Hangzhou is doubling down on tech – minus the viral hype

A year ago, a Unitree robot kickboxing could light up social media. When DeepSeek released its latest open-source artificial intelligence (AI) model, developers around the world rushed to test it.

This year, however, Hangzhou’s latest technology bets have barely made a ripple. The city’s “New Eight Steeds” – eight deep-tech companies in fields ranging from smart glasses and inference graphic processing units (GPUs) to compute-in-memory chips and space computing – are a very different proposition from the “Six Little Dragons” that have made Hangzhou a focus of the global tech conversation.

Most of them operate further up the industrial chain, serving companies and institutions rather than consumers. That helps explain why the new cohort has struggled to capture the public’s attention. It also raises an uncomfortable question: has Hangzhou’s technology marketing playbook stopped working?

The scepticism is understandable. Some mock Hangzhou’s eagerness to turn tech companies into a branding exercise. The “Six Little Dragons” have yet to produce many businesses with proven profitability, yet the city has already moved on to another coterie.