appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Leopold Chen

At just 18, Hong Kong tech enthusiasts Rexan Wong Chak-chi and Ken Mochizuki are both rushing to deliver their business ideas.
However, their choices of launch pad could not be further apart. While Wong is eyeing Silicon Valley in the United States for better support, Mochizuki is keen to stay in the city and contribute to the local community.
Their contrasting approaches highlight Hong Kong’s advantages and challenges as it strives to become a global innovation and talent hub under China’s strategic blueprint, with artificial intelligence (AI) and research transformation listed among the priorities of the city’s first five-year plan, to be released by the government later this year.
While the city boasts cutting-edge university research, critics have warned that an increasingly risk-averse culture and a lack of early-stage support may push young tech talent towards overseas ecosystems.
California dreaming
Wong developed an interest in AI when he was 15 after joining a class on building mobile applications.
He later connected with many leading tech entrepreneurs through X, formerly known as Twitter, and built an AI-powered app called Text Behind Image in 2024. He said the app allowed its 500,000 users to design images with text behind featured objects.
Despite launching his first product in Hong Kong, Wong is looking to San Francisco and nearby Silicon Valley as the future launch pad for his AI business, believing the US tech hub can offer him better support.
“The main reason was really the access to support for early-stage founders. In Hong Kong, I think there is really a lack of support,” said Wong, a computer science undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
“In San Francisco, there are a lot of incubators that help young founders go from zero to one.”
In January, he joined a two-month incubation programme with Founders Inc, a major San Francisco-based start-up community, making connections and receiving guidance from those with experience.
The “beauty” of the programme was having founders at different stages under the same roof, allowing them to discuss problems they faced, he said.
Intending to run an AI-powered market analytics company in the future, Wong is busy reaching out to tech start-ups in San Francisco and observing their operations.

Wong also pointed to the United States’ early adoption of advanced AI tools, such as models developed by Anthropic and OpenAI, as an advantage, while most Hongkongers used AI “at a very basic level” and some tools were not even available in the city.
“So it is really a lack of talent density, a lack of support and a lack of accessibility to these tools and knowledge on how to use frontier technology that holds Hong Kong back, which is why I picked San Francisco over Hong Kong,” he said.
Silicon Valley has been ranked the top start-up ecosystem in the world, while Hong Kong has come 29th, according to this year’s Global Startup Ecosystem Report, released by consultancy firm Startup Genome.
On a scale of one to 10, Hong Kong scored only two to four for its start-up performance, funding, talent, market reach and the degree to which it encourages AI start-ups. In contrast, Silicon Valley received full marks for each of these indicators.
Hong Kong only scored one for its research and development capacity, compared with Silicon Valley’s score of five.
Other Asian markets, such as Singapore and Seoul, and some major mainland Chinese cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou, also outperformed Hong Kong.
Kenny Shui Chi-wai, vice-president of think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation, said Beijing’s strength lay in its strong research capabilities, supported by top universities and close collaboration among the industrial, education and research sectors.
South Korea excelled because major enterprises devoted resources to research in key sectors such as semiconductors and biotechnology, while Singapore had outperformed Hong Kong because of its high density of venture capital firms and incubators – all of which Hong Kong could learn from, Shui added.
“If we cannot have our own major [tech] companies now, we should think about how to attract some of the largest institutions from other places to operate in Hong Kong,” he said.
According to the government’s investment arm, InvestHK, Hong Kong was home to 5,221 start-ups as of 2025, with 186 of them focusing on core or applied AI.
The San Francisco Bay Area, which includes Silicon Valley, has nearly 200,000 funded start-ups, with 80 per cent of funding going into AI, according to start-up data tracking platform dealroom.co.

‘A-Eye’ funding
But as Mochizuki sees it, Hong Kong’s young tech entrepreneurs are blessed with abundant support, and the only problem is that they are not told about available resources, so more publicity was needed.
Mochizuki, who is studying electrical engineering at City University (CityU), learned coding on his own in 2022, when he was still in secondary school and the Covid-19 pandemic forced pupils to study at home.
Within two years, he built “A-Eye”, an AI shopping assistant designed to help visually impaired people identify products and compare prices.
The project recently received HK$200,000 (US$25,500) in funding from CityU and the Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) through the university’s HK Tech 300 project.
CityU’s law school also offered free legal consultation under the programme, he added.
“My goal is to stay in Hong Kong and try to use my skills to contribute to this place and serve people,” Mochizuki said.
“Although other countries like the US or the United Kingdom may have better resources or a better culture for start-ups, the competition is much [fiercer] than in Hong Kong.”
Apart from university-based projects, Hong Kong authorities have made multiple start-up programmes available through the government-backed HKSTP and Cyberport.
HKSTP offers a range of start-up support programmes covering different stages, including ideation, incubation, acceleration and global expansion.
According to its latest annual report, 570 start-ups graduated from its support programme in 2024-25, and it spent more than HK$415 million on incubation and tenant support during the period.
Cyberport had more than 200 start-ups graduate from its entrepreneurship schemes in 2025-26, including an incubation programme offering grants of up to HK$500,000 and rental subsidies of up to HK$200,000, as well as the Creative Micro Fund, which helps early-stage start-ups move towards incubation.
The Home and Youth Affairs Bureau has also launched a funding scheme for young entrepreneurs to start their businesses in Hong Kong, Macau and the nine Guangdong cities under Beijing’s Greater Bay Area blueprint.
Shui said funding for early-stage start-ups remained insufficient as local investors preferred “easier and more certain” options, and investment activity tended to be cautious amid a turbulent economic environment.
“Tech start-ups have a higher chance of failure, but when they succeed, they can bring high returns,” he said, urging the government to step up support for early-stage founders.
A start-up usually goes through multiple rounds of financing, including the pre-seed stage, when founders develop an idea and work towards a minimum viable product (MVP); the seed stage, when they refine the MVP for market fit; and the series A to C stages, when they scale the business, before exiting through an initial public offering or an acquisition.

According to a recent Our Hong Kong Foundation report, only 10 per cent of founders in the city received support from venture capital or angel investors, 30 per cent got funding from the government, and 85 per cent had to tap personal savings.
But the report highlighted a stark imbalance in the government’s funding allocation.
As of 2024, funding was concentrated heavily at the pre-seed stage, at HK$49.5 billion, and in late-stage investment beyond series C, at HK$62 billion, leaving those in between – often described as the “valley of death” – largely underserved, with only HK$3.4 billion in capital support.
Apart from a lack of funding and support, Hong Kong founders have complained on online forums about high office rents, talent costs and the city’s small market size, with some pointing to places such as Bangkok and Shenzhen as better choices.
Headwinds
Alberto Moel, a professor of practice in finance at the University of Hong Kong, said it would be harder for young entrepreneurs such as Wong and Mochizuki to grow businesses built from their own ideas in the city, as the government and universities dominated the local start-up ecosystem.
“We are in a stage in Hong Kong where university research projects are the ones driving the pool of innovation,” he said.
“If your idea is outside that pool, then you are basically up against the usual headwinds in venture capital that have been around for a long time, namely that it is difficult to get capital and difficult to put together a team.”
Moel added that Hong Kong’s risk-averse culture was also reflected in the investment behaviour of venture capitalists, resulting in limited capital for very early stage start-ups or those taking on more risk.
In contrast, funding for such companies in the US was much broader because the culture there was more inclined to “try things and see what happens”, while there was much more capital in the country, he said.
Hong Kong’s young entrepreneurs would stand a better chance of success if they looked at opportunities arising from university research projects, Moel said.
“If the policy is not focused on [independent ideas], you are more likely to fail, and it is going to discourage you,” he said.
“I would recommend young entrepreneurs look at the existing platforms and work within them because you will find much better chances and opportunities to monetise [ideas] into a company.”
The government should do more to publicise and create opportunities for building businesses from research projects by linking tech-minded businesspeople with innovative ideas, he added.
Derek Chim, HKSTP’s head of start-up ecosystem and development, agreed that access to early-stage capital remained important in helping innovative ventures scale up, and said the park had teamed up with the private sector to catalyse start-up growth.
“While different investors naturally have different risk appetites and return expectations, we are seeing growing interest in deep-tech and innovation-driven companies that require longer development horizons,” he said.

The Innovation, Technology and Industry Bureau said the government attached importance to encouraging and cultivating a thriving I&T ecosystem for start-ups, and acknowledged that its sustainability relied heavily on private sector participation.
It said the government would launch an HK$10 billion Innovation and Technology Industry-Oriented Fund this year to channel more social capital into “emerging and future industries of strategic importance”, benefiting companies at different stages of development.
Despite the growing range of start-up funding options in Hong Kong, Mochizuki and Wong agreed the city’s cautious culture still made it hard for young entrepreneurs to strike out on their own.
“In Hong Kong, the culture drives most people down a very traditional path – primary school, high school, graduating from college, working in a full-time job – and it is very hard to pivot if you want to change your profession based on your interests,” Wong said.
“Everything is laid out for you, and this sense of security is embedded into young Hong Kong people growing up.”


100 start-ups joining Hong Kong’s flagship tech hub to get top mentors

Hong Kong aims to scale its tech ecosystem and nurture more unicorns: HKSTP CEO

Hong Kong astronaut can help propel the city’s science and tech ambitions

Hong Kong is lagging in the AI race – can it raise its game, and how?

Hong Kong science and technology

Hong Kong aims to be a global tech hub, but can it hold on to its young talent?

 Illustration: Quoc Huy Truong

Rexan Wong believes Silicon Valley can offer aspiring tech entrepreneurs like him better support than Hong Kong. Photo: Rexan Wong

San Jose, California, the commercial hub of Silicon Valley. Photo: Getty Images

CityU student and computer engineer Ken Mochizuki believes there are resources available to Hong Kong tech entrepreneurs. They just need help tapping into them. Photo: Ken Mochizuki

The Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park in the Northern Metropolis. Photo: Edmond So

Rexan Wong (right) at the Founders Inc incubation programme in San Francisco earlier this year. Photo: Rexan Wong

Ken Mochizuki’s AI shopping assistant for the visually impaired has garnered accolades at several innovation competitions. Photo: Ken Mochizuki

Northern Metropolis fast-track laws will ‘run parallel’ with environmental rules

The site of the Northern Metropolis’s future San Tin Technopole. Photo: Edmond So

A model of the Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park located in the Northern Metropolis. Photo: Eugene Lee

Hong Kong tech chief warns AI will unleash ‘greatest industrial revolution’

A robot wows people at a conference hosted by the Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Center at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology on June 3. Photo: Dickson Lee

The Hong Kong Embodied AI Lab at the Hong Kong Science Park is focused on training talent and developing humanoid robots. Photo: Edmond So

News

Hong Kong

Hong Kong Economy

An increasingly risk-averse culture and a lack of early-stage support may push young start-up founders to look overseas, critics warn


An increasingly risk-averse culture and a lack of early-stage support may push young start-up founders to look overseas, critics warn.


.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}An increasingly risk-averse culture and a lack of early-stage support may push young start-up founders to look overseas, critics warn

An increasingly risk-averse culture and a lack of early-stage support may push young start-up founders to look overseas, critics warn