On June 24, at the first "International Bio-Computing Innovation Summit" held in Hong Kong, Hong Kong Investment Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "HKIM") signed a strategic cooperation agreement with BioMap, and will lead the new round of financing for BioMap, an AI large model company in life sciences. This is also the second partner announced by HKIM within two weeks after SmartMore.
Hong Kong's Financial Secretary Paul Chan said at the summit that Hong Kong fully supports the development of the AI industry and encourages relevant companies to go public in Hong Kong. From the private equity funds to the venture capital ecosystem, and then to the deep and broad listing platform, Hong Kong has a complete fundraising chain. He also mentioned that the settlement of cutting-edge technology companies such as BioMap in Hong Kong is beneficial for the city to develop its AI industry and cultivate talent, enhancing Hong Kong’s competitiveness. In the future, more technology companies will choose Hong Kong as their R&D and international cooperation base.
As the "14th Five-Year Plan" of China establishes Hong Kong's important position as an international innovation and technology center, the official operation of the Hong Kong Investment Company is pushing Hong Kong into a "business recruitment era" for scientific and technological innovation.
Harbour Investments Makes Second Move, Invests in Li Yanhong's New Company
BioMap is a life sciences AI large model company, founded in September 2020 by Robin Li, the founder of Baidu, who also serves as its chairman. BioMap’s other co-founder, Liu Wei, who also serves as CEO, is the former CEO of BV Baidu Ventures. As a seasoned AI investor with 18 years of experience in frontier technology venture capital, Liu Wei has systematically invested in AI infrastructure and industry applications since 2011, providing angel investments to over a hundred AI companies in China and the US, including Megvii Technology.
BioMap is committed to combining cutting-edge AI and biotechnology to build the xTrimo platform, a large foundational model in life sciences centered on protein language, with hundreds of billions of parameters. By modeling biological evolution and decoding the laws of life, it brings generative capabilities to the frontier discovery problems of the life science industry. It has achieved a series of breakthrough results in innovative drug design, target discovery, de novo design of proteases, green technology, industrial innovation, consumption upgrade, and other fields, thereby contributing to human health and sustainable social development.
Chen Jiaqi, CEO of Hong Kong Investment Corporation, stated that BioMap is a pioneer in applying AI large language models in the life sciences field. The collaboration with BioMap will serve as a model for Hong Kong Investment Corporation's investment and strategic partnerships. Together, they will realize the vision of "from zero to one, and from one to infinity." It is believed that the support and cooperation from Hong Kong Investment Corporation will benefit BioMap’s development and application of AI large language models, especially within Hong Kong's pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors.
In fact, before the announcement of investment by the Hong Kong Investment Corporation, BioMap completed an over USD 100 million Series A round of financing in 2021, led by GGV Capital, with participation from Baidu, Legend Capital, BlueRun Ventures, Genuine Capital, and Xianghe Capital. Li Yanhong continued to increase his investment.
Notably, after its establishment, BioMap set up a strategic investment department named BioMap Ventures. The predecessor of this team was BV's biotech investment team, whose members come from renowned universities both in and outside China, possessing extensive experience in investment and management within the life sciences sector. According to available information, the first-phase fund scale of BioMap Ventures is 200 million US dollars, covering all investment stages, with a 20-million-dollar innovation fund established to incubate early-stage projects. CVSource data shows that BioMap has invested in several AI companies such as AbcamBio, Neovision Intelligence, Sinochips Bioscience, and Deep Potential Technology.
62 Billion, Hong Kong Begins Business Recruitment
On October 19, 2022, Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee delivered his first Policy Address, proposing the establishment of a new "Hong Kong Investment Management Limited." The company's official website states that it is an investment firm wholly owned by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government. It was set up to better utilize fiscal reserves to promote Hong Kong’s economy and industrial development. Following the principle of enhancing Hong Kong's competitiveness and leading and supporting the flourishing development of strategic industries, the company will make investments to strengthen Hong Kong’s ability to attract investments. Its goal is to upgrade the industrial structure and boost economic development momentum.
The Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC), wholly owned by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, manages funds including the HK$22 billion Hong Kong Growth Portfolio, the HK$5 billion Greater Bay Area Investment Fund, the HK$5 billion Strategic Technology Fund, and the HK$30 billion Co-Investment Fund, with a total management scale of HK$62 billion. This is the first time that a large government-controlled fund has appeared in Hong Kong, so the HKIC has been dubbed the "Hong Kong version of Temasek" by the market.
Compared with other sovereign funds that tend to focus more on financial returns, the Hong Kong Investment Corporation (HKIC) has a more crucial function of leveraging the guiding and leveraging role of capital. Therefore, it requires the invested companies to establish and root themselves in Hong Kong, promoting the development of Hong Kong's ecosystem. Chen Jiaqi once revealed that HKIC has conducted extensive research and comparisons over the past period, initially identifying three major investment themes: hard technology, life science, and new energy technology. Hard technology includes AI, data science, semiconductors, and RISC-V (the fifth-generation reduced instruction set) technology, which high-tech industries have pursued applications for in recent years.
On the day when Harbour Investments announced its leading investment in BioMap, BioMap declared the establishment of its first international innovation center (BioMap InnoHub) in Hong Kong. The first project to be implemented at this innovation center is the "Biocomputing Innovation Acceleration Program" (BioMap BioX). This program is expected to support more than fifty cutting-edge life science early-stage R&D projects over the next five years, with priority given to projects recommended by Hong Kong's universities and ecosystem partners. Liu Wei stated that the company has already started renting office space in Hong Kong and committed to continuously increasing its investment in Hong Kong over the next three years, as well as actively promoting U.S.-China partners to come to Hong Kong.
The first investment of the Hong Kong Investment Company, SmartMore Technology, will also establish the first artificial intelligence research institute in Hong Kong, focusing on cultivating young talents in Hong Kong for the development of artificial intelligence. In addition, SmartMore Technology will also prioritize Hong Kong as its listing location and invest resources to enhance the computing power level in Hong Kong, etc.