Shenzhen Action Plan for Building a Pioneer AI OPC Entrepreneurship Ecosystem (2026-2027)

Shenzhen‘s industry and information technology bureau has launched an action plan to strengthen the one-person-company (OPC) entrepreneurship ecosystem in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The original text can be read at: https://www.sz.gov.cn/szzt2010/wgkzl/jcgk/jcygk/zdzcjc/content/mpost_12602688.html 

The plan took effect on Jan. 1, 2026, and remains valid for two years. Its goal is to create a supportive business environment for AI OPCs and to make Shenzhen a leading hub for AI innovation and single-person entrepreneurship.

Under the plan, by the end of 2027, Shenzhen aims to establish more than 10 OPC communities, each with an area of at least 10,000 square meters with significant agglomeration effect and national influence. The city also plans to cultivate over 1,000 high-growth AI startups and attract more than 10,000 professionals in AI innovation and entrepreneurship, forming a distinctive and highly influential OPC entrepreneurship ecosystem.

Key measures:

(1) Build high-quality OPC communities. Each district will select areas with high talent density and active entrepreneurial ecosystems to develop OPC communities through coordinated city-district efforts. The plan will initially leverage AI innovation clusters in Nanshan, Longgang, Futian, and Guangming, then expand across the city to form a resource-concentrated, functionally clear, industry-clustered, and synergistic AI OPC ecosystem. By the end of 2027, citywide OPC community area is expected to exceed 500,000 square meters.

(2) Attract and retain talent. Offer tiered household registration (hukou) subsidies up to 100,000 yuan for newly introduced doctoral, master’s, and bachelor’s degree holders. Select top AI innovators as municipal-level high-level talents and provide them with mentorship, investor access, priority industrial space, innovation resources, funding support, and city-level scenario access. Establish an open, diversified talent evaluation system and grant key policy support to outstanding innovators active in AI open-source communities, application development, and competitions.

(3) Provide workspaces. The city and districts will jointly develop industrial innovation spaces and implement a “one desk, one office, one floor” workspace system to support enterprises through incubation to maturity. Offer low-cost startup spaces in OPC communities sized to team needs.

Under “Measures on Enhancing Services for Young Talent Development in Shenzhen,” eligible AI individuals and teams settling in other industrial spaces may access low-cost entrepreneurial space up to 50 square meters.

(4) Provide housing support. Promote a housing supply system of “one bed, one room, one apartment” to ensure stable living conditions for talent. Qualified young entrepreneurs may rent transitional housing for up to 36 months at about 60% of market reference rent, or opt for a housing subsidy for up to 24 months (1,250 yuan before tax / 1,000 yuan after tax per month). Districts will be supported to increase housing sources and provide guaranteed housing for OPC enterprises.

(5) Provide startup funding. Expand financial support for AI startups: offer up to 50,000 yuan in innovation and entrepreneurship rewards and up to 1 million yuan in R&D funding for selected Kunpeng Youth Innovation and Entrepreneurship Projects. Provide up to 1 million yuan in startup funding for eligible overseas-educated young talents.

Recent graduates (within five years) who found startups may apply for personal startup guaranteed loans up to 600,000 yuan, small- and micro-enterprise startup guaranteed loans up to 5 million yuan, and applicable interest subsidies or discounts.

(6) Strengthen industrial policy supply. Increase municipal and district support for OPC communities by pooling funds and resources to ensure efficient community operations and enterprise services. Districts will allocate “smart vouchers” to enterprises in OPC communities based on scale, offsetting early-stage costs such as computing power, models, and data corpora.

Support applications for National AI Vouchers (Computing Power Vouchers) and provide municipal AI policy vouchers of up to 10 million yuan for training (Training Power Vouchers), up to 2 million yuan for model development (Model Vouchers), and up to 2 million yuan for data corpora (Data Corpus Vouchers) to fund model training, intelligent agent construction, and API usage. Promote ecosystem connectivity by encouraging co-location of companies in the same industrial chain to enable efficient collaboration.

(7) Accelerate opening of application scenarios. Intensify scenario cultivation, supply-demand matching, and scenario opening to help enterprises accelerate technology verification, iteration, and commercialization. Regularly open high-value application scenarios in urban governance and public services and provide up to 5 million yuan for AI products deployed in government services.

Support scenario matching across advanced manufacturing, modern services, and other sectors, and provide up to 2 million yuan in R&D funding for demonstration application projects with strong promotion value.

(8) Provide full-cycle investment and financing services. Build an investment and financing system guided by funds and supplemented by credit. Leverage the National Venture Capital Guiding Fund, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Venture Capital Guiding Fund, municipal and district guiding funds, and industry funds to increase early-stage and hard-technology investment.

Promote AI and embodied robotics funds to focus on high-growth OPC enterprises. Encourage districts to establish matching seed and angel funds, host regular investment and financing roadshows, and explore models such as “loan + external direct investment” to increase financial support for seed and early-stage firms.

(9) Promote collaborative innovation (industry-university-research-application). Support university AI talent to found startups in Shenzhen and help commercialize research in OPC communities. Encourage joint labs between companies and research institutes for R&D and commercialization.

Promote shared access to research instruments and equipment to lower innovation barriers. Support creation of innovation consortia among universities, institutes, and enterprises to tackle key technologies; selected projects may receive up to 30 million yuan under Shenzhen’s R&D funding measures for key sectors.

(10) Build industrial public service platforms. Establish integrated government and public service platforms for enterprises throughout the full life cycle, offering policy consultation, business registration, tax, and intellectual property services. Provide professional services such as large-model filing guidance and security evaluation.

Develop an AI “Going Global Zone” to assist companies with cross-border payments, networking and data issues, overseas promotion, and other international expansion challenges. Facilitate cross-border data flows via Qianhai and Hetao to support international AI cooperation.