In the pharmaceutical industry, there is a “double ten law”: the average cost of developing an innovative drug from initiation to market exceeds $1 billion, takes more than 10 years, and about 90% of drugs fail during clinical trials.
Hong Kong-listed JingTai Technology is reshaping the productivity paradigm of drug development through technological transformation: the company leverages cutting-edge technologies such as quantum physics, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and robotic experiments to enhance the quality and efficiency of industries like biomedicine and materials science, continuously cultivating new productive forces to support future industrial development.
Recently, the Securities Times’ “New Productive Forces in Hong Kong” reporting team visited this Shenzhen-based company to gain in-depth insights into how it drives industrial innovation through unique technological advantages and innovative models, providing new digital and intelligent models and dynamics for related industries.
Innovative Technological Foundation: Integration of Quantum Physics, AI, and Robotics
In the AI robotics laboratory of JingTai Technology, researchers only need to issue commands from a computer control console, and the robots, each performing their designated tasks, spring into action: material retrieval, transportation, feeding, reaction, monitoring, testing…
Located in the He Tao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone, which connects northern Hong Kong and central-southern Shenzhen, this area serves as a distinctive platform themed on technological innovation within the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. At the core of the cooperation zone, JingTai Technology’s AI robotics laboratory resembles a smart hive filled with intelligence and order, operating quietly and efficiently with its unique rhythm.
Wen Shuhao, Chairman of JingTai Technology, stated in an interview with Securities Times reporters: “If advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotic experiments can assist in early target discovery, molecular design, and compound synthesis, it will greatly shorten the time for new drug development, while reducing costs and increasing the success rate of research and development.”
Founded in 2015, JingTai Technology combines quantum physics, artificial intelligence, and robotics with large-scale cloud computing to reduce costs and improve efficiency across multiple critical stages of innovative drug development, exploring several cutting-edge technologies in drug discovery, design, and development.
Wen Shuhao explained that based on first-principles calculations rooted in quantum mechanics, the company has established a globally leading AI robotics innovation research and development platform through a technical closed loop of “quantum physics computation – robot data collection – AI model training.”
Specifically, quantum physics computation reconstructs research logic from fundamental principles, accurately simulating the physicochemical properties of molecules and materials; AI models drive innovative research and development modes, achieving accurate and efficient screening and design of key physical, chemical, and pharmaceutical properties of drug molecules; the robotics laboratory realizes standardization and automation, completing high-precision, uninterrupted experimental operations and high-quality data collection under algorithmic guidance.
“Our self-built AI drug discovery platform can generate up to millions of virtual molecules at the initial stage of project initiation, leveraging powerful computational capabilities and advanced algorithms to construct a vast and rich molecular ‘material library’. Through intelligent screening and algorithmic predictive analysis, we significantly narrow down the range to select 10 to 20 of the most promising molecules for subsequent synthesis and testing,” Wen Shuhao illustrated. This process not only greatly enhances the efficiency of drug development but also opens up new design ideas, leading drug development towards a more precise and efficient direction.
In December 2024, JingTai Technology participated in the Guangdong Provincial Laboratory of Traditional Chinese Medicine located in the Hengqin Guangdong-Macao Deep Cooperation Zone through competitive bidding. With solid accumulations in AI large models and robotic technology, JingTai Technology developed the world’s first fully automated platform for the separation and analysis of effective active ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine, achieving full-process intelligence, digitization, engineering, and automation from component separation and extraction to drug activity testing, contributing to the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine and serving “Healthy China”.
Empowering Industrial Scenarios: New Materials through Second Entrepreneurship
In August 2024, JingTai Technology released its first semi-annual report after its IPO. In the report, the company announced a partnership with GCL-Poly Energy Holdings, which attracted significant market attention: why did JingTai Technology, whose original business was primarily in biomedicine, choose to “cross over” and partner with a new energy company?
Rewinding two months to June 2024, at the 17th SNEC International Photovoltaic Power Generation and Smart Energy Conference, GCL-Poly Chairman Zhu Gongshan pointed out that the photovoltaic industry is facing the strongest “involution” in history, and companies must respond to these issues through technological innovation and structural adjustments.
In recent years, the photovoltaic industry has fallen into a quagmire of overcapacity, with product prices continuously declining and fierce market competition, posing significant cost challenges for photovoltaic companies that urgently need support from new technologies.
“The AI robotics innovation research and development platform meets the common characteristics and requirements for exploring the microscopic world, achieving significant results not only in the biomedicine industry but also generating spillover effects into other industries such as new materials, petrochemicals, and new energy,” Wen Shuhao believes, drawing a parallel to a decade ago when biomedicine faced declining returns and sought new breakthroughs.
According to the agreement, JingTai Technology will leverage its leading innovative advantages in artificial intelligence and robotic automation to provide order-based services for the research and development of high-tech new energy materials in fields such as perovskite, supramolecular, lithium-ion batteries, cathode materials, and carbon-silicon materials, collaborating to develop a series of differentiated new materials with industry competitiveness and industrial application potential.
At the same time, JingTai Technology will also create a model-driven AI + automated intelligent creation system for GCL-Poly in the materials field, achieving rapid design of new materials and compounds, high customization of functional materials, and efficient development and application of processes, helping GCL-Poly become a new energy company driven by artificial intelligence.
Wen Shuhao views the entry into the new materials field as the company’s second entrepreneurship. “The collaboration with GCL-Poly is a very important step for us in the new materials field.”
Future Ecological Layout: From Drug Development to Multi-Field Fission
With biomedicine at its core and the second entrepreneurship into new materials, JingTai Technology’s “cross-border” efforts are ongoing.
In the new energy sector, JingTai Technology has reached a strategic cooperation with Yanyi New Materials, focusing on lithium battery functional materials. Both parties will leverage their respective advantages in technology research and development and market expansion to jointly promote the research and development of new materials for the next generation of lithium batteries.
In the petrochemical field, based on the requirements of the “dual carbon” goals, JingTai Technology successfully delivered a catalyst analysis pre-treatment workstation to Sinopec, suitable for the standardized analysis pre-treatment operation process of catalyst products, to improve the efficiency and adaptability of catalysts and promote industry development.
In the agricultural sector, JingTai Technology, leveraging its technological foundation of quantum physics, robotics, and AI, aims to build a replicable “Chinese solution” for global agricultural modernization. This includes collaboration with Guangdong’s major strategic investment platform Hengjian Holdings and leading modern agricultural enterprise Shouguang Vegetables to jointly create an “AI + seed industry” innovation consortium, establishing an AI agricultural seed software development platform and a flexible robotic laboratory, accelerating the commercialization of research results.
In the field of biomanufacturing and synthetic biology, JingTai Technology has reached a strategic research and development cooperation with Berkeley-based star company Aether Biomaterials, relying on JingTai Technology’s AI + robotics platform to jointly develop environmentally friendly plastics with superior performance and ultra-high decomposition and recycling rates, promoting green and sustainable development in the materials science field.
As a technology-driven enterprise, JingTai Technology resembles a freely growing crystal, continuously sprouting “interfaces” between technology and various industries, empowering innovation and research and development in biomedicine, fine chemicals, new energy, and new materials with new productive forces, gradually pushing the fields of research and industry towards comprehensive automation, digitization, and intelligence, while exploring broader application scenarios with new technologies such as artificial intelligence, allowing new productive forces to play a greater role in traditional fields.
Editor: Ye Shuyun
Proofreader: Lü Jiubiao
