"AI Lobster" dominates the screen, is a "one-person company"迎来爆发点?

The reporter from 每经｜Xie Tao　The editor from 每经｜Tang Yuan

Image source: Reporter from 每经 Zhang Jian

This spring seems to arrive earlier than in previous years. Driving south along Chengdu’s “central axis,” from the Tianfu Software Park to the banks of Xinglong Lake, OPC communities have sprung up one after another like tender shoots—eagerly taking root.

Like many cities brimming with the vitality of innovation and entrepreneurship, Chengdu will not miss a single “springtime for industries.”

Whether it’s the “building new forms of the intelligent economy” first raised in this year’s National Two Sessions, or the “raising crawfish”（OpenClaw）that has recently gone viral across the internet, Chengdu is moving early in this wave of artificial intelligence industry momentum, becoming one of the most active “players” after Shenzhen and Suzhou.

OPC_(One Person Company_) refers to a new start-up and innovation model in which an individual leverages artificial intelligence to independently complete end-to-end business activities such as product R&D, market promotion, and user service.

Open AI co-founder Sam Altman once said: “In the AI era, a single person can absolutely found a unicorn company valued at $1 billion.”

In the latest round of “industrial races,” many places have elevated the cultivation of OPC communities into a systemic strategy. From implementing top-level policies to taking shape in physical space, from scattered early trials by individuals to building an ecosystem, how are different regions racing to seize the OPC opportunity? As an innovation and entrepreneurship hub, what opportunities worth watching—and what latest explorations—does Chengdu have?

Recently, reporters from 《The Economic Daily News》 went on-site to OPC communities, interviewing relevant companies and scholars on the front lines, focusing on the cutting-edge trends of OPC and how they are reshaping regional innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems.

More than 20 cities Make an early bet on the “strongest opportunity”

OPC is not a one-person company in the simple sense, but a new organizational and innovation form of “standing up as a company with a single person + AI.”

As early as August 2025, the State Council issued the Opinions on Deeply Implementing the “Artificial Intelligence+” Action Plan, first proposing the concept of “intelligent-native enterprises.” A new proposition tied to youth entrepreneurship, urban innovation, and the future of industries has been placed before cities nationwide.

Journalists observed that starting in late 2025, a “competition” of special policies targeting OPC began unfolding intensively across the country. More than 20 cities and administrative districts have introduced related special measures, seeking to clear obstacles for this start-up model.

“The emergence of OPC communities reflects local governments’ profound understanding and forward-looking planning of micro-level forms of ‘new quality productive forces.’ Behind it is an iteration of the logic of industrial development. When places carry out top-level design and make early bets, they are upgrading from simply ‘giving money and space’ to ‘empowering the ecosystem.’” Chen Shaofeng, deputy dean of the Institute for Cultural Industries Research at Peking University, said in an interview with reporters from 《The Economic Daily News》.

From the perspective of “top-level design,” how are different regions betting on OPC?

In January this year, Shenzhen was the first to roll out the nation’s first city-level special plan, the “Shenzhen Action Plan for Building a Leading AI OPC Start-up Ecological Hub (2026–2027),” aiming to cultivate more than 1,000 high-growth AI enterprises by the end of 2027. On March 7, the Longgang District of Shenzhen then released the “Crawfish Ten Articles,” with “zero-cost launch” as a core highlight, extending an olive branch to OPC entrepreneurs around the world.

Shanghai, meanwhile, has introduced policies in succession, laying out multiple “super entrepreneur communities” in Xuhui, Jing’an, Lingang, and Pudong, and building representative projects such as the Qixin Island OPC super individual community.

Suzhou, on the other hand, launched an AI OPC cultivation and development initiative as early as November 2025. The plan is to build 30 OPC communities by 2028, gather 1,000 OPCs and 10,000 talents, provide up to RMB 20 million in policy-based equity investment, and set up a dedicated OPC track within the “Jinji Lake Science and Technology Leading Talent Program,” with support of up to RMB 50 million for a single project.

Looking across these cities, Suzhou’s policy strength and targeting accuracy in empowering OPC can be said to be far from trivial.

Image source: Suzhou released

To a certain extent, as OPC communities emerge in various places across China, it reflects that cities’ investment-attraction logic and industrial logic are shifting from competing for big projects to cultivating an individual innovation ecosystem for the AI era.

Recently, Hangzhou’s Shangcheng District released Zhejiang’s first district-level OPC special policy, announcing RMB 100 million in special funding each year. Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area invests up to RMB 300 million per year in compute power, data, and model vouchers. Wuxi’s High-Tech Zone, on March 9, 2026, released “Raising Crawfish 12 Articles.” For OPC projects using the intelligent compute power platform within the district, each can receive subsidies up to RMB 300,000.

“When building OPC communities, what localities pursue should not be entrepreneurs’ ‘physical clustering,’ but rather better ‘chemical reactions.’ Therefore, bringing in leading enterprises to enhance industrial clustering density and fit is especially important for achieving complementary exchanges between resources and demand. This helps break the ‘island effect’ for entrepreneurs and truly unlock a city’s innovation capacity,” Chen Shaofeng said.

Differentiated competition Accelerating localization of OPC

Journalists noticed that talent service guarantees, policy support, and funding support remain common themes that cannot be avoided as places accelerate their layout of OPC communities. But how to accelerate local adoption based on each region’s industrial endowments and distinctive features—building an OPC ecosystem centered on compute power, algorithms, data, and scenarios—is the practical exploration to be carried out right now.

For example, Shenzhen has the world’s most complete hardware industry chain, and its comprehensive strength in the artificial intelligence industry ranks in the top tier nationwide. Its industry chain covers every stage from chips, models, hardware, and applications. Therefore, Shenzhen’s OPC communities naturally focus on—AI hardware.

Whether it’s the first OPC community in the world aimed at AI hardware—Ba’nan District’s Dagongfang AI Hardware OPC—or Shenzhen’s first OPC innovation community—Huaqingbei OPC Innovation Community—what they target are “hardcore” tracks such as AI + hardware, robotics and intelligent terminals, and intelligent manufacturing.

Taking Huaqingbei as an example, within an area of only 1.45 square kilometers, it has already achieved aggregation across the whole supply chain—from chips, design, manufacturing, to sales—building a “natural fit” OPC community for “AI + hardware.”

If Shenzhen’s choice for building OPC communities is a “hard-tech” path, then cities represented by Suzhou primarily focus on the full-cycle, all-round “soft services.”

Based on high-quality industrial foundations and the business environment built over decades, Suzhou’s OPC community was designed from the start to jump out of low-end supply of “space leasing,” instead focusing on a higher-level “value enablement.”

Gusu District of Suzhou converts the cultural heritage of the ancient city and spatial resources into advantages for developing “artificial intelligence +” and builds a full-cycle enablement system for OPC, targeting “OPC across the whole ancient-city area.” The Suzhou Industrial Park then moves from simple “funding support” to providing “complete factor enablement,” addressing OPC’s shortcomings in business models, resource integration, and so on—offering policy-based equity investment support of up to RMB 20 million for eligible OPCs. At the same time, it provides all-round factor supply, builds a unified dispatching public compute power platform with on-demand access, and forms a “shared compute power” resource pool.

As leading industrial cities such as Shenzhen and Suzhou sprint ahead, Chengdu—an innovation and entrepreneurship hub in the West—has also been exploring a differentiated path suitable for OPC development.

On February 6, 2026, the “High-Tech π Cubic OPC Community” plan in Chengdu High-tech Zone officially kicked off. The debut of the “Tianfu Software π Cubic OPC Community” was also unveiled. This is the first OPC dedicated community in China focused on “AI + digital cultural and creative industries.”

Image source: Chengdu High-tech

In the view of Wang Xiaoli, secretary-general of the incubation division of the China Association for Science and Technology Entrepreneurship, “OPC communities are a new innovative ecosystem in the AI era that focuses on ‘super individual entrepreneurship,’ not a simple upgrade of traditional coworking spaces or maker spaces.”

Currently, cities represented by Shanghai rely on a more active investment and financing market, precisely focusing on market demand, and gradually constructing an OPC support system covering the whole city. The emphasis is on “OPC across the whole region” and differentiated competition. Once the Xuhui District OPC special support policy was introduced, it attracted nearly 100 OPC companies to move in. Pudong New Area comprehensively launched the construction of the Zhangjiang Artificial Intelligence Innovation Town, providing resources all in one place—from free desks, talent apartments, start-up funding, compute power vouchers, and scenario matching. Yangpu District accelerates the integration of resources such as policies, technology, carriers, and services, and launches the construction of the Qixin Island OPC super individual community.

Focusing on digital cultural and creative industries How can Chengdu find its path?

With pain points faced by OPC communities such as “compute power being too expensive,” “scenarios being scarce,” and “too few leading players,” Chengdu is accelerating industry integration practices—simplifying processes, building a leader-chain coordination model—and exploring a path that aligns with local industrial characteristics.

Digital cultural and creative industries have become the best “testing ground” for local OPC, and also the best “opportunity pool.”

On February 6, 2026, the debut of the “Tianfu Software π Cubic OPC Community” was unveiled, marking the appearance of the nation’s first OPC dedicated community focused on “AI + digital cultural and creative industries.”

It is reported that the community has already signed agreements with 12 companies in its debut. It is expected to exceed 100 new enterprise users throughout 2026. In the future three years, the number of users is expected to be no less than 1,000.

As a first batch of settled-in companies, Liu Qiang, general manager of Zhongxin Shutong, said, “Tianfu Software Park has an excellent atmosphere for entrepreneurship. The park will proactively recommend partners and potential customers, building bridges for business expansion. It also holds regular recruitment activities, provides guidance for project applications, and organizes knowledge lectures related to social insurance and housing provident funds, so that we can get key information in a timely manner.”

Recently, Sichuan Tianfu New Area’s “Tianfu Zhichuang T·OPC” action also officially kicked off. Tianfu New Area and Chengdu Mingtou Technology Co., Ltd. jointly launched their first project—Mingtou Qihang Camp—focusing on the “AI + culture, commerce, travel, and sports (or physical education)” field. Tianfu New Area will provide policy support such as talent, compute power, and large-model training subsidies.

“Currently, Mingtou Qihang Camp has attracted more than 200 OPC entrepreneurs, mainly focusing on sectors such as culture and tourism consumption, vocational education, government services, and healthcare,” Li Hui, market director of Chengdu Mingtou Technology, told reporters from 《The Economic Daily News》.

In the view of OPC frontline promoter like Li Hui, in the latest wave of OPC, Chengdu—backed by its unique industrial genes and first-mover advantages—has rapidly transformed from a “follower” into an OPC highland in the West and even across the country. “Chengdu is the first city nationwide to launch an OPC dedicated community after Suzhou and Shenzhen, and its policy response speed is extremely fast. The core of OPC is ‘people + AI,’ and Chengdu has the most suitable industrial soil in all of China for this model—digital cultural and creative industries.”

Image source: Tianfu released

In recent years, Chengdu’s digital cultural and creative “top-tier” initiatives have kept coming out, and its industrial environment has continued to improve. In 2025, Chengdu’s digital cultural and creative core industries’ total operating revenue reached RMB 413.97 billion, up 8.3% year over year.

With its unique advantages in the digital cultural and creative industry and the business environment, Chengdu has already built OPC communities such as the Tianfu Software π Cubic OPC Community, Mingtou Qihang Camp, and the Zhuge Space π Cubic OPC Community. The Data Group under Chengdu Industrial Investment Group has also officially released the “Rongsu” OPC community plan. The Changdao π Cubic at the Tianfu Changdao Digital Cultural and Creative Park has also started preparations.

Regarding the development model of OPC communities, Song Jiayin, business director of Mocake Technology, told reporters from 《The Economic Daily News》: “For the new generation of OPC maker groups, the traditional park operation model is becoming ineffective. As highly digitized ‘modern nomads,’ they don’t need a large physical office space, and the traditional policies of ‘no rent and providing desks’ can no longer constitute the core attraction.”

In Song Jiayin’s view, “Park managers must think about how to get rid of the low value-added ‘second landlord’ model, and build a true ‘digital soft environment’ that can attract the top OPCs in the country—and even globally—to settle in. The focus of support for OPC must be upgraded comprehensively from the traditional ‘help developers build products’ to ‘solve the problem of developers selling products.’”