Speech by the Chief Executive Officer at HKU iCube Annual Gala Luncheon 2025 (English version only) (8 May 2025)
Professor Cai, Tony, Professor Li, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is my great pleasure to join you all today at the HKU iCube Annual Gala Luncheon.
As an HKU alumnus, I am very excited to be here, witnessing the continued efforts of HKU in supporting the development of innovation and entrepreneurship in Hong Kong. Notwithstanding its relatively short history of only two years, the HKU iCube has been playing an important role in facilitating discussion among academics, thought leaders, investors and entrepreneurs, and in transferring ideas into real impact. All these efforts are bearing fruits and bringing further momentum to the innovation and technology (“I&T”) ecosystem in Hong Kong, of which artificial intelligence (“AI”) is a core element.
Today, we gather under the theme “Talent Management in the Age of AI”. This is a topic very dear to my heart, due to the fact that AI has become the backbone technology for future creation, innovation and empowerment. It is bringing transformation to our society and economy with unprecedented scale and pace. On this front, we always hear the thesis that talents are the key to unlock the full potential of AI. Let me contribute my two cents on this topic by sharing with you what the HKIC is doing and has been seeing from around the world.
The HKIC's AI Journey
At the HKIC, we firmly believe in the transformative potential of AI to drive positive change to Hong Kong’s economy and society. Guided by our dual mandate, which is to seek reasonable financial return, and at the same time to enhance the long-term competitiveness and economic vitality of Hong Kong by the channelling force of capital, we have invested in over 100 projects to date. Many of these projects are in the AI or AI-enabled industries, ranging from foundational infrastructures such as large language models and chips design, to cutting-edge applications including embodied AI and AI drug discovery, to name but a few.
As Patient Capital with a view to accelerating the nurturing of New Quality Productive Forces, we create value by both investment and partnership. We invest not only our capital, but also our time and efforts to nurture or support our investee companies and partners. For example, we mobilise cross-sector resources to meet their evolving needs which may differ at their different stages of development; we share insights and experience about governance and organisational development as well as go-to-market strategies; and we bring connections from our ecosystem to them, which involve investors and clients locally and globally. All these aim to provide full-suite support to them covering areas such as product and service innovation, productivity improvement and talent development.
Talents are the Key to Unlock the Full Potential of AI
During our day-to-day work, we have a few observations about talents in the age of AI. Let me try to summarise them under the framework of the four question words, namely “What”, “How”, “Where” and “When”.
First, it comes “What”. When the HKIC sources and evaluates potential investment targets, we are focused on finding talents who have the vision and perseverance. This is because vision and perseverance define how far one could go. In many cases that we have seen and invested in, we note that AI development, just like other technology, could take time because it involves a lot of uncertainties. And inherently, the R&D journey could be challenging and lonely. We find that the winning teams of talents are usually those who have great perseverance in pursuit of vision, and at the same time also having the courage to reflect, and then to pivot and make changes if needed. These are the types of talents that the HKIC will support. Many of them could be from our universities, be they professors, students or graduates.
Then, it comes “How”. We think the key word here is openness. A key element for success in AI development is the openness to look around the whole world to identify and embrace the best wisdom, ideas and application, regardless of geographies, races, politics and background. Good examples are open-source architectures like DeepSeek and RISC-V. Openness is critical in building a self-sustained, positive feedback loop, which usually starts with open-source architecture which enables and accelerates adoption across boundaries, and increased adoption allows accumulation of all sorts of data generated by real usage. Then such data would get back to the system to support the continued iteration and upgrading of the original products and services, which in turn will benefit users and make the adoption and market position expansion even quicker, broader and deeper.
Then the “Where” and “When” questions in relation to the AI investment opportunities and talents. My quick answers are “Here” and “Now”.
Hong Kong’s Differentiating Advantages for AI Development
The HKIC sees great potential of AI investment opportunities and talents in Hong Kong and Mainland China. In fact, a lot of the HKIC’s business counterparts and peer investors such as sovereign wealth funds, pension plans and university endowments from around the world have been showing an increased level of interest in investing in AI opportunities and seeding AI teams in this part of the world. I am sure such interest will continue to grow. In fact, we are going to host an important event named “International Forum of Patient Capital” on 22 May, in which we will announce more details on these investment opportunities and progress.
When we talk to foreign investors, there are a few things that they repeatedly mentioned about why they love Hong Kong particularly on the aspect of AI development, which I think are of good reference value.
Firstly, Hong Kong is home to world-renowned universities, including of course, HKU. As demonstrated by initiatives like the HKU iCube, our universities provide not only solid academic foundations that equip students with knowledge to thrive in the rapidly evolving AI world, but also support for them to dream and innovate and to bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and practical applications. On this, please keep up the good work. The HKIC looks forward to more collaboration with our universities.
Also, people like the fact that Hong Kong has a diverse and multicultural environment which fosters creativity and innovation. Our city is a melting pot where people from different backgrounds could collaborate and exchange ideas easily. Hong Kong’s strategic position as “Super Connector”, role as an integral part of the Greater Bay Area and “One Country, Two Systems” also offer us unique advantages.
Moreover, the dedication and commitment of our Government to attract and nurture AI talents are so loud and clear. For the HKIC as the investment arm of the Government, in addition to channelling capital into AI investments, we are also curating resources to invest for the future of AI by talents nurturing. For example, we always require our investee companies or strategic partners to work with and bring value to our universities by way of doing joint research and commercialisation or providing internships, and to invest resources to enhance AI literacy covering not only universities but also secondary and primary schools in Hong Kong. We will also host the inaugural “International Young Scientist Forum on AI” and the inaugural “International Conference on Embodied AI Robot” later this year. We look forward to bringing together top talents from various AI fields and from around the world to showcase the latest research achievements and application scenarios of Hong Kong, exchange ideas and foster new collaborations.
Closing
To close, thank you again for having me today. With the great attributes of Hong Kong and the tremendous growth potential of AI, I am sure Hong Kong will have a promising future for AI. In this important journey for Hong Kong, the HKIC keenly looks forward to joining hands with the HKU iCube to collectively contribute the best for Hong Kong!