During the 2025 Spring Festival, the domestic buzz around the animated film "Ne Zha 2" and the DeepSeek-V2 large language model highlighted the growing influence of the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone in China's tech and creative industries.

Hefei Hanling Digital Technology, a company based in the zone, played a pivotal role in the visual effects production of "Ne Zha 2" to deliver a stunning cinematic experience. Meanwhile, Anhui Baixin Information Technology contributed to optimizing the DeepSeek-V2 model, achieving a 20% improvement in overall performance through hardware adaptation and efficiency enhancements.

The breakthroughs underscore the zone's thriving innovation ecosystem. In recent years, the zone has prioritized cultivating high-level innovation and improving its business environment, empowering tech enterprises to drive advancements in new quality productive forces.

Phase II of the Innovation Industrial Park in the Hefei National High-tech Industry Development Zone. [Photo/WeChat account: hefeigaoxinfabu]

Hefei Hanling was founded in 2023, and relocated in 2024 to Tencent Maker Space (Hefei), a facility in the zone's Innovation Industrial Park Phase II area. The company credits its growth to tailored incubation support from the zone and the co-working hub, including funding and administrative services.

"The zone's comprehensive support, including subsidized office space, venture capital access, intellectual property guidance, and streamlined policy compliance, allows us to focus entirely on advancing our expertise in film and gaming CGI," said a company executive.

Anhui Baixin, established in 2019, has become a key hardware partner for the DeepSeek model series. Its innovations in reducing latency and boosting computational efficiency have enabled the AI system to excel in complex tasks. The company benefited from preferential site selection, rent subsidies, and investment partnerships facilitated by the zone during its early stages.

The successes of "Ne Zha 2" and DeepSeek have thrust Hefei Hanling and Anhui Baixin into the spotlight, exemplifying the zone's strategy to transform cutting-edge R&D into real-world impact.

The zone now hosts over 3,400 high-tech enterprises and more than 4,000 national-level tech SMEs. In 2024, its initiative to commercialize academic research spurred the creation of more than 300 spin-off companies from universities and research institutes.

Looking ahead, the zone plans to deepen integration between innovation chains and industrial chains, accelerate commercialization of scientific achievements, and foster future-oriented industries. The zone aims to build a world-class high-tech hub where innovation directly fuels the development of new quality productive forces.