At the 2026 Lujiazui Forum, Industrial And Commercial Bank Of China Limited (ICBC) President Liu Jun delivered a keynote speech on establishing a comprehensive lifecycle service system for technology finance to support the high-quality development of the real economy.
Liu Jun began by defining the core concepts: technology is the primary productive force, talent is the foremost resource, and finance is the lifeblood of both the modern and the real economy. He noted that technology finance is a multi-dimensional concept, integrating technology, education, and talent, while finance itself is intertwined with industry, creating a three-dimensional overlay of "technology + finance + industry."
He elaborated that technology finance is an exceptionally complex and systematic concept. Its current importance stems from technology's decisive role in global economic growth and human welfare. Simultaneously, observing the frontiers of technological innovation reveals it is continually approaching physical and engineering limits, demanding extreme resource investment. Financial services and paradigms need to be defined at boundaries, conceptualized at limits, and seek focal solutions based on integrated solutions and boundary conditions. "We used to think technological innovation was based on a specific frontier field, conducting research and adapting financial services for that field before scaling it up. That no longer works. Many disruptive technologies are positioned at boundaries. Without an accurate grasp of these boundaries, technology financial services will inevitably fall short," Liu Jun stated.
What Has Changed in the Economy's Positioning and Meaning?
Liu Jun proposed four key changes. The first is the extreme efficiency of resource allocation. Coase's theorem explains that firms determine their optimal boundaries by weighing internal organizational costs against external transaction costs. The digital economy has redefined this efficiency benchmark. The minimal efficiency losses in innovation activities are constantly being dismantled. We see global leading tech companies scaling unprecedentedly while their ability to acquire, allocate, and integrate resources is growing exponentially.
"For example, many large tech firms are building internal capital markets—a particularly important trend. While they still rely on external markets, this reliance is diminishing. They form internal ecosystems to identify promising technologies across their supply chains. Leaders in the AI field are integrating horizontally and deploying vertically in depth. Upstream, they secure foundational endowments like resources and computing power. Downstream, they cover application scenarios like robotics and consumer PCs, breaking the traditional linear market share competition logic to create a three-dimensional ecosystem that closes the loop between enabling technologies and application scenarios. Previously, we often said companies made hardware, software, products, or technology. It seemed a new technology emerged, they made the product, served both B2C and B2B, and focused on the long tail in B2C," Liu Jun explained, using large tech companies' practices as an illustration.
The second aspect is the extreme speed of enterprise growth. Traditional enterprise lifecycle theory often charts an S-curve, with time since founding on the horizontal axis, depicting a company's journey from startup to growth and maturity, with its ups and downs. Now, this curve is becoming increasingly steep, growing at an extreme pace, with constant inflection and breakpoints appearing on the curve. When a breakpoint forms, it can lead to a second leap. Particularly, frontier tech companies in their startup phase exhibit strong scale effects. Once they cross a computing power threshold, they can leap to become so-called "unicorns," "decacorns," or "hectocorns" in an extremely short time. Conversely, they can be quickly eliminated by the market.
Compared to using time since founding, using computing power scale and data density as a new horizontal axis may be a better way to chart the growth patterns of AI companies. This challenges traditional DCF (Discounted Cash Flow) models. The focus of corporate valuation is no longer the time discounting of financial variables but the technology premium based on computing power and technology. This premium has a term structure and a revenue-expenditure structure; it is a new, option-like form of enterprise value. "If you tried to calculate SpaceX's value using DCF, you could never arrive at a figure exceeding two trillion dollars, yet it indeed exceeds two trillion. It has designed its core technology as a future option. This design logic is completely different from the traditional economy. Moore's Law itself is akin to a law of scale," Liu Jun remarked.
The third aspect is the extreme interaction of market supply and demand, where technological innovation drives market再造 and the lines between production and consumption increasingly blur. For instance, in financial institutions' client services, while the institution delivers a financial solution, the client, while receiving the service, is also producing a set of data through feedback, evaluation, visit frequency, and even emotional expressions like micro-expressions. This data, in turn, feeds back to the institution, allowing it to further optimize its products and service delivery. Liu Jun used live-streaming e-commerce as an example: "During a live sales stream, you might think a host is selling you a product—a sales process where you are the buyer. But in reality, you are an important producer. You are producing price information, data, expressions, all of which are useful for the live stream."
Therefore, Liu Jun believes every consumer is simultaneously a data producer, and data is the new oil of our era. Beyond the traditional balance sheet, there may将来 be a data balance sheet and a new talent balance sheet. Putting these three sheets together forms the modern economy's "three statements." Thus, production and consumption are gradually merging into a new process, combining producer and consumer into a new concept.
This concept has gained deeper practical meaning in the digital economy era. Therefore, the modern economy is not merely a product economy nor simply an attention economy. The attention economy might be the prologue to the digital age, but the modern economy is more accurately an interactive economy, a participatory economy, a融合 economy. Attracting attention is only the preliminary step; the key is achieving interaction and integration, making the client an organic part of financial activities. This allows for providing more tailored services, forming a community for value creation. Clients, in their financial consumption, are also producers of new financial innovation. Financial institutions use their feedback to further optimize and adjust products, meaning clients themselves participate in producing innovative financial products. This is a particularly important new economic concept.
The fourth aspect is the extreme combination of talent supply. For large financial institutions today, whether a graduate majored in finance or economics is not the primary concern. Greater importance is placed on industry knowledge, technical expertise, and technological proficiency. "Without knowledge and educational background in these three areas, I don't believe you can excel in technology finance," Liu Jun stated. He explained that the required talent combination is now a "π-shaped combination": deep mastery of financial and market knowledge is required, while the horizontal bar of the π represents breadth—the more diverse and deep the understanding across different industries, the better. This composition of human resources meets the development needs of modern financial institutions, enabling them to form a financial-intellectual balance sheet alongside their financial and data balance sheets.
What Should Financial Institutions Do in Technology Finance?
Given the current market environment, Liu Jun proposed three key initiatives for financial institutions in technology finance.
First, reconstruct financial products and services with a technological mindset. This includes processes, product combinations, and delivery methods, all of which should be reshaped by new technologies. This adjustment is revolutionary. Upon completion, many new technological elements will be integrated into processes. For example, in financial market operations, robots now handle quoting. Their speed, efficiency, and accuracy in quoting确实 surpass human capabilities, and ICBC has made many attempts in this area.
Second, promote a shift from the time-discounting logic to a technology-option logic. In the past, heavy emphasis was placed on collateral—a financial, discounting logic. In the future, greater importance will likely be placed on patents and technology—a technology-option logic. Therefore, institutions should value the option premium embedded in technological breakthroughs, computing power investment, data accumulation, and model capabilities. These key value and risk factors should be reintegrated into models to form the best possible financial pricing system for supporting technology finance.
Third, build interactive financial platforms. When serving tech companies, it becomes clear that without interaction, it is impossible to understand their industry, products, technologies, or customer base. Therefore, financial institutions themselves are a crucial link in the chain of technological innovation.
In conclusion, Liu Jun stated, "ICBC is a globally systemically important financial institution. In the process of China's technological self-reliance and the great development of China's technology finance, we will certainly provide our standardized answers, leverage ICBC's distinctive strengths, diligently serve technology finance, and contribute to achieving Chinese modernization."
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