Are half of China's tech tycoons from Chaoshan?

Recently, Kimi K3 has exploded in popularity overseas, and its founder Yang Zhilin has become a globally influential figure.

Shortly afterwards, a "Map of Chaoshan Tech Entrepreneurs" began to circulate across the internet.

Whether they are engaged in large model development, 3D vision, autonomous driving, LiDAR, robotics and embodied intelligence... to put it in exaggerated terms, half of the domestic founders standing at the cutting edge of new technology trends right now are from Chaoshan.

In the past, when people mentioned Chaoshan people, their first impression was always brick-and-mortar store owners. They invested in rice industries, grocery businesses, catering, real estate, and all industries that could generate cash flow and build commercial networks.

But in the AI era, the younger generation of Chaoshan people have become the investment targets instead.

They are backed by top-tier venture capital firms, internet giants, local governments, and waves of capital pouring into the AI industry round after round... This has changed the label of Chaoshan people from "chasing market trends" to "becoming the trend itself", which raises a question:

How did these new tech upstarts from Chaoshan come into being?

01

How many of these new tech elites are from Chaoshan?

The most high-profile Chaoshan AI giant recently is still Yang Zhilin.

Yang Zhilin, born in Chenghai, Shantou, Guangdong in 1992, is the founder and CEO of Moonshot AI, an artificial intelligence enterprise.

Recently, Kimi K3, the large model developed by Moonshot AI, has caused a huge stir in the global AI community.

In multiple capabilities, Kimi K3 is close to or even surpasses the most top-tier models in the United States, and it has fully open-sourced its code for global practitioners to download and modify.

According to Reuters, the West previously generally believed that China lagged behind the United States by at least several months in large model development.

Now, the success of Kimi K3 has shaken a long-standing assumption: in the competition of cutting-edge large models, Chinese companies can only follow, and cannot take the lead in reaching some key capabilities first.

Looking back at the birth of Moonshot AI, we can hardly find traces of the operation of the traditional Chaoshan business model: Yang Zhilin's founding team is not a hometown association, but a group of elites gathered from top tech companies and prestigious universities around the world.

The initial startup capital did not come from business associations either, but from venture capital of HSG, ZhenFund, and Longhill Capital of Meituan, and the investment was made because of Yang's personal ability and vision. Even after hearing his judgment on the technical route of large models, Wang Xinyu from Longhill Capital of Meituan thought: "There is no reason not to invest."

At that time, Moonshot AI had only more than 20 people, no formal structure, no model, and in the short term, there was no sign of the cash flow that Chaoshan merchants cared most about in the past. It was purely burning money to bet on the future.

Yang Zhilin's rise seems to have no trace of the traditions of Chaoshan merchants at all. On the contrary, he followed the standard Silicon Valley venture capital route.

And his fellow townspeople also have similar entrepreneurial experiences.

Hong Letong, a post-2000s generation born into a working-class family in Chaoshan, co-founded Axiom, a company focused on "curing AI lying", with a former Meta employee he met at a cafe near campus, and secured hundreds of millions of dollars in Silicon Valley venture capital with nothing but an idea.

Xiao Jianxiong, from Chaozhou, Guangdong, turned down the offer from the vice president of autonomous driving at Ford, and then used the seed funds from Zhang Shoucheng and Xu Xiaoping to found AutoX, which focuses on L4 self-driving vehicles.

Qiu Chunxin, born in Chaozhou, Guangdong in 1983, co-founded Hesai Technology with his doctoral supervisor and classmates, and once ranked first in the world in the LiDAR niche track...

At least from the public resumes, in the entrepreneurial scripts of this generation of Chaoshan people, the old pattern of "uncles leading the way, fellow townspeople providing funds, acquaintances supplying goods" seems to be a thing of the past. What endorses business activities has changed from blood ties in the past to a more credible credential:

Educational background.

Looking back at those Chaoshan tech leaders at the beginning of the article, you will find that they are not only born in the same place, their labels are either "child prodigy" or "PhD entrepreneur".

When Yang Zhilin applied for university, he got admitted to Tsinghua University with three qualifications at the same time: recommendation through academic competition, independent recruitment, and top scorer in science in the Shantou college entrance examination.

Hong Letong entered MIT at the age of 17, completed all courses in three years, and had already won a bunch of mathematics awards before starting his business. The aforementioned Xiao Jianxiong, Qiu Chunxin, Wang Shiquan and Lu Cewu, Shantou natives engaged in embodied intelligence, are all PhD holders, and most of them graduated from Ivy League schools in the US such as Stanford and MIT.

Rather than asking why so many tech leaders come from Chaoshan, it is better to ask why so many top students come out of this region.

The answer lies in the educational philosophy of Chaoshan people.

For many local people, letting the next generation study hard is probably the most cost-effective long-term investment they can make.

02

How many generations of support does it take to cultivate a new generation of tech elites?

Why can Chaoshan continuously produce such a group of young people who are good at studying and dare to start businesses?

The answer cannot be simply attributed to "Chaoshan people are born to do business", let alone some mysterious regional gene.

A more reliable clue lies in the years-long investment in education in this region.

As early as in the overseas remittance letters more than half a century ago, you can see old overseas Chinese in Singapore persuading their younger brothers to study hard:

"Now that you are studying, you will make a living with your knowledge in the future, not like laborers who live by physical strength."

In other words, acquiring knowledge is a means to make a living in the future.

For most Chaoshan people, education is a long-term investment for ordinary families to change their livelihood and expand their choices.

This kind of encouragement for learning is not only limited to words and papers, but also reflected in real money and years of continuous support for education.

In Chaoshan, education is not a one-off deal, but a lifelong investment. It is not a short-term cooperation between a few wealthy people and a few schools, but the collective support of countless Chaoshan people at home and abroad.

During the 10 years from 1987 to 1996, more than 10,000 Chaoshan people who worked hard overseas donated a total of 1.5 billion yuan to fund educational development in their hometown. By 2008, more than 2,000 schools had been built or expanded in Chaoshan with these donations, so that a saying was widely spread at that time:

"The most beautiful buildings in the villages of Shantou are schools."

Speaking of running schools, many people will think of the Li Ka Shing Foundation, and the story of continuously investing funds to build Shantou University little by little over many years.

But across the Chaoshan region, similar mutual support can be found everywhere:

For example, Zheng Kaide, an 80-plus-year-old Chaoshan merchant, donated 260 million yuan to almost fully cover all the hardware renovation of Shantou Jinbao Middle School;

The teaching buildings, school history museum, school gate, basketball gymnasium and various scholarships and grants of Hanshan Normal University are all funded by Chen Weinan, a patriotic overseas Chinese leader who graduated from this school;

There are also families such as the Charoen Pokphand Xie family and the Chen Biheng family, whose two or three generations have spared no effort to contribute to the cause of education in their hometown for decades.

Years of continuous investment, some are used to support poor students to complete their studies, some are used to reward top students for their achievements;

Some are used to build buildings and venues to improve teaching infrastructure, some are used to sponsor science and technology academic competitions to build paths for talent development;

There are awards such as the Chaoshan Xinghe Prize, which not only rewards top students, but also rewards teachers, as well as sports and art talents;

There are also awards such as the Yidan Prize, which is not limited to students in Chaoshan, but extends to supporting the development of global education...

A large amount of funds, full coverage, and stable inheritance, all these factors combined have turned schools in Chaoshan into huge talent reservoirs, nurturing a group of young people who are ready to embrace any technology trend.

Take Shantou Jinshan Middle School as an example. From here came Huang Yuanhao from Orbbec, Wang Shiquan from Flexiv, and Yang Zhilin from Moonshot AI:

Among the three, one is engaged in 3D vision, researching machine perception; one is engaged in embodied intelligence, transforming the body of machines; the other is engaged in large model development, pioneering the consciousness of machines.

Moreover, after the three of them, the school also produced Zheng Linkai, who won the "Global Brain King" on the Super Brain show and completed his computer major at Tsinghua University ——

His story has only just begun.

It seems that once top students from Chaoshan start their businesses, their innate business acumen will be awakened.

03

Why can Chaoshan people always stand at the forefront of the times?

In interviews with Chaoshan tech leaders, more than one person mentioned the influence of Chaoshan culture on their choice to leave academic research and start businesses.

Huang Yuanhao was once called "the first Chaoshan scientist to ring the IPO bell". He said:

"I wanted to run a business since I was a child. When I was doing scientific research, I would think: how to turn this technology into a product?"

Zhang Junbin, who works in robotics, put it more directly: "I am from Chaoshan, and I wanted to start a business as soon as I graduated."

Xiao Jianxiong's grandparents and parents are all businessmen, so after leaving Princeton, starting an autonomous driving business seemed to be an inevitable next step for him: "90% of startups will fail, 90% of academic careers will succeed... But I think being an entrepreneur is more suitable for me."

After bringing technology out of the ivory tower, the new generation of Chaoshan tech entrepreneurs have not discarded the most familiar survival method of their ancestors:

Sticking together.

Although in the entrepreneurial stage, everyone makes their own way with their own abilities, after their businesses grow, the Chaoshan hometown