In Liangzhu, a quiet suburb of Hangzhou, an informal “coder village” has quietly become ground zero for China’s latest AI surge — a high-energy, startup ecosystem driven by young developers settling in low-rent homes, coffee shops and backyard venues, pitching ideas to investors amid drones and strawberry Frappuccinos. Spurred by local and provincial incentives offering subsidies and tax breaks, this emerging community has attracted talent from Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen, all aiming to build AI-powered ventures. The area has produced the renowned “Six Little Dragons” of Hangzhou — including AI and robotics leaders like DeepSeek, Game Science, and Unitree. DeepSeek’s cost-effective, open‑source AI models and Alibaba’s competitive systems rank globally among the top‑performing offerings, while graduates of Zhejiang University fuel this boom. Engineers in Liangzhu often bide their time fulfilling non-compete clauses at giants like Alibaba and ByteDance before launching their own startups in this fertile, collaborative “villager” ecosystem.

sources