Wuhan Zhihua Technology Co (Zhihua Tech), located in the Biolake of Wuhan East Lake High-tech Development Zone (Optics Valley of China, or OVC), has grown from a 20-square-meter office since its establishment at the end of 2018 into a tech company serving the top five pharmaceutical companies globally.

At its inception, the company had only one employee, the founder, Xia Ning. After securing funding in 2019, the company began to expand its team and now boasts 50 employees.

Xia Ning works in his office. [Photo/talent work bureau of Wuhan East Lake High-tech Development Zone]

Xia shared that securing an order from a global top-five pharmaceutical company was a significant turning point for the company. He explained that very few companies, domestically or internationally, could handle such business, but his company's technology solved the client's problems, winning the order. Today, Zhihua Tech's clients span North America, Europe, China, and India.

The company's long-term accumulation of algorithms and focus on AI in chemistry have become its core competitive advantage. The company's ChemAIRS platform has become an "intelligent navigator" for chemists, capable of automatically planning molecular synthesis paths with an error rate lower than manual designs.

The product of Zhihua Tech. [Photo/talent work bureau of Wuhan East Lake High-tech Development Zone]

Zhihua Tech's product was honored in the 2023 Health Digital Innovation Top 10 Qipu Seeds List. The company has also been recognized as a technologically advanced service enterprise, a 2023-2024 Hubei province advanced unit in information and innovation, a reserve listed "Silver Seed" enterprise, and one of Hubei's sixth batch of specialized and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises.

Looking to the future, Xia is full of hope. He aims to make Zhihua Tech a leading company in AI-powered chemistry and likens it to a marathon runner leading the pack, believing that with persistence, they can cross the finish line.