It was a sunny Saturday afternoon, and dozens of people sat in the grass around a backyard stage where aspiring founders of tech start-ups talked about their ideas. People in the crowd slouched over laptops, vaping and drinking strawberry Frappuccinos. A drone buzzed overhead. Inside the house, investors took pitches in the kitchen.

那是一个阳光明媚的周六下午，数十人坐在一个后院舞台周围的草地上，怀揣科技创业梦想的创始人正在台上分享他们的想法。台下的人们懒散地伏在笔记本电脑前，一边抽着电子烟，一边喝着草莓星冰乐。一架无人机在头顶嗡嗡作响。而在室内，投资者在厨房里听取项目提案。

It looked like Silicon Valley, but it was Liangzhu, a quiet suburb of the southern Chinese city of Hangzhou, which is a hot spot for entrepreneurs and tech talent lured by low rents and proximity to tech companies like Alibaba and DeepSeek.

这一幕看起来像发生在硅谷，但它其实是良渚——中国南方城市杭州一个安静的郊区。这里因低廉的租金以及靠近阿里巴巴、DeepSeek等科技公司，成为了吸引创业者和科技人才的热门地点。

“People come here to explore their own possibilities,” said Felix Tao, 36, a former Facebook and Alibaba employee who hosted the event.

“人们来这里探索自己的可能性，”这次活动的主办者、36岁的陶芳波说道，他曾在Facebook和阿里巴巴任职。

Virtually all of those possibilities involve artificial intelligence. As China faces off with the United States over tech primacy, Hangzhou has become the center of China’s A.I. frenzy.

几乎所有这些可能性都与人工智能有关。随着中美在科技主导权上展开较量，杭州已成为中国人工智能热潮的中心。

A decade ago, the provincial and local governments started offering subsidies and tax breaks to new companies in Hangzhou, a policy that has helped incubate hundreds of start-ups. On weekends, people fly in from Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen to hire programmers.

十年前，浙江省和杭州市政府开始为新公司提供补贴和税收减免，这一政策帮助孵化了数以百计家初创企业。每逢周末，就会有人从北京、上海和深圳飞来这里招聘程序员。

Lately, many of them have ended up in Mr. Tao’s backyard. He helped found an A.I. research lab at Alibaba before leaving to start his own company, Mindverse, in 2022. Now Mr. Tao’s home is a hub for coders who have settled in Liangzhu, many in their 20s and 30s. They call themselves “villagers,” writing code in coffee shops during the day and gaming together at night, hoping to harness A.I. to create their own companies.

最近，他们中的许多人都来到了陶芳波的后院。在阿里巴巴工作的时候，他参与创建了一个人工智能研究实验室，之后于2022年离职创办了自己的公司心识宇宙。现在，陶芳波的家成为了那些定居在良渚的程序员们的聚集地，他们大多是二三十岁的年轻人。他们自称“村民”，白天在咖啡馆写代码，晚上一起打游戏，希望利用人工智能创建自己的公司。

Hangzhou has already birthed tech powerhouses, not only Alibaba and DeepSeek but also NetEase and Hikvision.

不少科技巨头诞生在杭州，不仅有阿里巴巴和DeepSeek，还有网易和海康威视。

In January, DeepSeek shook the tech world when it released an A.I. system that it said it had made for a small fraction of the cost that Silicon Valley companies had spent on their own. Since then, systems made by DeepSeek and Alibaba have ranked among the top-performing open source A.I. models in the world, meaning they are available for anyone to build on. Graduates from Hangzhou’s Zhejiang University, where DeepSeek’s founder studied, have become sought-after employees at Chinese tech companies.

今年1月，DeepSeek发布了一款人工智能系统，声称成本只有硅谷企业开发同类系统的一小部分，结果震惊了科技界。自那时起，DeepSeek和阿里巴巴开发的系统已跻身全球表现最佳的开源人工智能模型之列，这意味着任何人都可以基于它们进行开发。DeepSeek创始人毕业于杭州的浙江大学，现在中国的科技企业争相招揽这所大学的毕业生。

“人们来这里探索自己的可能性，”陶芳波说。在创办心识宇宙之前，他曾在Facebook和阿里巴巴任职。浙江大学本部——玉泉校区的毛泽东塑像。一位创业者表示，政府曾帮助他与投资人建立联系。

Chinese media closely followed the poaching of a core member of DeepSeek’s team by the electronics company Xiaomi. In Liangzhu, many engineers said they were killing time until they could create their own start-ups, waiting out noncompete agreements they had signed at bigger companies like ByteDance.

小米挖走DeepSeek一名核心团队成员的消息引起了中国媒体密切关注。在良渚，许多工程师表示，他们是在打发时间等待创办自己的初创公司，同时也在等待他们与字节跳动等大公司签署的竞业禁止协议到期。

DeepSeek is one of six A.I. and robotics start-ups from the city that Chinese media calls the “six tigers of Hangzhou.”

DeepSeek与其他五家来自杭州的人工智能和机器人初创企业一起，被中国媒体称为“杭州六小龙”。

Last year, one of the six, Game Science, released China’s first big-budget video game to become a global hit, Black Myth: Wukong. Another firm, Unitree, grabbed public attention in January when its robots danced onstage during the Chinese state broadcaster’s televised annual spring gala.

去年，“杭州六小龙”之一的游戏科学发布了中国首款风靡全球的大制作电子游戏《黑神话：悟空》。另一家公司宇树科技则在今年1月引发了广泛关注，它的机器人在中国国家电视台的春晚舞台上表演舞蹈。

This spring, Mingming Zhu, the founder of Rokid, a Hangzhou start-up that makes A.I.-enabled eyeglasses, invited the six founders to his home for dinner.

今年春天，杭州一家生产人工智能眼镜的初创公司Rokid的创始人祝铭明邀请“六小龙”的创始人们到他家聚餐。

It was the first time they had all met in person, Mr. Zhu said. Like him, most of the six had studied at Zhejiang University or worked at Alibaba.

祝铭明说，那是他们所有人第一次线下见面。和他一样，这六人中的大多数都曾在浙江大学学习或在阿里工作过。

“When we started, we were small fish,” Mr. Zhu said. “But even then, the government helped out.” He said government officials had helped him connect with Rokid’s earliest investors, including Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba.

“我们起步时只是小鱼小虾，”祝铭明说。“但即便那时，政府也提供了帮助。”他说，政府官员曾帮助他联系到了Rokid最早的投资者，包括阿里巴巴创始人马云。

白天，咖啡馆变成了编程中心。阿里巴巴数字生态创新园是这家科技巨头在杭州租赁给其他科技公司的一个综合园区。

But some said the government support for Hangzhou’s tech scene had scared off some investors. Several company founders who asked not to be named so they could discuss sensitive topics said it was difficult for them to attract funds from foreign venture capital firms, frustrating their ambitions to grow outside China.

但也有人表示，政府对杭州科技圈的扶持吓跑了一些投资者。几位因为话题敏感而不愿透露姓名的公司创始人表示，这让他们很难从外国的风投那里吸引到资金，阻碍了他们在海外发展的雄心。

The nightmare situation, they said, would be to end up like ByteDance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, whose executives have been questioned before Congress about the company’s ties to the Chinese government.

他们说，最糟糕的情况就是变得像TikTok的中国母公司字节跳动那样，其高管因公司与中国政府的关系而要去美国国会接受质询。

Founders described choosing between two paths for their companies’ growth: Take government funding and tailor their product to the Chinese market, or raise enough money on their own to set up offices in a country like Singapore to pitch foreign investors. For most, the first was the only feasible option.

一些创始人描述了公司发展的两条路径选择：要么接受政府资金并根据中国市场研发产品，要么自行筹集足够资金，在新加坡等国家设立办事处以吸引外国投资者。对大多数人而言，前者是唯一可行的选择。

Another uncertainty is access to the advanced computer chips that power artificial intelligence systems. Washington has spent years trying to prevent Chinese companies from buying these chips, and Chinese companies like Huawei and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation are racing to produce their own.

另一个不确定性是获取驱动人工智能系统的尖端芯片。华盛顿多年来一直试图阻止中国公司购买这样的芯片，而华为和中芯国际等中国企业正在竞相生产自己的芯片。

So far, the Chinese-made chips work well enough to help companies like ByteDance provide some of their A.I. services in China. Many Chinese companies have created stockpiles of Nvidia chips despite Washington’s controls. But it is not clear how long that supply will last, or how quickly China’s chip makers can catch up to their American counterparts.

到目前为止，中国制造的芯片足以帮助字节跳动等公司在中国提供部分人工智能服务。尽管华盛顿实施了管制，许多中国公司仍然储备了大量英伟达芯片。但目前尚不清楚这种供应能持续多久，也不知道中国的芯片制造商能以多快的速度赶上美国同行。

因低廉的租金以及靠近阿里巴巴、DeepSeek等科技公司，杭州吸引了很多科技人才。许多初创企业创始人表示，杭州的氛围激发了他们的创造力。这座坐落在湖畔的城市，曾是中国历代诗人和画家的灵感源泉。

A seemingly inescapable concept in Hangzhou is “agentic A.I.,” the idea that an artificial intelligence system could be directed to act on its own.

在杭州，一个似乎无处不在的概念是“AI智能体”，即人工智能系统被赋予自主行动能力。

Qian Roy, another Hangzhou entrepreneur, has developed an A.I.-enabled digital companion for young people that responds to their moods based on information from the Myers-Briggs personality test, which is popular among young people in China. His team programmed his app, All Time, using publicly available A.I. systems, including those made by DeepSeek, Alibaba and Anthropic, an American start-up.

另一位杭州的创业者钱睿（音）开发了一款面向年轻人的人工智能数字伴侣，它能根据迈尔斯-布里格斯性格测试（在中国年轻人当中很受欢迎）的信息来响应他们的情绪。他的团队使用公开可用的人工智能系统——DeepSeek、阿里巴巴和美国初创公司Anthropic的产品——为他的应用“万物时”编写程序。

Mindverse, the company co-founded by Mr. Tao, who hosted the backyard event, is working on a product that would use A.I. to help people manage their lives. It can send supportive daily emails to colleagues, for example, or regular text messages to parents reminiscing about family vacations.

在自家后院举办活动的陶芳波与他人一起创办了心识宇宙，这家公司正在开发一款产品，将利用人工智能帮助人们管理生活。例如，它可以每天向同事发送鼓舞他们的电子邮件，或者定期给父母发短信，回忆全家一起度假的时光。

“I don’t want the A.I. to just handle tasks, but to actually give you more mental space so you can unplug,” Mr. Tao said.

“我不希望人工智能只是处理任务，而是希望它能为你提供更多的心灵空间，让你能够放松下来，”他说。

Many in the crowd in Mr. Tao’s backyard said the atmosphere in Hangzhou, set on the banks of a lake that was muse to generations of Chinese poets and painters, fueled their creativity.

在陶芳波后院的人群中，许多人表示，杭州的氛围激发了他们的创造力。这座坐落在湖畔的城市，曾是中国历代诗人和画家的灵感源泉。

Lin Yuanlin started his company, Zeabur, while studying at Zhejiang University. His company provides back-end systems to people who are making apps and websites by “vibecoding,” or using A.I. tools to program without deep software knowledge.

林沅霖在浙大读书时就创办了自己的公司Zeabur。该公司通过“随性编程”——即无需具备深厚软件知识就能利用人工智能工具编程——为开发应用程序和网站的人提供后端系统。

地铁上的通勤者，该线路服务于阿里巴巴集团总部及其周边的科技公司。过去十年，杭州市政府为本地的科技产业倾注了大量资源，包括一个名为梦想小镇的开发项目内的初创企业。

Liangzhu is the perfect testing ground for his product, Mr. Lin said. He can lean over to someone in a coffee shop or wander into a neighbor’s living room and learn what kind of support they need for their start-ups. Mr. Lin found himself going to Liangzhu so often that he moved there.

林沅霖说，良渚是其产品的完美试验场。他可以在咖啡馆里向旁人倾身请教，或者走进邻居的客厅，了解他们的初创公司需要什么样的支持。林沅霖去良渚的次数越来越多，最后干脆搬到了那里。

Liangzhu villagers have been hosting film nights. They had recently gathered to watch “The Matrix.” Afterward, they decided the movie should be required viewing, Mr. Lin said. Its theme — people finding their way out of a vast system controlling society — provided spot-on inspiration.

良渚的“村民”们一直在举办电影之夜活动。最近，他们聚在一起观看了《黑客帝国》。林沅霖说，观影结束后，他们认定这部电影应该成为必看片。其主题——人们设法逃脱一个操控社会的庞大系统——正好为他们提供了灵感。

Aspiring founders in Liangzhu, even those who did not go to top universities, believe they could start the next world-changing tech company, Mr. Tao said.

陶芳波说，良渚的这些心怀创业梦想的人，即使没有上过顶尖大学，也相信自己能够创办下一个改变世界的科技公司。

“Many of them are super brave to make a choice to explore their own way, because in China that is not the common way to live your life.”

“他们中有许多人非常勇敢地选择探索自己的道路，因为在中国，这不是常见的生活方式。”