- District acelerator now hosts over 30 one-person companies, supported by AI access, subsidzed loans and free tokens.
- Shangcheng aims for 250+ embodied intelligence firms and 30 billion yuan in output by 2028.
Hangzhou will roll out a spate of policies encouraging solo founders to drive its next wave of tech innovation, the city’s major Yao Gaoyuan said yesterday after a tour of local businesses.
During a visit to Honghub, a “one-person unicorn” accelerator in Hangzhou’s downtown Shangcheng District, he discussed with individual entrepreneurs and pledged to support their endeavors with funding, AI tools and dedicated workspace as part of the city’s broader plan to transform the IT-heavy district from a traditional business hub into a central innovation cluster for AI-focused businesses.
“We need to proactively engage and provide attentive services, leaving ample room for innovation for companies in promising new technologies and industries,” Yao was quoted as saying in local media reports. “We should encourage exploration and be tolerant of failure, so that more ‘super individuals’ can sprout and thrive in Hangzhou.”
He was referring to a group of solo founders who build their ventures around AI agents like the viral OpenClaw framework to help automate tasks.
According to Wang Jiahao, a partner at the Honghub accelerator, the community has received more than 1,300 project applications, with over 30 one-person companies now operational.
One such founder, Zhao Ruolan, 29, a former algorithm engineer working in the brain-computer interface sector, returned to Hangzhou in 2025 to launch what she called a personal growth app.
Her two-person team now leverages AI to complete tasks that previously took a week in a single day, with the system handling 80% of the workload, Zhao told media.
Shangcheng has responded to the rising one-person-company (OPC) trend with dedicated policies, including an annual fund of 100 million yuan ($14.46 million), personal entrepreneurship loans of up to 500,000 yuan, subsidized business loans of up to 3 million yuan, and over 20,000 square meters of plug-and-play workspace available at low cost for up to three years.
Additionally, free AI-agent accounts provide immediate access to computational power for resident founders. This helped ease the financial burden on small-time entrepreneurs like Zhang, who said she could save around 2,000 yuan a month in compute costs.
Yao’s visit reflects the district’s ongoing transition from a central business district to a “Central Innovation District (CID),” as outlined in an official blueprint that came out in August last year.
The three-year blueprint focuses on a pivot to frontier sectors including embodied intelligence, AI, and industrial software. By 2028, Shangcheng aims to host over 250 embodied intelligence companies and reach 30 billion yuan in industrial output.
After visits to other tech companies in Shangcheng, such as leading AI developer Zhipu’s Hangzhou office and Chicheng Digital Technology, a 3D spatial modeling firm, the mayor stressed the importance of “space” and “patience” for emerging technologies, encouraging an entrepreneurial culture that fosters experimentation and tolerates failure.
“We must seize the opportunities of the new technological and industrial revolution, focus on tech innovation, strengthen policy support, and leverage resources like computing power, models, data, scenarios, and markets to take the lead in industrial development,” Yao said.
