Editor's Note: In recent years, China's innovative drug industry has been undergoing a profound generational transition. The previous generation of entrepreneurs, leveraging hands-on experience accumulated at multinational pharmaceutical companies, completed the path from 0 to 1. Meanwhile, a cohort of post-80s and post-90s scientists are now exploring entirely new drug R&D paradigms atop the existing industrial foundation, using cutting-edge tools such as AI-driven drug discovery, organ-on-a-chip technology, and small nucleic acid delivery systems. This article is approximately 2,509 words and takes about 4 minutes to read.

01 From a Roadshow Observation: The Generational Shift Among Founders

Since 2026, at dozens of biopharmaceutical roadshows, the founders presenting their pipelines to investors have shown a clear trend toward youthfulness. In the past, the stage was often occupied by seasoned scientists with 20–30 years of experience at overseas pharma companies. Today, a growing number of post-80s and even post-90s researchers are stepping forward with entirely new technological approaches.

Looking across a longer timeline, this youth movement is not a sudden mutation, but rather a new phase in the industry's generational relay.

More than two decades ago, the first wave of pioneers—exemplified by Chipscreen Biosciences and Betta Pharmaceuticals—started from scratch in an environment with little policy support, capital accumulation, or industrial infrastructure. It took them nearly twenty years to achieve breakthroughs from establishing regulatory pathways to gaining approval for blockbuster products—a true 0-to-1 accomplishment.

Subsequently, the overseas talent recruitment programs launched around 2008 brought back a wave of post-60s scientists, who became the industry's recognized "pioneering generation." Most began their entrepreneurial journeys in their early 40s and remain active on the industry frontlines today. Right behind them is the current "middle generation"—those who returned to China to start businesses around 2010 and are now in their prime at ages 51 to 60, representing the mainstream age bracket among current listed Biotech leaders.

With the release of a series of capital market policy dividends—including pharmaceutical regulatory reforms, the HKEX 18A listing regime, and the STAR Market—a younger cohort of entrepreneurs with global perspectives and interdisciplinary backgrounds has begun to emerge, progressively expanding into frontier areas such as advanced therapeutics, nucleic acid drugs, and AI-driven drug discovery.

02 Cross-Disciplinary Integration: The Industrial Practice of Post-80s and Post-90s Scientists

According to data from Arterial Network, over the past year or more, a number of innovative enterprises have secured new financing rounds worth tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of yuan. These companies share a common feature: their key leadership or core founding teams include young scientists born after 1990—not as replacements for their predecessors, but as pioneers carving out their own innovative directions atop the industry's existing foundation.

It is evident that in the vertical field of medical innovation, dozens of post-90s founders have already taken the helm at key positions. Their starting points are not decades of experience in traditional pharma, but rather AI, interdisciplinary sciences, and cutting-edge biotechnologies. Their R&D pathways do not rely on generics or me-too strategies, but instead aim to achieve true 0-to-1 drug creation through novel methodologies. The connection between their academic backgrounds and industrial practice is highly seamless, and the path from scientific research to clinical translation has been significantly shortened.

The speed at which this cohort is rising is also reshaping the industry's age structure. In 2025, a post-90s leader at a Chinese biopharmaceutical company spearheaded an M&A transaction worth approximately 6.8 billion yuan—setting a record for the largest M&A deal in the innovative drug sector that year. Such major transactions were previously almost exclusively the domain of the "middle generation" or even older leaders.

Industry observers widely agree that over the next five to ten years, the trend toward younger founders and leaders, coupled with cross-disciplinary integration, will become the mainstream—and even younger entrepreneurs born after 1995 and 2000 are already beginning to make their mark in frontier fields such as synthetic biology and AI-driven drug discovery.

03 The Technology Foundation: How AI Compresses the Time Cost of New Drug Ventures

The reason the previous generation of entrepreneurs needed two decades to lay the groundwork is that critical know-how—such as regulatory pathways, agency communications, and clinical trial strategies—had no precedents in China at the time. These had to be forged step by step through long-term hands-on experience at multinational pharma companies and on the academic frontier. What AI is changing is the shape of certain segments along this experience curve—not replacing experience itself.

Specifically, AI-driven drug discovery currently plays a role in three main areas:

First, target discovery and validation, using pattern recognition across large-scale biological data to shorten the repetitive trial-and-error cycles of traditional wet-lab experiments;

Second, molecular design and optimization, such as applying AI to drug delivery system design, transforming formulation screening—once reliant on expert judgment—into a computable and iterative process;

Third, predictive capabilities in the preclinical and clinical stages, where novel in-vitro models like organ-on-a-chip are beginning to partially replace traditional animal testing.

The common thread across these three tools is that they convert processes that previously depended solely on "personal experience accumulation" into processes that can be amplified and accelerated by technology. Experience remains the foundation; AI is the lever placed atop it. It can speed up target screening, molecular design, and preclinical predictions, but it cannot replace the judgment required for regulatory communications and clinical strategy—skills that must be cultivated through real projects under the mentorship of previous generations. The pathways forged by predecessors over twenty years remain essential coursework; this generation simply has a new set of tools to master that coursework more efficiently.

04 The Inner Logic of the Generational Relay: From "Laying the Foundation" to "Building New Towers"

When placing the two generations of entrepreneurs on the same timeline, the logic of the generational relay becomes clear. The previous generation, leveraging their hands-on experience at multinational pharma companies, laid the industrial foundation for China's innovative drug sector. This process was lengthy, yet it established an irreplaceable foundation for the industry. The new generation no longer simply replicates the previous path; instead, they start directly with new tools such as AI drug discovery, organ-on-a-chip, and small nucleic acid delivery systems, constructing new R&D paradigms atop the already-laid foundation. This is not replacement, but relay: the 0-to-1 path forged by the previous generation now enables the new generation to accelerate the 1-to-100 journey with new tools.

On July 24, 2026, the 14th Venture Capital Conference, organized by the Securities Times · National Venture Capital Alliance with a focus on the Greater Bay Area, was held in Shenzhen. A sub-forum titled "Generational Clash in Tech Innovation: Entrepreneurs & Investors from the 70s to 90s in Dialogue" placed the generational agenda at the center of industry discussion. Mr. Zhu Pai, CEO of Efung Capital, was invited to participate in this panel, alongside Mr. Xu Yerong, Vice President of Shanghai State-owned Capital Investment, Mr. Xiong Wei, Founding Partner of Qiancheng Capital, Mr. Chen Yingfeng, Partner of Songhe Capital, and Mr. Yan Wentao, Partner of Hillhouse Ventures. The panel engaged in a cross-generational dialogue covering investment philosophies, sector selection, and industry transformation.

Mr. Zhu Pai stated: "Our mission is no longer to replicate the established investment paths of the past domestically, but to elevate Chinese investment to the dimension of 'global innovation'—to pursue true globalization." This statement forms a logical parallel with the practical path of the new generation of entrepreneurs: drug developers are no longer simply following the previous generation's playbook, and investors are no longer replicating past investment logic. Both point in the same direction: from imitation to originality, from domestic to global.

05 From "Laying the Foundation" to "Building New Towers": A Generational Relay in China's Innovative Drug Industry

From an industrial practice perspective, Efung Capital's own investment trajectory embodies participation in this generational relay. In its early-stage deployment, Efung invested in companies such as Chipscreen Biosciences, Heyuan Biotechnology, Ascentage Pharma, and Bioxin Life—enterprises that accomplished 0-to-1 breakthroughs in core areas such as target validation, clinical advancement, and pipeline development, serving as key participants in building the industry's foundation. In its current phase, Efung is directing more investment resources toward teams that are "building new towers"—those focused on AI-driven drug discovery, advanced delivery technologies, and innovation driven by interdisciplinary sciences.

From foundation to new towers, Efung's involvement has been continuous. Professional judgment in innovative drug investment is built on long-term presence in the field—only by persistently tracking progress in target validation, clinical data readouts, and regulatory policy changes can one discern which technological paths have demonstrated robust evidence, which directions require further validation, which tools are ready for translation, and which remain at the conceptual stage.

But the generational relay has never been a monologue by any single institution—it is a relay race completed by an entire generation. The previous generation spent two to three decades charting regulatory pathways and building the industrial foundation; this generation, armed with new tools such as AI, organ-on-a-chip, and small nucleic acid delivery systems, is passing the baton forward. From the young faces on roadshow stages to the yet-unnamed names in laboratories, what they represent is not merely the growth stories of a few companies, but a real, unfolding generational shift in China's innovative drug industry.

This relay—taking place among the post-80s and post-90s—may have only just begun. And as we cast our gaze toward the farther horizon, we must not forget to look back at the road traveled—to pay tribute to the trailblazers who built the foundation from nothing. Without the regulatory pathways and industrial ecosystem they forged, the new tools in this generation's hands would have no stage on which to perform.

Discussion Topic

How do you view the generational relay in China's innovative drug industry?
In the new drug R&D paradigm driven by the next generation of scientists, which directions deserve the most attention?

Welcome to share your observations and judgments in the comments section.

Data Sources:

1. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/JMrxg337C1jS5jOBC_y0Gg

2. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1JPL5ZXL5qLTrxuH4kyEew

3. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/PxDJFIEjgRRNvE1-WzkSAQ

4. https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ZuRf3ZBq-jmwClO6NIwgHg

Disclaimer
This content represents solely the views of our company based on currently available public information and data provided by portfolio companies. It does not constitute any investment advice, medical advice, or assurance of specific company performance. Investment involves risks; enter the market with caution. Readers should make independent judgments based on public information. Unauthorized reproduction or commercial use is prohibited.