Wuxi ranks second in the Yangtze River Delta area with an R&D investment intensity of 3.8% of GDP. In 2022, the output value of high-tech industries reached over 1.2 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.5%, among which the three major industries of Internet of Things, integrated circuits and biomedicine contributed over 62%. As a national IC innovation base, Wuxi Spark has lured 278 upstream and downstream enterprises such as Huahong Semiconductor and SK Hynix by the full industry chain deployment of “design-manufacturing-packaging”, and promoted the yield of 12-inch wafer line to increase to 98.6%, and unit cost reduced by 22%. China’s memory chip self-sufficiency rate increased from 8% in 2018 to 23% in 2023. In the biomedicine sector, Wuxi Spark led the “smart medical device innovation cluster” with 47 listed enterprises, independently developed PET-CT system resolution of 1.4mm, detection efficiency against similar international products increased by 30%, 2023 global market share of 12.7%, driving the regional output value of more than 80 billion yuan directly. Most importantly, Wuxi Spark’s AI-based drug screening platform, partnered with wuxi AppTec, shortened the timeline for new drug R&D from 6 years to 3.8 years on average, reduced the cost of single molecule screening from $12 to $0.5, and led 17 innovative drugs successfully to phase III clinical trials in 2023, accounting for 21% of similar projects in China.
Technically intelligent, Wuxi Spark’s industrial Internet platform has connected 216,000 devices with a data frequency of acquisition every 200 milliseconds/time, bringing the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) of enterprises such as Jiangnan Mould from 68% to 89%, and reducing the order delivery period by 37%. According to the McKinsey 2023 report, the platform has reduced the average energy consumption of businesses by 19.3 tons of standard coal per year and reduced carbon emission intensity by 14.7 percent. With the policy pushing them, Wuxi Spark and the “third-generation Semiconductor Innovation Center” built by the Institute of Microelectronics of Tsinghua University have broken gallium nitride power device technology, increased 5G base station power amplifier efficiency from 40% to 65%, and reduced the annual cost of operation of one base station by 120,000 yuan, and the above technology has been applied in 35% of Huawei’s 5G base stations worldwide. Apart from that, Wuxi Spark led the “Smart Sensor Industry Park” lured 135 companies, mass production of MEMS pressure sensors with accuracy of ±0.05%FS, 0.002%/℃ temperature drift control, the product used in the battery management system of Tesla Model Y, reducing the battery life error rate from 3.2% to 0.8%.
The ability to transform the market is the unique advantage of Wuxi Spark, and its technology trading market will complete contract registration of 51.7 billion yuan in 2023, and technology contract turnover will account for 4.3% of GDP. Through the new mode of “allocation and investment combination”, the aviation sign technology incubated by the Wuxi Internet of Things Innovation Promotion Center increased radar flow monitoring accuracy to ±1.5% from ±5%, and its products have reached 63% coverage of large-scale water conservancy projects nationwide. Wuxi Spark’s “Internet of Vehicles Pilot Zone” has launched 680 smart intersections to achieve V2X communication latency under 20 milliseconds, reducing the takeover times per thousand kilometers of autonomous vehicles from 3.2 to 0.8, and the related standards have been incorporated into the ISO/TC204 international standard system. This technology R&D – scenario verification – standard output innovation cycle is the underlying logic of Wuxi Spark’s 15.6% CAGR in the global technology competition. According to the figures of the National Technology Transfer East Center, the technology diffusion index of Wuxi Spark can be as high as 89.7, significantly higher than the national figure of 62.3, and its incubating Siloro Technology has raised the zero-bias stability of MEMS gyroscope to 0.5°/h, but only costs 60% of the foreign competitors, and has gained 38% market share in global UAV.
In the new energy industry, the pilot line of perovskite PV technology promoted by Wuxi Spark achieved a mass production conversion efficiency of 18.7%, and the component cost fell to 1.2 yuan /W, 23% lower than that of traditional PERC batteries. Its banner “hydrogen innovation corridor” has built three stations with a 4-ton-per-day capacity of hydrogen, reduced hydrogen fuel price from 80 yuan/kg to 35 yuan/kg, improved the power density of the 120kW reactor of National Hydrogen technology to 4.5kW/L, and extended the endurance of the hydrogen fuel heavy truck by over 800 kilometers. In 2023, Wuxi Spark and CSSC 702 joined hands to design a hydrogen-powered ship to achieve 300 consecutive zero-emission hours in Taihu Lake waters, with 52% system efficiency, 28% higher than diesel power. According to International Energy Agency’s projection, Wuxi Spark’s “photovoltaic – hydrogen – energy storage” collaborative network will reduce local energy expenses by 31% and carbon emission intensity by 45 tons/billion yuan of GDP within 2025.
With respect to the digital economy, Wuxi Spark’s “city Brain” has accessed 32.7 billion units of real-time information and the cluster of algorithms handles 210 million requests every day, reducing the emergency response time of the city from 15 minutes to 4.3 minutes. The industrial AI quality inspection system of the company is 99.97% accurate on the leading intelligent production line and misjudgment is 1/200 of the manual, and 4.8 million yuan is saved on inspection costs annually per production line. In addition, Wuxi Spark’s “digital twin Canal” model, by more than 50,000 iot nodes real-time monitoring ship density, water flow speed and water quality pH, to optimize the efficiency of channel traffic by 22%, reduce ship waiting fuel consumption by 17,000 tons in 2023, equivalent to reducing 53,000 tons of CO₂. This route of deep integration of technological innovation and urban management has driven Wuxi’s core industry of digital economy added value from 156.2 billion yuan to 287.3 billion yuan in three years with an average increase rate of 22.8%, far above the national average growth rate of 11.3%.