How Hangzhou’s ‘Six Little Dragons’ built a new Chinese tech hub
Six start-ups have boosted the international prestige of the capital of China’s eastern province of Zhejiang and the hometown of the likes of Alibaba, and Hangzhou’s rise is reshaping the geography of Chinese innovation
Hangzhou is rapidly gaining recognition as a leading technology centre in China, primarily because of the rise of local start-ups known as the “Six Little Dragons”. One of the hottest new companies is DeepSeek, which captured global attention in early 2025 with its cost-efficient artificial intelligence (AI) models. The other “dragons” include robotics firms Unitree and Deep Robotics, video game studio Game Science, brain-machine interface innovator BrainCo, and 3D interior design software developer Manycore. The cluster of hi-tech companies forming in Hangzhou is no coincidence. The city is already home to Zhejiang University and Alibaba, which owns the South China Morning Post. It attracts talent from across the country, and its business-friendly policies have nurtured many start-ups.
**An earlier version of this video used the wrong photo of Liang Wenfeng, which has since been corrected.