The Coders' Village at the Heart of China's AI Frenzy

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and dozens of people sat on the grass around a backyard stage where aspiring founders of tech start-ups talked about their ideas.

- Meaghan Tobin

HANGZHOU - It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and dozens of people sat on the grass around a backyard stage where aspiring founders of tech start-ups talked about their ideas.

People in the crowd were slouched over laptops, vaping and drinking strawberry frappuccinos. A drone buzzed overhead. Inside the house, investors took pitches in the kitchen.

It looked like Silicon Valley, but it was Liangzhu, a quiet suburb in the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou, which is a hot spot for entrepreneurs and tech talent lured by low rents and proximity to tech companies such as Alibaba and DeepSeek.

"People come here to explore their own possibilities," said Mr. Felix Tao, 36, a former Facebook and Alibaba employee who hosted the event.

Virtually all of those possibilities involve artificial intelligence (AI). As China faces off with the US over tech primacy, Hangzhou has become the center of China's AI frenzy.

A decade ago, the provincial and local governments started offering subsidies and tax breaks to new companies in Hangzhou, a policy that has helped incubate hundreds of start-ups. On weekends, people fly in from Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen to hire programmers.

Lately, many of them have ended up in Mr. Tao's backyard. He helped found an AI research lab at Alibaba before leaving to start his own company, Mindverse, in 2022.

Now Mr. Tao's home is a hub for coders who have settled in Liangzhu, many in their 20s and 30s. They call themselves "villagers," writing code in coffee shops during the day and gaming together at night, hoping to harness AI to create their own companies.

Hangzhou has already birthed tech powerhouses, not only Alibaba and DeepSeek, but also NetEase and Hikvision.

In January, DeepSeek shook the tech world when it released an AI system that it said it had made for a small fraction of the cost that Silicon Valley companies had spent on their own.