Empowering early-stage sci-tech innovation projects across the entire industrial chain, with seed funding of up to 5 million. The registration for the 4th "Shenxian Lake" International Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, the "Today International Cup", is officially open now.

The 4th "Today International Cup" Shenshen Lake International Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) has officially opened for registration. This competition is exclusively titled by Shenzhen Today International Logistics Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Today International"), and is open to enterprises, universities, scientific research institutes and innovation teams across the country. Rooted in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area and radiating across the global innovation landscape, the competition takes "Gathering global cutting-edge technologies, linking international innovation resources, empowering early high-potential projects" as its core concept, and is committed to building an international event platform integrating capital docking, industrial empowerment and cross-border collaboration, so as to promote the efficient transformation of scientific and technological achievements from universities and help the Greater Bay Area build an innovation highland with global influence.

The 4th Competition is fully upgraded, and the international innovation platform reaches a new level

Registration for the 4th "Today International Cup" Shenshen Lake International Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen) is in full swing. Since its inception, the event has gradually grown into an internationally influential innovation and entrepreneurship platform in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, with participating projects covering 29 countries and regions. This year's competition is fully upgraded around four major directions: "fair competition, international vision, whole-chain empowerment, and brand upgrading", and takes "attracting talents through competition, promoting innovation with talents, boosting industry through innovation, and feeding back development through industry" as its core logic, to build an ecological closed loop of circulating innovative elements.

Focusing on project landing, fund support, policy docking and capital empowerment, the 4th competition builds a whole-chain support system covering key growth links of early-stage hard technology projects.

In terms of landing space, award-winning projects can settle in the national-level technology business incubator of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), and obtain up to 12 months of free office space and supporting facilities. The incubator also provides incubation services in six dimensions: site, training, resources, publicity, talents and financing, helping early teams reduce landing costs, and accelerate product verification and market expansion.

In terms of financial incentives, the competition has set up a million-yuan prize pool to support early-stage hard technology projects in the form of competition bonuses. The bonuses aim to ease the financial pressure of projects in the start-up period, guide teams to focus on technology R&D, product iteration and commercial verification, and provide more practical starting support for innovative projects.

In terms of policy and qualification docking, as a cooperative event of Shenzhen Kunpeng Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Project, award-winning projects of the competition can obtain direct access to the project pool, apply for a maximum of 1 million yuan in R&D grants, and enjoy all-round support in talents, sites, science and technology finance at the same time, forming an effective connection between event selection and policy support.

In terms of capital empowerment, award-winning projects also have the opportunity to obtain investment from "CUHK-Shenzhen Songhe Seed Fund", with the maximum investment amount reaching RMB 5 million. The fund focuses on extremely early-stage science and technology innovation projects, and forms a connection mechanism of "event selection - early investment - incubation and cultivation" with the competition, promoting more high-quality projects to move from the competition field to the market.

Focus on four major tracks, covering hard core technology fields

The competition focuses on the following four core industry sectors:

· Big Data and Artificial Intelligence: Covering new generation electronic information technologies such as large models, edge computing and quantum communication, algorithm innovations such as image, speech semantics and knowledge graph, as well as the landing application of artificial intelligence technology in finance, industry, logistics, healthcare, agriculture and other industry sectors.

· High-end Intelligent Manufacturing and Semiconductors: Covering technologies including key basic components and basic manufacturing equipment, major intelligent manufacturing equipment, energy-saving supercharging and new energy vehicles, low-altitude equipment manufacturing, semiconductor equipment and materials, devices, processes, packaging, applications, design and simulation.

· New Materials and New Energy: Covering carbon fiber materials, nanomaterials, biological materials, electronic information materials, functional polymer materials, etc., as well as a variety of clean energy sources such as solar energy, hydrogen energy, nuclear energy, biochemical energy, geothermal energy, wind energy and ocean energy.

· Biomedicine and Medical Devices: Covering high-end biological products such as gene therapy, cell therapy and antibody drugs, innovative traditional Chinese medicines and improved new drugs, innovative chemical drugs, as well as high-end medical devices such as medical imaging, life monitoring and life support, implantable interventional devices and consumables, surgical robots, new in vitro diagnostic equipment and reagents.

According to the competition schedule, registration is open from now on, with the registration deadline set on December 4, 2026, and the final will be held in Shenzhen on January 10, 2027. Participating teams can register online through the official competition registration webpage. Innovation has no boundaries, and wisdom converges at Shenshen Lake. The organizing committee of the competition sincerely invites global innovators to gather in Shenzhen to attend this grand international innovation and entrepreneurship event.