From 23 to 25 April the ninth Everything Grows conference was held in Hangzhou — a forward-looking platform for entrepreneurship and venture dialogue created by Zhejiang, bringing together technology and academic leaders, founders and investors, and releasing a series of influential lists.
On the strength of its work in AI and life sciences, Westlake Pharmaceuticals was named a Hangzhou quasi-unicorn for the third consecutive year and joined the Zhejiang Top 100 Future Unicorns.
At the same event, founder and chairman Dr. Hongtao Yu was named a “2024 entrepreneur of the year” — recognition of his strategic vision and leadership, and of the company’s standing as a model for university technology transfer.
Building on eight previous editions, the conference was upgraded this year to a Zhejiang science and innovation brand event. Beyond the established Hangzhou unicorn and quasi-unicorn lists, the scope was widened to the whole province to identify high-growth, high-potential companies. Life sciences leads the provincial top 100 with 23 companies, Westlake Pharmaceuticals among them.
As one of China’s digital-economy leaders, Hangzhou has strong momentum in artificial intelligence. The organisers also published the Hangzhou AI landscape, covering 108 emerging companies across infrastructure, technology and applications. Westlake Pharmaceuticals appears on it as a representative of AI in life sciences.
From the outset Westlake Pharmaceuticals has explored applying AI to drug discovery to address the industry’s long timelines and high cost. Building on its research base, the company has released its own AI drug design platform, WAND (Westlake AI for Novel Drug), now applied across its pipeline. WAND integrates life sciences, physical sciences and computer science with frontier AI, and is characterised by deep theory, full-process coverage and high prediction accuracy. In practice it has markedly improved efficiency, and AI-driven work has produced several staged breakthroughs.
Guided by Zhejiang’s strategy of innovation-led growth, a group of technology-driven companies is emerging across the province. As a participant in that ecosystem, Westlake Pharmaceuticals will keep focusing on key technology and its translation into use.