InnoSpring and Alibaba Group Launch Innovation Center to Support US & Global Startups Expanding to China

SANTA CLARA, CA–(Marketwired – Aug 17, 2017) – In response to rising demand from American and global startups seeking resources and a ready ecosystem to expand business operations and market share in China and beyond, InnoSpring, an industry innovation catalyzer and ecosystems builder unlocking opportunities for startups and industrial enterprises worldwide, today announced a joint venture with Alibaba and the launch of their Alibaba Innovation Center located in Jiading, a district with automobiles as its leading industry. With this joint venture, InnoSpring and the Alibaba can now offer an expanded startup support system and infrastructure to drive the globalization of innovation. 

American, global, and Chinese companies seeking to accelerate growth can leverage the Alibaba Innovation Center along with InnoSpring’s Shanghai Hongkou Incubator and its four other satellite locations in the area as a landing pad for expansion. The center’s comprehensive cloud service offerings and commerce infrastructure — along with InnoSpring’s strong ecosystem of investors, partners, services and events — provide the physical and digital foundation for cross border businesses and online marketplaces to flourish.

One of the first InnoSpring-Alibaba Innovation Center joint venture initiatives is the launch of Demo Day. With additional support from Jiading District government and TEEC (Tsinghua Entrepreneur & Executive Club), the day-long event welcomed US startups to demo and pitch to a panel of investors. This batch of startups hailed mainly from the areas of biomedical sciences and intelligent manufacturing, and they presented to more than 10 global investors including SIMIC Holdings Co., Ltd., Shanghai Jiading Venture Capital Management Company, Northern Light Venture Capital, and more.

“Our joint venture with Alibaba underscores the importance of close collaboration between industry giants, government, associations, and startups,” said Dr. Xiao Wang, chief fire starter and general manager, InnoSpring Silicon Valley. “By working together to provide a vibrant ecosystem for startups, we collectively push technological boundaries to create open, global, and ‘borderless’ platforms for innovation.”

With resources from TEEC’s entrepreneur network and the Alibaba ecosystem, InnoSpring and partners are promoting and developing Jiading as a global center of innovation in areas of smart cars, biomedical sciences, intelligent manufacturing and robotics, and the Internet of Things (IoT), specifically in integrated circuits. Jiading is a launch pad and gateway to the China market for many companies in these industries. InnoSpring Silicon Valley has introduced international innovation best practices to the incubator and has drawn some US companies such as Antibody BioPharm, Inc., Conju-Probe, and Intelligent Pharma, there. 

“This is an exciting venture for InnoSpring and Alibaba, two companies that have great entrepreneurial expertise and passion for the global exchange of business and technology innovation,” said Eric Cheng, general manager of the Alibaba Innovation Center (Shanghai Jiading) and the InnoSpring Shanghai Hongkou Incubator. “We look forward to working with exciting startups from around the world and helping them jumpstart their enterprises in China and across borders.”

This center joins InnoSpring’s fast growing network of innovation centers and offices that the company has set up in China and the United States. The expanded network will advance InnoSpring’s mission to nurture startups and accelerate the pace of the commercialization of new technologies in the global market.

About InnoSpring
InnoSpring is an industry innovation catalyzer and ecosystems builder unlocking opportunities for startups and industrial enterprises worldwide. With close to 20 years of experience, InnoSpring founders have a track record of building vibrant ecosystems and bringing together companies to synthesize innovative ideas and advanced technologies into upgraded products and services. These successes have paved the way for InnoSpring to positively impact and elevate traditional industries to new levels, and enabled large enterprises to operate more profitably and efficiently by collaborating with startups on cutting-edge technologies.

With intelligent manufacturing, bio-medicine and smart building as its focus industries, InnoSpring’s extensive services range from planning, investing, technology development, startup growth, space solutions, mentoring and ecosystems building. Recognized as one of the top 10 global accelerators (Entrepreneur), InnoSpring has four funds under management, and has served more than 300 startups, six of whom went public. Headquartered in Shanghai, the company operates multiple industrial parks, incubators, venture capital funds, and has offices in China, the United States and Germany (launching in fall 2017).

InnoSpring Silicon Valley, a subsidiary of InnoSpring, was founded in 2012 as the first US-China startup incubator to help accelerate cross-border entrepreneurship and innovation in US, China and beyond. It has since established itself as one of the Bay Area’s top Chinese investors (Silicon Valley Business Journal) and has expanded its services ranging from strategy, planning, the sourcing of investors, talent and partners, and mentoring to their portfolio companies. InnoSpring Silicon Valley has worked with 150 U.S. companies and invested in more than 50, including Drive.ai, Savioke, TrustGo, Kuaiya, Meadow and Meta. InnoSpring Silicon Valley is located in Santa Clara, California, with an office in San Francisco. www.innospringus.com.

About Alibaba Group and Alibaba Innovation Center
Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere. The company aims to build the future infrastructure of commerce. It envisions that its customers will meet, work and live at Alibaba, and that it will be a company that lasts at least 102 years.

Alibaba Innovation Center is Alibaba Group’s incubation service platform which is based on Internet, cloud computing and large data technology. Alibaba Innovation Center provides business support service including venture capital, venues, office facilities, capital docking, mentors, tax relief, development components, promotion, Alibaba Cloud service resources etc. As of December 2016, Alibaba Innovation Center has established 35 innovative incubators in 25 cities across the country, provided free cloud resources support for more than 2,000 startups, totaling more than 35 million yuan.
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