The 2025 Pujiang Innovation Forum — held on Sept 20-22 in Shanghai — attracted over 550 participants from more than 300 institutions across 45 countries and regions. 

Both the scale and number of guests at the forum hit records, highlighting global collaboration in science and technology.

New to this year's forum were the Predicting the Future and Sharing the Future zones — designed to immerse attendees in Shanghai's advancements in future industries. 

The Sharing the Future zone featured interactive exhibits — including a brain-computer interface game developed by Shanghai Inside Brain, an artificial intelligence research company. 

Participants could control the blockbuster Chinese video game Black Myth: Wukong using only their thoughts after only a brief training session.

Elsewhere, the Predicting the Future zone highlighted Shanghai's strategic focus on six key sectors: future healthcare, future intelligence, future energy, future space, future materials and future information. 

These areas are in line with Shanghai's plan to establish a world-class innovation hub by 2030, aiming for industrial output worth about 500 billion yuan ($70.28 billion). 

The InnoMatch Tech-Matching Fair, a central part of the forum — and a global platform that connects technology demand with innovators, capital and enterprises to speed up commercialization — posted 10,000 technology requests worldwide, with participating businesses committing over 20 billion yuan in funding. 

The fair also announced 2,000 new job opportunities and showcased more than 80 new products and demonstration projects in advanced fields.

At the fair, six concept-validation platforms for emerging industries debuted, lowering trial-and-error costs for startups in areas such as brain-computer interfaces. 

The fair also highlighted interdisciplinary projects like the math-medicine AIagent, which combines mathematical modeling with medical expertise to improve diagnostic accuracy and efficiency.

Launched in 2022, Shanghai's action plan to cultivate future industries has steadily accelerated. References to future industries in forum reports multiplied tenfold from 2023 to 2024, reflecting the growing momentum.

More than 30 specialized sessions and closed-door meetings — covering AI for science, quantum intelligence and controlled nuclear fusion — involved Nobel Prize, Wolf Prize and Turing Award laureates.

They joined government officials, entrepreneurs and investors to discuss fundamental research and industrial applications.

The forum also announced the creation of the international Mesoscopic Brain Mapping Alliance and released its white paper — marking a global collaboration to map primate brain connectivity at the mesoscale level.

With an atmosphere of innovation and discovery, the 18th Pujiang Innovation Forum continues to provide a premier platform for scientists, entrepreneurs and investors to exchange ideas and accelerate breakthroughs that shape the industries of the future.