technologies and has over 20 years of experience in intellectual property commercialization, business models innovation and technology transfer. Lo has also served as a senior researcher at Harvard Business School’s Asia-Pacific Research Center.

Jointly organized by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, Enterprise Singapore, and IPI Singapore, the Singapore Fintech Festival (SFF) x Singapore Week of Innovation and Technology (SWITCH) returns on Dec. 7-11. This year, the event will be presented in a unique hybrid format, combining a 24-hour online event platform and over 40 global satellite events in Fintech hubs around the world, including physical and digital formats. 

The global pandemic has underscored the need for innovation and resilience to overcome the greatest challenges. With the theme “People and Talent,” SFF x SWITCH 2020 will support initiatives and community activities that drive talent development, reskilling and upskilling of the financial and tech workforce. The event will also continue to champion key themes such as inclusion, green technology, and sustainability. 

In line with this year’s theme, TechNode and TechNode Global are excited to co-host five sessions on Day 4 of SWITCH. We will be spotlighting the faces that make up the Chinese tech innovation ecosystem, inspiring budding entrepreneurs and innovators.

Topics

SEA startups at a crossroad: Yay or nay to Chinese investments and partnerships?

For many China tech companies, Southeast Asia is both a second market and, increasingly, their most important global office—a home away from home. With the ongoing geopolitical tension, are Southeast Asian businesses still open to Chinese tech partnerships and investment? How can technology companies rethink their global strategies? 

Mobility insights in China: Is China’s electric vehicle industry thriving or diving?

Chinese carmakers have long sought to expand overseas amid Beijing’s ambition to build a world-class auto industry, and the baton has now been passed to young Electric Vehicle makers. Are they well-positioned to sustain high growth rates into the future, and can they prove viability in the market?

China’s shoppertainment craze: Is the social commerce livestream hitting its ceiling?

Livestream e-commerce has reached dizzying sales figures, and optimism is rife. However,  the sector may have hit its limit. The hype around livestreamed e-commerce is threatening its sustainability, especially as regulators set their sights on the sector.

Up close with tech veteran Lei Ming: The Baidu Kuwo Music founder on the next breakthrough

What are some best practices for companies to overcome adversity as they seek to expand into China? This session will look back at the tech veteran’s entrepreneurship journey: co-founding Baidu and KuWo Music, before switching gears to the angel investment and artificial intelligence sector.

How the health tech innovation environment will change post-COVID-19

China’s telemedicine industry got a big boost this year, offering vital medical services that would have otherwise been unreachable to many patients. But it’s too soon to say whether the surge in patients caused by lockdowns has lasted, or whether healthtech apps will be able to turn a profit

5 sectors of featured activities

The event will focus on five major topics: Fintech; Smart cities & urban solutions; Healthcare and biomedical sciences; Trade and connectivity; and Blockchain, AI, and 5G.

Other featured activities include: Deal Fridays, an internship program, the revamped MAS Global FinTech Hackcelerator and MAS FinTech Awards, SLINGSHOT 2020, and TechInnovation, which will culminate in special digital showcases at the week-long event. A new element this year includes digital events to engage the African Fintech community.

Featured speakers:

More than 1,400 prominent guest speakers have confirmed their participation. Among them are:

• Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft
• Jane Fraser, incoming CEO of Citigroup
• Akon, Founder of Akoin
• Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal
• Kai-Fu Lee, Chairman and CEO of Sinovation Ventures
• Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Founder and CEO of PayTM
• Adena Friedman, President and CEO of Nasdaq
• Calvin Choi, Chairman of the Board at AMTD Group
• Henry Ma, Chief Information Officer of WeBank
• Gang Ye, COO of Sea Ltd

For more information

Please check the official website of SFF x SWITCH 2020.

SINGAPORE, NOV 18 2020: TechNode Global, a Pan-Asia tech platform, has announced the winners for the first edition of ORIGIN Innovation Awards. The winners were announced during the ORIGIN Conference, an on-demand conference track about the latest developments in the Asia tech and startup scene within TECHFEST Live x ROAD-TO-WCIT Malaysia 2020.

2020 winners include early-stage startups, venture capital firms, corporates, community builders, and influential individuals. Close to 400 contenders from 18 countries across the Asia Pacific region participated. Southeast Asia continued to be the most-represented region, with 67% of the applications, while East Asia emerged in the second spot with 23%, ahead of South Asia with 10%.

“Congratulations to the winners for making an impact on the Asian technology and innovation space. All of this year’s nominations were impressive and have demonstrated passion and dedication in providing innovative technology solutions,” said Nadia Fonny, vice president at Gobi Partners, and advisor of the ORIGIN Innovation Awards 2020 panel.

The all-star advisory team is made up of representatives from AppWorks, Cyberport, Gobi Partners, Golden Gate Ventures, InnoVen Capital, MDI Ventures, Rakuten Capital, Sistema Asia, True Digital Park, and ZWC Partners. 

Read more: Announcing the finalists for the ORIGIN Innovation Awards 2020 

TechNode Global presented the ORIGIN Innovation Awards to outstanding startups, corporates, ecosystem enablers, and movers and shakers in Asia who are poised for growth.  Nominations were evaluated based on criteria such as value proposition, strength of technology product, company growth potential, and the leadership capability. 

Dr. Gang Lu, founder and CEO of TechNode Global, said, “We’re thrilled to offer recognition to the winners as they continue their journey on a technology revolution. TechNode Global remains committed to continue building a community of tech innovation in Asia. We look forward to meeting more outstanding solutions, engaging new partners, and connecting tech businesses across the region.”

The winners (in alphabetical order):

[Startup Awards] – Artificial Intelligence 

1. AIZEN – South Korean AI Banking-as-a-Service platform. 
2. AlpacaJapan – AI and FinTech company that utilises machine learning and deep neural network to provide investment solutions for bankers, asset managers, traders, and market makers worldwide. 
3. Kata.ai – Indonesian conversational AI company with an integrated platform to build intelligent chatbots. 
4. SandStar – startup that uses AI computer vision to revolutionize retail operations. 
5. Tookitaki – enterprise software company that creates sustainable compliance programs for the financial services industry. 

[Startup Awards] – FinTech 

1. Aspire – Y Combinator-backed technology organization that serves small businesses with financial tools to solve cash flow management and working capital needs across Southeast Asia. 
2. FPL Technologies – FinTech startup that helps consumers check, monitor, and improve their credit score via an AI-based score planner. 
3. slice – FinTech startup that aims to redesign the financial experience for millennials in India. 
4. StashAway – digital wealth manager that personalizes financial planning and portfolio management for the needs of retail and accredited investors alike. 
5. Vaymuon.vn – Vietnam-based peer-to-peer lending platform that connects borrowers with investors. 

[Startup Awards] – IoT 

1. KaHa – end to end smart IoT wearables platform.
2. oneCHARGE – electric vehicles startup that operates a computer vision and AI enabled EV charging system. 
3. Origami Labs – mobile computing solutions provider that offers screen-free, voice, and gesture-based products and services. 
4. Overdrive – IoT platform specialized in fleet management, assets monitoring, environmental sensing, vehicles monitoring, and real time location system. 
5. Pinmicro – global provider of IoT-based real-time location solutions.

[Startup Awards] – HealthTech 

1. Aktivolabs – personal wellness application that utilizes digital behavioural modification tools. 
2. DocDoc – patient intelligence company that empowers patients to make data-driven healthcare decisions. 
3. mClinica – healthtech startup that connects pharmacies using mobile technology. 
4. Oncoshot – cancer collaborative platform that empowers patients, caregivers, and oncologists with access to personalized clinical trial information and top cancer experts for second opinion. 
5. Vault Dragon – healthtech startup that aims to build “Asia’s Google Maps for healthcare data”. 

[Startup Awards] – Logistics & LMF 

1. Buyandship – cross-border e-commerce logistics company in the Asia-Pacific region. 
2. DRVR – fleet management solution that uses an IoT analytics platform. 
3. Inteluck – logistics company focused on first and second mile delivery.
4. Parcel Perform – carrier-independent parcel tracking platform for e-commerce retailers.
5. PDL Technology Limited – semiconductor company who drives adoption of the use of 3 phase 6 wire BLDC motors in the transportation industry.

[Startup Awards] – Supply Chain & New Retail 

1. InsightSCS – Philippines-based provider of cloud, blockchain, and AI-based supply chain solutions.
2. IUIGA – Singapore lifestyle homeware retailer combining brick-and-mortar retailing with e-commerce.
3. Mighty Jaxx – integrated platform empowering future culture brands with an end-to-end supply chain of tech-enabled collectibles and to deliver new retail experiences to consumers globally.
4. O4S – Gurugram-based SaaS startup helping brands with 360° visibility in their downstream supply chain. 
5. Wahyoo – Indonesia-based startup focused on digitizing street food vendors. 

[Startup Awards] – E-commerce 

1. Captive Interactive – Singapore-based digital content production and integrated digital marketing agency focused on e-commerce live streaming and e-commerce marketing.
2. Intrepid Group -a Southeast Asian e-commerce consultancy firm offering end-to-end e-commerce management services.
3. Kampung Marketer – Indonesia-based social enterprise who trains and educates village youth about e-commerce and digital marketing. 
4. LoveLocal – India-based retail company that digitizes and organizes local retailers, delivering a neighborhood shopping experience of the future. 
5. myCashback – online cashback platform for multi-category consumer products.

[Startup Awards] – Media & Entertainment 

1. CAPSL – Hong Kong & Shanghai-based Esports game studio. 
2. CloudTheatre – online ticket streaming platform for theatre shows. 
3. Gushcloud International – global talent agency group that connects audiences and brands to influencers and content creators. 
4. Music Hotpot – cloud infrastructure on blockchain that enables direct creator-to-consumer transaction and monetization on the music marketplace. 
5. Zocial Earn – marketing agency that empowers everyday consumers and social users to be key opinion consumers for brands. 

[Startup Awards] – Food & AgriTech 

1. Aquaconnect – full-stack aquaculture technology venture that provides data-driven farm advisory and marketplace solutions for shrimp and fish farmers. 
2. Avant Meats – cultivated meat technology company with a pilot focus on fish and seafood. 
3. 8villages – agritech company aspiring to empower farmers and rural communities through technology. 
4. HERO Protein – Mainland China-focused plant-based meat company with its proprietary process based on a high moisture extrusion technology.
5. Sesamilk Foods – Thailand-based company producing sesame milk, which is an alternative to dairy milk and is extracted from premium-grade Thai sesame seeds.

[Startup Awards] – EduTech 

1. ACKTEC Technologies – EdTech company focused on innovation in 360 VR, virtual reality, and augmented reality for immersive learning. 
2. Careershe – career guidance startup focused on helping students between 15-25 years old in China. 
3. Flying Cape – online booking and advisory platform for tuition and enrichment classes in Singapore. 
4. Kalpha – peer to peer mobile platform where individuals can connect and meetup to learn and share any skills, knowledge and experiences on a 1-to-1 basis. 
5. Ottodot – Singapore-based science learning platform for primary 3-6 students. 

[Startup Awards] – Internet Solutions (aaS) 

1. Parkingbnb – platform for drivers to find the cheapest and closest parking space considering personal preferences. 
2. Procol – India-based intelligent procurement software. 
3. Ravenry – company that connects customers with content writers in Asia. 
4. SyZyGy –  5G-powered virtual event platform with integrative features such as VR/MR, 720° panoramic view, and live streaming.
5. Trabble – guest engagement SaaS platform for the hospitality & travel industry. 

Best Digital Transformation Award 

1. ADB – Philippines-based multilateral development bank focused on Asia and the Pacific region. ADB Digital seeks out innovative solutions aligned to the digital sandbox programs on artificial intelligence, robotics, blockchain, and big data. 
2. Fung Group – Hong Kong-based, privately-held business entity that engages in trading, logistics, distribution, and retailing businesses. Explorium is a value-generating ecosystem where businesses, start-ups, incubators, accelerators, and venture capitalists collaborate to explore disruptive technologies that are reshaping global supply chain and retail in the digital era. 
3. L’Oreal – French personal care company. The annual L’Oreal Innovation Runway launched in 2017 in Singapore is a competition that seeks to transform the beauty industry with scalable, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly technologies. 

[Ecosystem Enabler Awards] Best Community Builder 

1. HKSTP Global Acceleration Academy – free-of-charge open innovation platform that transforms corporate innovation with tech venture solutions and co-creation to succeed in the Asian market and beyond. 
2. SheLovesTech – startup competition for women and technology, seeking and accelerating the best entrepreneurs and technology for transformative impact. 
3. True Digital Park – Thailand-based startup and tech entrepreneur hub for digital innovation. 

[Ecosystem Enabler Awards] People’s Choice VC 

1. Brinc –  venture capital and accelerator firm that invests in pre-seed to series A startups and runs global accelerator programs. 
2. 500 Startups – global venture capital firm managing over $600M in committed capital across their global and regional funds.
3. Gobi Partners – venture capital firm with a Pan-Asian presence across North Asia, South Asia, and ASEAN with over US$1.1 billion in assets under management (AUM).
4. Quest Ventures – venture fund for companies that have scalability and replicability in large internet communities. 
5. Sequoia India – venture capital firm which operates in India and Southeast Asia through one arm, helping founders build companies from idea to IPO and beyond. 

[Movers & Shakers Awards] Outstanding Female VC

1. Amra Naidoo, Accelerating Asia 
2. Goh Yiping, Quest Ventures
3. Shannon Kalayanamitr, Gobi Partners

[Movers & Shakers Awards] Promising Female Founder

1. Araya Noon Hutasuwan, SnapCart 
2. Caecilia Chu, YouTrip 
3. Val Yap, PolicyPal 

[Movers & Shakers Awards] Founder of the Year

1. Jonathan Savoir, Quincus
2. Michele Ferrario, StashAway
3. Mohammad H. D. A. Farahani, SEPPURE

[Movers & Shakers Awards] Best Sustainable Solution

1. EcoWorth Tech – waste solutions company specialised in transforming waste materials into reusable products.
2. Magorium – waste plastic recycling solution and a disruptor in the road modifier industry.
3. RWDC Industries – Singapore-based company that produces biodegradable plastic.

[Movers & Shakers Awards] Resilience Award

1. Insilico Medicine – Hong Kong-based AI company for drug discovery and development. Insilico launched a COVID-19 basic and clinical research system called COVIDomic which helps scientists and researchers alike to predict the severity of the disease in hope to reduce the severity and mortality of infection. 
2. mClinica – HealthTech startup that connects pharmacies using mobile technology. mClinica has offered the much-needed digital tools for governments to conduct online research of COVID-19, to run digital awareness campaigns to its pharmacy network on prevention and screening, and to provide e-learning modules to prepare the pharmacists for the pandemic and inform them of the latest guidelines. 
3. Unacademy – India-based online learning platform. During the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, Unacademy Educators offered 20,000 Free Live Classes on its platform not just to existing Unacademy subscription but to the general public as well. 

ORIGIN Innovation Awards 2020 is made possible through the continued support from our community and media partners:

About ORIGIN Innovation Awards

ORIGIN Innovation Awards is APAC’s esteemed accolade for tech innovation which aims to provide recognition to companies that have exemplified the spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship in the running of their businesses. The inaugural ORIGIN Innovation Awards started in 2020 as an initiative by TechNode Global with a goal to build a dynamic community in propelling them to soar to greater heights.

About TechNode Global

TechNode Global is a Pan-Asia tech platform offering premium tech news, cross-border businesses, events, and tailor-made marketing solutions for startups, VCs, corporates, and other industry pioneers. With a vast network in global innovation and entrepreneurship, TechNode Global facilitates cross-border partnerships and businesses.

On Oct. 29, the 2020 Shanghai Makers Awards Ceremony hosted by the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission and organized by InnoSpace Incubator, was held in conjunction with TechNode’s Emerge 2020 conference at the Shanghai Exhibition Center.

The theme of this year’s competition was “Industrial Intelligence,” and its subevents were the EdgeX Competition, Smart Medical Competition, and the Emerge Conference. The competition was held both online and offline, and attracted around 200 applications from global hacker elites. After more than three months of selection, preliminaries, training, and roadshows, winning teams were selected from the medical, industrial, retail, automotive, and logistics industries.

Liang Bing, the deputy director of the Innovation Service Department of Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission (STCSM), delivered a speech at the awards ceremony. She said that the Science and Technology Commission is ready to provide innovative services for innovators and entrepreneurs.

She emphasized that she hopes to create demand for big enterprises. There are many makers and entrepreneurs in Shanghai, as well as universities and educational institutes, which can serve big enterprises, and big enterprises can create a better scene for them. Talented makers are welcome to start their own businesses in Shanghai, and the STCSM will give their best efforts and services.

At the award ceremony, 25 teams won the first, second, third, special, and honorary awards.

The presenters were Sun Min, Co-Head of EdgeX China Community and Senior Marketing Manager at Intel; Yilin Xu, Senior Marketing Manager at Intel’s IoT Business Unit; Chris Wang, AI Marketing Director at IoT Business Unit; and Yinglei Ma, Deputy General Manager of SIMIC Incubator. Among the winning teams were i-Design, HYD Miracle Innovation, AI Cooling, Power Blazers, Huiyanshi Energy, Jiangxing Intelligence, JD Xinglian, Baowuzhiwei, CTC Jujishou, Xueyi jiu deliao hao jiemei, and Yizao Medicine.

On Oct. 29, TechNode’s second annual flagship conference successfully came to a close at the Shanghai Exhibition Center.

Emerge was a central stage event of the Inno Match Global Technology Transfer Fair, organized by the Pujiang Innovation Forum. It attracted an audiences of more than 300, consisting of investors, business executives, diplomats, media outlets, tech professionals, large enterprises, and startups. We discussed in-emerging technology trends in depth, through our six panels on stage with professional analysts and industry experts, as well as two workshops on decentralized finance and China’s data privacy framework, conducted by Sino Global Capital and Control Risks, respectively.

During the conference, we also co-hosted the Shanghai Makers Awards Ceremony with Shanghai Makers to announce the winners for the EdgeX awards, the Open VINO special awards, and the Healthtech Special Track awards. Among the 11 winners are i-Design, HYD Miracle Innovation, AI Cooling, Power Blazers, Huiyanshi Energy, Jiangxing Intelligence, JD Xinglian, Baowuzhiwei, CTC Jujishou, Xueyi jiu deliao hao jiemei, Yizao Medicine.

The following are the highlights of each panel at Emerge.

Keynote Panel: World still open to Chinese tech amid tensions

Beyond geopolitical tensions, Chinese tech companies expanding overseas also face obstacles in the form of privacy regulations, marketing, and localization. To answer the big question of the year: “Is the world still open to China tech?”, We invited William Bao Bean, general partner at investment firm SOSV, and Kiran Patel, the senior director at China-Britain Business Council, to share their thoughts.

“You have to adapt to the local market. You have to follow the local law. And half the time, people [startups] don’t even know that they’re breaking the law when they go across the border,” said Bao Bean.

Chinese companies have been successful in exporting hardware to overseas markets, but there are trust considerations when they are exporting software that holds personal data, said Patel during the discussion. “That is the challenge that companies like Tiktok and Wechat have to meet when moving into a new market,” Patel said. “The first challenge that must be overcome is building trust.”

Read more.

Healthtech after Covid: The future of healthtech in China is B2B

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought users and funding opportunities to healthtech startu­ps, but the industry is shifting away from B2C models due to high user acquisition costs, according to an early-stage investor speaking at TechNode’s Emerge 2020 conference on Thursday.

Many B2C healthtech startups, like Ping An Good Doctor, have followed a model popularized by China’s e-commerce platforms: They don’t care how much capital they spend on user acquisition, thinking that eventually it will pay off, said Linda Li, managing director and co-founding partner of investment firm Vickers Venture Partners.

Mark Zhang, partner at law firm King & Wood Mallesons, said during the discussion that a major inflection point for China’s healthtech boom came two years ago in the form of comprehensive regulation.

“Before 2018, there was no nationwide framework to regulate online healthcare,” even though the industry had been growing for 10 years, he said. Platforms couldn’t really go into healthcare so the industry was focused on tasks like making appointments with hospitals.

Starting in 2018, three pieces of regulation cleared the way for healthtech innovation: online platforms, online solutions, online hospitals.

Read more.

China’s EV battery reliability a lingering question

China will maintain its leadership in the global clean energy vehicle industry powered by its mass production of cheaper electric vehicle (EV) batteries, according to an industry expert, though it will struggle to surpass technological advances from Asian peers.

“Technically, Chinese battery makers are catching up to the Korean and Japanese battery suppliers. The technology gap is getting smaller, though reliability is still sometimes a question compared with Korean and Japanese batteries,” Stephen Dyer, managing director of global consultancy AlixPartners, said Thursday on the sidelines of the TechNode Emerge 2020 event in Shanghai.

“Nickel, cobalt, and manganese (NCM) batteries, including CATL’s NCM 811 battery, are naturally more unstable. A growing number of automakers in China are thus turning to lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries from a safety and cost perspective,” said Daniel J. Kollar, head of Automotive & Mobility Practice at business development consultancy Intralink Group.

“We’ve seen a lot of companies came in and failed in the Chinese steel and solar industries, and the battery sector is going to follow that trajectory,” Tu T. Le, founder and managing director of business intelligence firm Sino Auto Insights, said during the panel discussion.

Read more.

Not just a hard sell, livestreams help build a brand image

Applications for livestream are various and it is a matter of what merchants or brands want to achieve by leveraging the format, Pablo Mauron, partner and managing director of Digital Luxury Group (DLG), said during the panel discussion. He cited a recent example from Louis Vuitton which staged and streamed its Spring/Summer 2021 Show in Shanghai as a typical non-sales-driven approach for livestreaming.

Michael Norris, research and strategy manager of Agency China, agreed. “Larger brands, such as SK-II and Aptamil, use elaborate branded sets to broadcast their livestreams. These broadcast studios become the home of product information, Q&A with the audience, celebrity cameos, as well as special offers and promotions.”

Speaking from her own experience, Maggie Fu, an internet influencer and co-founder of social media brand Melilim Fu, said livestreaming allows users to get a sense of being close to hosts. “People can see what you are doing, feel your personality through real-time interactions.”

Fu said that the key is to actually understand what the consumers want, rather than forcing consumers to buy. The entertainment aspect of watching the livestream and nice discounts are also crucial factors to attract eyeballs.

Read more.

Central mandates are China’s edge for decentralized ledgers

“China is in the driver’s seat” of blockchain development as blockchain adopters look for solutions to connect different chains, Fudan University professor Michael Sung said at the TechNode Emerge 2020 conference held on Thursday.

Cross-chain integration, called “interoperability” in the blockchain world, is a key challenge for the emerging technology. Blockchain promises a decentralized, largely tamper-proof way to store and share data. But as different users adopt different chains, there is a rising need for good ways to exchange data between them.

China’s blockchain developers are riding a wave of state support since the technology was “anointed” by top leaders, following the pattern of artificial intelligence and 5G, Matthew Graham, CEO of blockchain-focused investment fund Sino Global Capital, said during the panel discussion. This support means “huge investment, probably overinvestment,” he said. “But out of that, innovative things will emerge.”

China’s blockchain ecosystem has weaknesses, the panelists said, naming public blockchain and token-based business models as examples. The country restricts much cryptocurrency activity, and is known for favoring more controllable permissioned or consortium chains over decentralized chains. 

But this preference is not absolute, said Harriet Cao, co-founder of Bianjie, a Shanghai-based startup that has developed both public chains and enterprise-oriented consortium chains. “Public blockchain is highly supported” as long as companies are working on the technology and not banned activities like initial coin offerings, she said. Cao said she has been invited to universities around China to introduce public chains.

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Young consumers and buzz boost foodtech in China

The term “plant-based meat” became a buzz word in China with the entry of Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods to the market. Plant-based proteins are not a new thing in Asia, but with new technology behind the trend, China is taking a fresh interest in the food industry. Venture capital investors are also assessing potential in foodtech.

More than 80% of investment in the sector has been downstream from foodtech, such as e-commerce, delivery, and brands, said Dee Zhang, principal at Bits x Bites, during a discussion at TechNode’s Emerge 2020 conference. However, she said that the trend will shift upwards to upstream segments to secure the food itself. 

Rich cultures and vast territory has made China a country with diverse food choices. Therefore, the constant exchange of demographics has created a relatively dynamic market in China, said Sam Lee, manager of projects and operations at Analytical Flavor System. There have been some successful cases of a new food or flavor from overseas that were welcomed among the younger generation in China. However, whether all new foods and flavors brought to the Chinese market will be fully successful is debatable, Lee said.

Plant-based protein maker Just Egg has conducted a lot of research and customized recipes to fit Chinese consumers’ eating habits, according to Gary Zhang (no relation), head of its regional marketing. Some 90% of shoppers who buy its products are flexitarians, who opt for plant-based products from time to time for sustainability and health reasons. He said the awareness of plant-based dining among the Chinese consumers is growing very quickly. 

“We can see that more and more young groups and post-90s are embracing this kind of plant-based dining very actively,” he said.

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