A former Beijing programmer returned to his home county in 2024 to focus on digital services for county-level livelihoods, setting out to develop smart community cashier software. To make the product more practical, Zhang Shuwei built a pilot supermarket with a points system, iterating and refining the product against real county consumption scenarios and creating the "Meeting Beautiful Homes and Households" community service platform.
The platform uses the points supermarket as its vehicle, integrating value-added services such as points redemption, courier delivery, water purification and printing, and pairing these with a WeChat push function for members, precisely matching the consumption needs of county households. "At present, the pilot supermarket has 3,000 members and around 1,000 daily active users, multiple functions have been steadily rolled out, and the project is expected to launch in full on New Year's Day 2027," Zhang Shuwei said. With support from park subsidies for premises, water and electricity, his startup has developed steadily, becoming a vivid example of lightweight AI entrepreneurship in a county.
Computing Power Empowerment Unleashes New Policy Dividends
To lower the threshold for county-level AI entrepreneurship and energize digital startup activity, Cheng'an County held the "Information Valley · Cheng'an OPC Comprehensive Service Platform and Computing Power Voucher Policy Launch Event" on September 18, officially introducing the province's first county-level artificial intelligence OPC computing power voucher and simultaneously launching the Information Valley · Cheng'an OPC Comprehensive Service Platform.
The county's first batch of computing power vouchers is worth 2 million yuan, aimed specifically at county-level OPC enterprises and usable to directly offset computing power procurement costs. This effectively reduces the cost of digital transformation and AI research and application for small and medium-sized enterprises, allowing innovators to "afford computing power and train good models."
The Information Valley · Cheng'an OPC Comprehensive Service Platform integrates computing power scheduling, agent integration, supply-demand matching and technical services, providing entrepreneurs with a stable source of projects while offering one-stop digital support for building a county-level OPC industrial ecosystem. The platform innovatively implements a "no-review, immediate benefit" model, automatically capturing enterprises' computing power usage data, delivering subsidies directly to their accounts, simplifying procedures and precisely releasing policy dividends.
"In the past, enterprises building their own computing power facilities faced large investment, long cycles and high risks. The computing power voucher policy and the OPC platform have solved our development pain points," Liu Yahui said. Relying on the platform's inclusive computing power resources, enterprises can efficiently carry out industrial model training, greatly compressing research and development costs and providing strong support for the intelligent, lightweight development of small and medium-sized digital enterprises.
Pan Liyong, head of the Cheng'an County Development and Reform Bureau and the Commerce Bureau, said the province's first county-level computing power voucher landing in Cheng'an is an important exploration of channeling computing power resources down to the county level and making AI development more inclusive. Delivering computing power dividends directly to enterprises through the platform can both gather digital industry resources and cultivate new economic growth points, while also empowering the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, with the goal of creating a model of county-level digital economy innovation.
Full-Chain Support Solidifies a New Entrepreneurship Ecosystem
Addressing the pain points of solo entrepreneurs — weak technical capabilities, high computing power costs, unstable orders and cumbersome operations — Gao Jiwei, operations manager of the Yahui OPC Entrepreneurship Community, said the community has built a full-chain incubation system to precisely tackle entrepreneurial difficulties.
On the technical front, the platform features a rich set of built-in AI templates and regularly offers free hands-on training to shore up innovators' technical shortcomings. On the cost front, the platform procures computing power centrally, stacking on top of computing power vouchers for subsidies of up to 50%, greatly reducing startup costs. On the order front, it builds a public order pool and carries out supply-demand matching to solve the challenge of finding customers. On the operations front, it provides one-stop services including business registration, policy applications and contract review, letting entrepreneurs focus on delivering projects.
Since July this year, the park has regularly carried out digital skills training and startup accompaniment services, offering monthly inclusive large-scale training, targeted small-class practical training and one-on-one project coaching, balancing broad outreach with focused development and effectively improving entrepreneurs' practical abilities and project implementation rates.
Compared with first-tier cities, Cheng'an County has a significant cost advantage for startups. The park waives or reduces rent, water and electricity fees, and the county's lower living and trial-and-error costs combine to give returning young people strong support to start businesses with a light load, creating a distinctive county-level AI entrepreneurship model based on local scenario advantages.
Liu Yahui said the park will continue to deepen its work in the OPC industry track and improve the digital entrepreneurship ecosystem. Through measures such as building a dynamic database of high-quality OPC projects, exploring an "incubation plus investment" operating model, broadening project promotion channels and deepening specialized AI training, it will continue to expand the scale of county-level digital entrepreneurship.
With computing power as its wings, policy as its foundation and service as its soul, Cheng'an County is continuously cultivating lightweight OPC entrepreneurial entities, releasing the dividends of the digital economy and striving to build a benchmark for inclusive county-level artificial intelligence development, contributing Cheng'an's strength to the high-quality development of the city's digital economy.
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