Empowering innovation: Unique model of GUi

In late 2025, Hefei hosted a series of major innovation events. Participants repeatedly highlighted one shared impression: the city's pragmatic approach to making scientific breakthroughs tangible and accessible to all.

At the 2025 China (Hefei) Scene Innovation Ecosystem Conference, the latest technological achievements and applications illustrated future living shaped by technology.

During the fourth Anhui Innovation and Entrepreneurship Competition, creative and promising projects demonstrated the vitality and possibilities of Anhui's entrepreneurs.

And at the first National Agricultural and Scientific Talent Entrepreneurship Competition, the focus turned to agricultural technology, injecting fresh vitality and wisdom into agricultural modernization.

Behind these gatherings, which drew nearly a thousand entrepreneurs, investors, and experts, stood a recurring force: GUiTEK Service Platform. This rising innovation hub has become a cornerstone for Hefei's innovation, entrepreneurship, and integration of technology and industry.

Launched in June 2022 under the People's Government of Anhui Province's construction initiative, the Grand Union of Innovation (GUi) was designed as a testing ground for technological reforms in Hefei, dedicated to transforming innovation results, incubating innovative enterprises, catalyzing innovative industries, and optimizing the innovation ecosystem.

Supported by a flexible and adaptive framework for technological innovation, GUi offers a "one-stop" service for technology enterprises and talent, providing full-lifecycle support in entrepreneurship, finance, and management.

In just over three years, GUi has attracted over 2,500 tech companies and over 70,000 innovators. It is now home to 50 percent of Hefei's biotech and aerospace firms, and 45 percent of its AI companies, establishing itself as a crucial tech hub in Anhui and the Yangtze River Delta.

Sci Visual: Bridging the gap between science and public understanding

The story of Sci Visual, a representative GUi-based company founded by a 28-year-old entrepreneur, Yang Yuanfan, exemplifies the secrets behind GUi's success.

Along with his peers from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), Yang founded Sci Visual in June 2022. The company uses digital twins, XR, AI, and 3D technologies to visualize scientific principles within academic papers, research institutes, and large scientific devices.

Their goal is simple: to make the complex and often abstract scientific concepts more accessible to both scientists to observe and optimize, as well as the general public to understand. As Yang puts it, Sci Visual acts as a "science translator".

For instance, the EAST fusion reactor, often called the "artificial sun", can achieve extreme conditions like ultra-high and low temperatures with complex devices. However, with Sci Visual's headsets, users can see how magnetic fields twist inside the reactor, how plasma flows, and how different devices interact, all in a 3D, immersive experience.

A sci-art photograph captured by Sci Visual. [Photo/WeChat account: zhenghedao]

Making scientific principles understandable to the public and providing his educators with homegrown Chinese visual science resources — these were the driving forces behind Yang's founding of Sci Visual.

However, Yang faced many challenges as a student entrepreneur — funding, management, and market expansion were just a few of the hurdles. That's where GUi stepped in to provide critical support.