Healthcare AI investors are scrambling to recruit PhDs in Hong Kong.
In the summer of 2026, a large number of medical AI projects from Hong Kong's universities were "blocked" on campus by capital.
BrainsTech, an invasive brain-computer interface team led by Professor CHEN Guoliang from the University of Hong Kong, completed an angel round financing of over 10 million US dollars this year, led by Jun Capital and followed by BlueRun Ventures. The Hong Kong team of BrainsTech relies on the Hong Kong Advanced Biomedical Instrument Center (ABIC), co-built by the University of Hong Kong and Harvard University, to develop electrode devices and AI decoding algorithms, while the Shenzhen team is responsible for engineering and GMP production. The production line located in the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Cooperation Zone has already started construction.
Angxin Biotech at the Hong Kong Science Park has become one of the first two companies invested by the "Gobi - HKU Fund". Its founder YANG Guanya graduated from the Department of Chemistry of the University of Hong Kong, studying under the renowned inorganic chemist Academician CHE Chi-Ming. Less than a month after receiving the seed round, Angxin Biotech signed a cooperation with Dong'e Ejiao, a subsidiary of China Resources Pharmaceutical. The two parties will use Angxin Biotech's AI drug discovery platform to accelerate biomedical R&D.
Siruining Technology, incubated at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University Shenzhen Entrepreneurship Center and led by LIU Haowen, an alumnus of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, uses intelligent hardware combined with large AI models to provide home-based management for chronic diseases and mental illnesses, and has received millions of dollars in seed round financing.
Going to Hong Kong to recruit AI PhDs has become the most popular move for mainland funds and investors nowadays. Flights heading south to Hong Kong have recently been crowded with investors. They are packed shoulder to shoulder, all gearing up for action. But in this emerging hotbed of entrepreneurship, can the flowers of medical AI really bloom?
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Hong Kong PhDs,
are dominating the primary market
The starting point of this wave is not actually in the medical field.
In the first half of 2026, a set of financing data brought entrepreneurs with backgrounds from Hong Kong's universities into the spotlight. According to statistics, in the first half of 2026, 19 companies founded by entrepreneurs with backgrounds from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology completed 25 financing rounds, with the estimated amount exceeding 8.4 billion RMB. 15 enterprises founded by entrepreneurs with backgrounds from the Chinese University of Hong Kong completed financing, with a total estimated amount exceeding 1.5 billion RMB. Among them, one segment in the embodied intelligence track accounts for more than 70% of the total financing amount.
Yuance Future is the most high-profile case in 2026. In April 2026, the company, which was established less than a month earlier, announced the completion of a seed round financing of several hundred million yuan, with investors including six top-tier VCs: ZhenFund, Gaorong Ventures, IDG Capital, 5Y Capital, Gobi Partners, and MiraclePlus. Its founder LI Hongyang is an assistant professor at the University of Hong Kong and associate dean of the School of Computing and Data Science. Yisheng Technology, which completed an angel round of several hundred million yuan in the same period, has investors including China Biopharmaceuticals, Pudong Venture Capital, Zhangjiang Sci-Tech Investment, and Yunhui Capital. Its founder MA Yi is the founding dean of the School of Computing and Data Science at the University of Hong Kong, winner of the "Marr Prize" in computer vision, and a triple Fellow of IEEE/ACM/SIAM, focusing on the unified "brain + cerebellum" architecture for embodied intelligence.
In addition, Siyu Technology completed four rounds of financing with a total amount of several hundred million yuan less than one year after its establishment, with investors including Alibaba, GLP, and Hony Capital. Its founder ZHANG Fu is an associate professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Hong Kong and a former scientist at DJI. Euler Wanxiang was established in 2025 and completed two rounds of financing within 60 days with a scale of several hundred million yuan, with investors being Ant Group and Didi. Its founder ZHOU Shunbo is a PhD in robotics from CUHK, a "Genius Young Talent" of Huawei, and the "No.1 Employee" of Huawei's embodied intelligence business. Jianzhi Robotics, which was also jointly led by Ant Group and Didi, also has founding team members with backgrounds from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
"Teams from Hong Kong's universities often naturally have stronger commercial awareness and a global vision, with solid academic training, good English proficiency, access to international academic networks, and exposure to working methods in top laboratories. They have superior innate conditions for starting businesses," an investor explained to VCBeat.
In Hong Kong, although medical AI entrepreneurship projects from universities are far less high-profile than embodied intelligence projects, their rising speed cannot be ignored. "Hong Kong has never been the first choice for medical entrepreneurs," the aforementioned investor told VCBeat, "because Hong Kong has limited medical resources, and the related supporting industries are not as complete as some places in the Chinese mainland, so it is not very attractive for the increasingly involuted medical entrepreneurship." However, this situation is undergoing profound changes this year.
In addition to BrainsTech, Angxin Biotech, and Siruining Technology mentioned at the beginning of the article, EndoMed, incubated by the Hong Kong Innovation Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, completed its angel round financing in February 2026. In this place where almost everything is ready, the outbreak of the medical AI wave only lacks a final gust of wind.
In this process, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and the University of Hong Kong, as the three universities with the largest number of technology commercialization projects, have begun to systematically improve the soil for medical entrepreneurship.
For example, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has set up a complete incubation pipeline: IncuTech provides early verification, HKSTP STEP provides growth resources, TSSSU provides funding, and every step from the laboratory to capital has corresponding support. The University of Hong Kong directly connects with capital: the TEC Technology Transfer Center is responsible for screening projects, and the HKUMed Xelerate Challenge is responsible for creating an active atmosphere. In March 2026, the University of Hong Kong and CAS Star jointly established the FutureTech Stars Fund with an initial size of 150 million Hong Kong dollars, bringing mainland top-tier capital directly into the campus of the University of Hong Kong.
For another example, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and the City University of Hong Kong are focusing on building engineering export channels for "medicine-engineering integration". Among them, the trusted AI framework TRUEAAM developed by the team of Professor ZHANG Xiaoge was published in *Nature Biomedical Engineering*, and the AI for fundus angiography developed by the team of Professor HE Mingguang has a sensitivity of 96.2%, both of which have been verified in international awards, and have broken through the key node from academic papers to engineering. In addition, InnoHK, as the most critical policy leverage of the SAR government, relies on the two clusters of Health@InnoHK and AIR@InnoHK to introduce Harvard, MIT, and Stanford to co-build projects with local universities, bringing in international standards and industrial resources together, incubating BrainsTech and supporting MicroNeuro.
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The Hidden Force of Domestic Medical AI
If we extend the timeline, we will find that entrepreneurs from Hong Kong's universities have never been newcomers in the innovation and entrepreneurship landscape of China's medical track. Entrepreneurial teams from the eight well-established public universities in Hong Kong have developed influential star projects in cutting-edge tracks such as AI pharmaceutical, surgical robots, and precision diagnosis.
In 2017, WeMed Medical was established in Shenzhen. Its founder WANG Silun studied and worked at the University of Hong Kong and Johns Hopkins University in the United States successively, with his doctoral research focusing on biomedical imaging. At the beginning of his entrepreneurship, he did not choose to return to Hong Kong, but directly built the core R&D team in Shenzhen.
The logic of WeMed Medical is to develop AI-driven precision diagnosis and drug screening, with its core technology platform centered on medical imaging and biomarker modeling. In the first year of its establishment, WeMed Medical received angel round financing from domestic RMB funds, which supported the expansion of the core team and the construction of product prototypes. Since then, the company has maintained a stable financing rhythm, introducing industrial capital in Series A, and getting follow-up investments from top-tier institutions starting from Series B, gradually establishing a commercialization path in the direction of AI image diagnosis and biomarker modeling.
At present, WeMed Medical's products have entered dozens of medical institutions, and have established stable admission channels in the segmented scenario of AI-assisted diagnosis. It is worth noting that WANG Silun has always maintained the habit of academic linkage with Hong Kong's universities, and he regularly returns to the HKU laboratory to participate in cutting-edge research projects. At the same time, WeMed Medical has established a small clinical cooperation team in Hong Kong to connect with the imaging data resources of HKU-affiliated hospitals for algorithm training and clinical verification.
In 2019, Professor OU Guowei of the Chinese University of Hong Kong founded Konno Surgical. Before that, OU Guowei worked for nearly ten years at Intuitive Surgical, the parent company of the da Vinci surgical robot, leading the development of the Da Vinci Single-Site and Da Vinci ION systems. In 2016, OU Guowei returned to the Chinese University of Hong Kong to teach, serving as a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Automation Engineering and the director of the Medical Robotics Innovation Technology Center.
Coincidentally, OU Guowei also set Konno Surgical's headquarters in Shenzhen. In November 2020, Konno Surgical completed Series A financing, led by Qiming Venture Partners. Konno Surgical completed multiple rounds of financing in 2021, 2023 and 2025 successively, introducing top investment institutions and authoritative funds such as Lilly Asia Ventures, Longzhu Capital of Meituan, Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group, Hong Kong Investment Corporation, and global sovereign funds, with Qiming Venture Partners continuing to follow up. In June 2023, it completed Series B+ financing of 800 million yuan, with new investors including Dahe Tech and others. By the end of 2025, Konno Surgical's cumulative financing exceeded 3 billion yuan.
Konno Surgical's flagship product, the Sentire endoscopic surgical robot, which is a competitor of da Vinci, obtained the NMPA Class III registration certificate in September 2024, and simultaneously launched clinical commercial promotion in specialties such as urology and general surgery. Konno Surgical's clinical team shares surgical data and clinical feedback with the School of Medicine of the Chinese University of Hong Kong for continuous optimization of the robot control algorithm. At the same time, PhD candidates at the Surgical Robotics Research Center of the Chinese University of Hong Kong complete engineering training at Konno Surgical's Shenzhen factory, forming two-way talent flow. OU Guowei once said that R&D in universities only accounts for 5% of the entire R&D process, and the remaining 95% can only be learned during industrialization. In his view, it is crucial to give students from Hong Kong's universities the opportunity to receive engineering training.
In 2018, YANG Mengsu, senior vice-president of the City University of Hong Kong and a fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, registered and established AccuMed Diagnostics in the Hong Kong Science Park. YANG Mengsu has been conducting research on tumor liquid biopsy since 2000, systematically building a technology platform from circulating tumor cells to ctDNA, which forms AccuMed Diagnostics' core technical barrier.
In 2021, AccuMed Diagnostics completed Series A financing, led by Proxima Ventures, and followed by GL Ventures and Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund. Subsequently, AccuMed Diagnostics completed Pre-B round and Series B round financing in 2022 and 2024 successively, introducing Tiger Jade Capital, industrial capital, and alumni capital with a CityU background. Using circulating tumor cell and ctDNA detection technologies, AccuMed Diagnostics helps clinical practice realize early cancer screening and companion diagnosis.
After starting his business, YANG Mengsu still teaches at CityU of Hong Kong and supervises PhD students, and the research team continuously exports cutting-edge technologies to the company. The company has established clinical verification laboratories in Hong Kong and Shenzhen respectively, and carries out clinical cooperation projects on liquid biopsy with many public hospitals in Hong Kong.
Interestingly, in the aforementioned entrepreneurship stories, in addition to the founding teams coming from Hong Kong's universities, all of them set their main entrepreneurship bases in the Chinese mainland. In addition to the industrial ecological factors mentioned earlier, the low risk tolerance of local Hong Kong VCs for hard technology projects is also one of the reasons why Hong Kong PhDs used to choose to leave Hong Kong to start businesses. "Although Hong Kong is an important global financial center, in the early stage of entrepreneurship, it is difficult to find investors in Hong Kong who are willing to take risks and accompany startups to grow," said a practitioner.
In other words, for Hong Kong PhDs in the past, the mechanism to obtain the first sum of external capital for starting a business in Hong Kong was missing.
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Capital is actively flowing into Hong Kong
Since 2026, the most notable change is that capital has begun to actively flow into Hong Kong, instead of waiting for teams from Hong Kong's universities to come out to seek investment.
On the one hand, the SAR government is actively increasing its efforts. The Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC), an institution under the SAR government that manages multiple industrial investment funds, has begun to directly act as a cornerstone investor of funds, which means that the SAR government no longer only provides policy convenience, but uses real money to participate in the structure, reducing the risk exposure of mainland capital betting on Hong Kong. Hong Kong's universities are also taking synchronized actions. In 2026, the SAR government announced to inject 1.5 billion Hong Kong dollars into the innovation and technology field to optimize the "Industry-University-Research 1+ Program" to fund the commercialization of scientific research achievements of local universities. In the same period, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Shanghai state-owned capital such as Shanghai Industrial Holdings jointly built a joint fund for biotechnology. In addition, long-established institutions rooted in the Greater China region such as Gobi Partners directly act as fund managers, managing innovation and technology funds co-named with Hong Kong's universities.
On the other hand, the response of mainland capital is faster than expected. Sensitive RMB funds have entered Hong Kong in batches, and state-owned institutions such as Shenzhen Venture Capital Group, Pudong Venture Capital, and China Merchants Venture Capital frequently appear in the investor list of entrepreneurship projects from Hong Kong's universities. At the same time, industrial capital is following up synchronously, and capital parties with clear industrial logic such as Ant Group, Didi, Longzhu Capital of Meituan, and Lilly Asia Ventures have begun to include projects from Hong Kong's universities into their industrial layout.
The driving factors behind this are not difficult to understand.
First, the valuation gap. The valuation system for early-stage projects from Hong Kong's universities has not been fully priced by the enthusiasm of the mainland market. Under the same technical level, mainland capital can obtain shares at a lower cost. Second, the endorsement effect of the Hong Kong Investment Corporation. The entry of SAR government funds is equivalent to completing a due diligence screening for investment institutions, and the project quality and academic value have a trusted third-party judgment, which greatly shortens the decision-making cycle of investment institutions. Third, Shenzhen-Hong Kong collaboration reduces commercialization risks. Hong Kong focuses on R&D while Shenzhen focuses on manufacturing. The geographical distance between the two places is so close that people can make a round trip within one day, and their respective advantages can be maximized. This division of labor system, which has been verified by DJI and Huawei, is being replicated in the medical AI field.
As a result, PhDs from Hong Kong's universities no longer need to leave Hong Kong at the cost to get the admission ticket of mainland capital. In a sense, Hong Kong's universities are becoming a technology procurement market worthy of attention. The underlying logic for mainland capital to find projects in Hong Kong's university laboratories is that scientists here have received Western academic training, have no language barriers in English, can align with international standards, and their labor costs are lower than that in Silicon Valley. Once the project passes the technical verification, mainland capital will bring the company to Shenzhen or Suzhou for landing.
In essence, this is an extension of the "Hong Kong R&D, Mainland Manufacturing" division of labor system in the medical AI field