The HICOOL 2025 Global Entrepreneurship Competition has hit a new milestone, attracting 10,055 startup projects and 13,150 participants from 139 countries and regions - a 36% increase from last year in both projects and participants.

This year's competition has expanded from seven to 12 tracks, with high-tech sectors like integrated circuits, quantum information, and 5G/6G elevated to top-level categories. Notably, entries in the integrated circuits track more than doubled, up 107% year on year.

International participation continues to grow, with 5,588 projects, or 56% of the total, submitted from overseas. A total of 3,886 foreign participants registered, many of whom graduated from top universities around the world such as MIT, Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, Peking University, and Tsinghua University.

The competition kicks off in May and June, with preliminary rounds held in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Singapore. Over the coming months, startups will compete through multiple rounds, with 200 winners ultimately selected across various award categories.

Since its launch in 2020, HICOOL has become a platform for discovering and supporting global entrepreneurial talent. To date, it has helped incubate 16 unicorns as well as 157 specialized and sophisticated enterprises that produce new and unique products, and supported 154 winning projects in raising over 44.6 billion yuan (US$6.11 billion) in follow-up funding.

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