The 10-billion-yuan ($1.4 billion) Shanghai Future-oriented Industries Fund was launched during the opening ceremony of the Pujiang Innovation Forum, which started on Sept 7.

The new fund is projected to promote disruptive innovation, multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary innovation as well as cutting-edge platform-based technologies.

Focusing on future-oriented industries, such as health, information technology, manufacturing, energy, space and material industries, this new fund will serve as the reserve to invest in and nurture a wider range of patient capital. It will also connect to the industrial FOFs for Shanghai's three pioneering industries of integrated circuits, biomedicine and artificial intelligence to form a fund cluster. In this way, a complete technology innovation investment system can be shaped in Shanghai, facilitating early-stage technology incubation and industrial integration. It will also help to consolidate Shanghai's role as an international technology innovation center, according to the municipal government.

During his speech delivered at the forum's opening ceremony, Chen Jining, Party secretary of Shanghai, said that deepened institutional reform will be further emphasized in Shanghai to strengthen the ties between education, technology and talents.

The deepened reform will also help to further promote opening-up and cooperation, said Chen. Shanghai will expand the opening-up of science and technology plans and advance international cooperation in major scientific issues around consensus areas such as life and health, new energy, and the expanded space for human development. Efforts will be made to further integrate into the global innovation network and deeply participate in global governance in areas such as AI, he said.

Inaugurated in 2008, Pujiang Innovation Forum has come to the 17th edition in 2024. This year's theme is set at "Sharing Innovation and Shaping the Future: Towards an Open Environment for Scientific and Technological Innovation".