First BAAI Origin Innovation Program Demo Day: Five AI Hard-Tech Projects Unveiled

From underlying chips and neuromorphic computing to autonomous robot deployment, physical intelligence in extreme environments, and modeling of the Earth's physical environment, frontier AI technologies are advancing industrial application along multiple distinct paths. How to bridge the gap between original achievements in the laboratory and engineering validation and commercialization has become an important topic as scientific research innovation moves toward industrial practice.

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From "source innovation" to "industrial validation": what the Source Innovation Program aims to open up goes beyond funding

At the event, Yang Yang, vice president of the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, introduced the positioning and support mechanisms of the Source Innovation Program. As an original technology startup incubation program aimed primarily at the community of BAAI scholars, the Source Innovation Program focuses on original scientific research topics in the field of artificial intelligence. Following the principles of "source innovation, rapid decision-making, small-step trials, and full-process compliant transformation," it integrates technology, talent, capital, and industrial resources to support research teams moving from the laboratory to industry. The program focuses not only on funding connections but also on building a collaborative mechanism linking original research, startup teams, and the industrial market, driving scientific research achievements from technological discovery toward engineering validation and commercial application.

The launch of the Source Innovation Program also responds to the practical needs of AI industry development and the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. At present, AI is at a critical stage of moving from technological breakthroughs to industrial application, and the engineering validation, scenario adaptation, and commercialization of original technologies are attracting increasing attention. At the same time, policies and mechanisms for transforming scientific and technological achievements are being continuously improved, providing new conditions for research institutions to explore the transformation of original achievements. The Source Innovation Program hopes to seize this window of opportunity, further open up the connection between scientific research innovation and industrial demand, and support more promising original technologies in reaching the market.

1. Critical Core Technology: From original devices to software and hardware platforms

Critical Core Technology focuses on 3D V-RRAM chips, with a layout covering underlying self-selecting RRAM devices, chips, the FlagOS software ecosystem, and system applications, and is committed to building a full-stack product system with software-hardware synergy. The project takes storage-class memory and compute-in-memory as its entry point, exploring a new path for the coordinated development of new memory and AI computing power, aiming to break through the memory and computing power bottlenecks faced by existing computer architectures. The team is led by a national-level young talent from Tsinghua University and has won a provincial or ministerial first prize in natural science (2025), combining advantages in both basic research and engineering technology development.

2. Lingshu Qizhi: Reconstructing the embodied intelligence perception architecture with neuromorphic computing

Lingshu Qizhi focuses on cross-scale multimodal perception and neuromorphic embodied intelligence, and is committed to building physical perception and brain-inspired computing infrastructure for embodied intelligence. The project extends from underlying optical devices and sensing-computing integrated chips to model algorithms, exploring a full-stack technical architecture from perception to decision-making.

Its core goal is not only to enable agents to perceive the external environment, but also to understand material properties and human intentions, and on that basis achieve millisecond-level autonomous decision-making. Through the co-design of devices, chips, and algorithms, the project explores a new path to enhance embodied intelligence's environmental understanding and real-time decision-making capabilities.

3. Tensor Field Technology: Driving autonomous robot deployment with Hamiltonian world models

Tensor Field Technology targets high-value scenarios with high human-factor risks where engineers find it difficult to repeatedly debug, building a robot deployment engine driven by Hamiltonian world models and providing full-chain services such as environment modeling, policy generation, edge deployment, and continuous evolution.

The team proposes a Hamiltonian world model architecture that enhances the physical consistency of model outputs through physical prior constraints. According to the project, its pretraining data efficiency is 3-4 orders of magnitude higher than mainstream solutions. The model can adapt to a variety of robot bodies, and the project also proposes a "deployment-as-a-service" model, planning to develop in coordination with robot body manufacturers, hardware suppliers, and cloud computing platforms. The team won third place in the Tsinghua University President's Cup and has completed an angel round of financing; the company was registered and established in Haidian, Beijing, in August 2026.

4. Cangqiong Jizhi: Reliable physical intelligence in extreme environments

Targeting extreme environments such as deep space and deep earth, Cangqiong Jizhi focuses on building physical intelligence infrastructure, attempting to solve problems such as the difficulty of acquiring data, training models, and deploying intelligent systems in extreme scenarios.

The team proposes the AI4π (AI for Physical AI) technical paradigm, building a technical closed loop covering agent design, training, testing, and improvement through a physics-embedded simulation engine, a self-evolving hierarchical brain training and inference system, and a pan-body operating system, exploring ways to break through the data and engineering bottlenecks in physical intelligence R&D.

The team is led by a national-level leading talent and relies on the research resources of Beihang University and BAAI. It has won more than ten international awards, including outstanding paper awards at top conferences and a global third place at the World Humanoid Robot Games. At present, the project is exploring commercialization through simulation data subscriptions and system licensing, and has obtained tens-of-millions-yuan-level orders in fields such as park maintenance and commercial aerospace.

5. Latent Vector Technology: Connecting the virtual and the real with a unified world model of the Earth's physical environment

Latent Vector Technology focuses on a unified world model of the Earth's physical environment. Its team independently developed the EWM (Earth World Model), which incorporates external drivers such as atmospheric forcing and solar radiation, surface processes such as soil, vegetation, water bodies, mountains, and the carbon cycle, and human systems such as power stations, farmland, industry, and infrastructure into a unified latent space for representation, exploring the construction of a general-purpose physical foundation model that is intervenable, invertible, and falsifiable.

The project adopts a token-based model service model, and its new energy scenarios have completed empirical validation at 12 sites in 5 countries. In photovoltaic scenarios, the team uses its self-developed Boson series cleaning and O&M robots as execution terminals, jointly building a "perception-decision-execution-feedback" loop with cloud-based models, and exploring pathways for the coordinated implementation of Earth's physical environment modeling and embodied intelligent systems.

Connecting original technology with capital to drive scientific research outcomes toward industry

From original chips to world models, from brain-inspired embodied intelligence to autonomous robot deployment and physical intelligence in extreme environments, the five projects present diverse explorations of original artificial intelligence technologies in directions including underlying hardware, computing architecture, model R&D, and embodied applications. Their common feature is the attempt to transform cutting-edge scientific research capabilities into verifiable, deployable, and sustainably developing technologies and products.

For hard-tech enterprises founded by scientific research teams, technological breakthroughs in the laboratory are only the starting point. Subsequent engineering validation, product development, scenario adaptation, and business model exploration all require sustained resource investment and industrial collaboration. How to effectively connect scientific research innovation, entrepreneurial teams, capital, and the market is an important link in the industrial transformation of original technology.

This roadshow of the Origin Innovation Program built a platform for exchange and matchmaking between entrepreneurial teams and investment institutions through project demonstrations and fund negotiations, promoting further connections between original technology and capital and industrial resources. The event showcased BAAI scholars' original explorations in different technical directions and also presented diverse pathways from the mining of scientific research outcomes to the cultivation of entrepreneurial projects.

From the laboratory to the industrial frontline, the transformation of original technology requires not only sustained scientific research breakthroughs but also the joint support of engineering capabilities, application scenarios, and industrial resources. The Origin Innovation Program will continue to focus on cutting-edge original achievements in artificial intelligence, promote effective alignment between scientific research innovation and industrial needs, and support more promising original technologies in moving toward industrial practice.

BAAI Scholars: From the "Dream Team" to a "New Force in Industry"

The BAAI Scholars Program is a leading initiative created by the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence to build a high-level talent team for cutting-edge basic research. It aims to select and cultivate internationally influential academic leaders and young academic talents with development potential, establish collaborative innovation teams oriented toward major research tasks and future frontiers, lead the direction of future artificial intelligence technology development, and build an artificial intelligence industry innovation ecosystem. Over the past seven years, the BAAI Scholars Program has undergone three stages of iteration: free exploration, task-driven development, and innovation leadership. It has become an important vehicle for attracting and cultivating top talent in the artificial intelligence field. The number of BAAI scholars has exceeded 180, forming a global artificial intelligence "Dream Team."

More importantly, this "Dream Team" is becoming an important source of AI entrepreneurship. In recent years, the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence has incubated more than 20 innovative enterprises with core technical capabilities, including Zhipu AI, ModelBest, Galbot, Xingyuanzhi, Inverse Matrix, and Meridian Lightyear. From large models to embodied intelligence, from underlying vision to security governance, the figures of BAAI scholars and the BAAI ecosystem can be seen behind a group of representative AI startups. The implementation of the first roadshow of the Origin Innovation Program is the latest footnote to this transformation of talent potential into industrial momentum.