A founder of a tech company illustrates a language model developed by his company in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, March 26, 2026. (Xinhua/Wu Lu)

GUANGZHOU, April 18 (Xinhua) -- As a significant hub for manufacturing, trade and commerce, Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong Province in southern China, is actively positioning itself as a center for technological innovation through initiatives like the annual Pazhou Algorithm Competition.

Pazhou, located in Guangzhou's Haizhu District, also serves as the annual host of the Canton Fair. The algorithm competition has been held since 2022, in order to advance the integration of the digital and real economies, accelerate the aggregation of innovative talent and insights, and invigorate artificial intelligence (AI) innovation.

Now in its fifth year, the competition continues to foster high-quality development in Guangzhou's AI industry.

The fifth algorithm competition started in February. It will last for seven months and features five tracks, including the Large-scale AI Model Algorithm Optimization Competition, the AI Innovation Application Competition, and the International AI Competition.

The competition has experienced steady growth, with the number of participating teams increasing from 262 in its first edition to over 8,000 last year. It has attracted teams from many countries, including the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada and Singapore.

Among the international participants are teams from globally renowned institutions, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, Imperial College London and the National University of Singapore.

"Very excited. The competition is very hard here. I wasn't sure that we would really win, but it's a very pleasant surprise. I'm happy to have it," said Kayra Kakcioglu, co-founder and CEO of Paris-based dataLobster, upon learning that his company had won a prize in the fourth Pazhou Algorithm Competition.

For many participants, it's not just a competition but a gateway to the Chinese market and a platform to showcase innovative solutions and exchange ideas.

Kakcioglu said dataLobster's participation was aimed at leveraging the competition as a platform to strengthen its presence in the Chinese market. The company provides plug-and-play tech solutions that are designed to help small- and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises improve operational efficiency and optimize energy use.

Software engineer Farshid Ahsan of Markopolo AI voiced a similar opinion, noting that the Pazhou Algorithm Competition serves as an outstanding platform to showcase innovative solutions in the Chinese market.

The competition encourages enterprises to contribute authentic industrial scenarios and datasets as contest challenges, thereby bridging the gap between theoretical algorithms and real-world applications.

Among the companies issuing contest questions for the fifth algorithm competition is IROOTECH, a company that helps businesses achieve intelligent transformation by applying technologies such as industrial intelligence and embodied intelligent robots.

"IROOTECH will establish various forms of cooperation with outstanding participants to jointly explore the frontiers of industrial embodied intelligence," said Sun Baigui, director of the innovation laboratory at IROOTECH.

A participant in the first competition, CloudButterfly Technology, which develops AI vertical models and embodied intelligence, has now become a contest question issuer.

As noted by its founder, Tian Xuesong, this transformation highlights how participants can grow alongside the competition by contributing real-world scenarios, such as large models and industrial digitalization, to the contest, thereby "showcasing China's AI innovation strength globally."

The organizer further said the competition provides winning teams with valuable resources such as technology cooperation opportunities with leading enterprises and financing assistance. These resources are intended to help teams quickly commercialize their technological achievements and transfer their algorithms from the laboratory to the production line.

After winning an award in the competition, the start-up company Vocarea settled in Pazhou and established partnerships with industry leaders like Alibaba and China Mobile. Its voice model, VocuV3, has gained traction on the open-source platform HuggingFace.

The competition is one of the efforts made by Guangdong Province to accelerate AI technology development and its application. This aligns with the province's broader goal of promoting high-quality digital economic development. The scale of the core AI industry in Guangdong Province has exceeded 300 billion yuan (44 billion U.S. dollars), accounting for approximately one quarter of the national total. ■