(Yicai Global) June 11 -- Beijing recently introduced China's first 'hard' tech fund.

Worth CNY920 million (USD133 million), it is mostly geared toward investment in key leading world technologies in a bid to promote their industrialization.

Those technologies with high technical barriers and difficulty in replication and copying are potential investment targets, Economic Daily reported.

Prospective investment sectors of the fund co-established by Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Fund and multiple investment funds include artificial intelligence, gene technology, brain science, photonic chips and new materials.

The endowment is conceived as a long-term, patient angel fund to support the application of sound 'hard' technical achievements, said Mi Lei, one of its promoters and the founding partner of CAS Star, a Chinese Academy of Science-affiliated venture capital incubator.

The fund will mostly invest in CAS's scientific research institutions and China's key colleges and support original technology projects that rely mostly on independent research and development and require long-term R&D investment and continuous accumulation, Mi explained.

China has embarked on a transitional era in which it is shifting toward scientific and technical inventions and away from model innovation, and the country thus needs more hard technology now, Mi said.

Beijing Science and Technology Innovation Fund, major founder of the hard tech fund and a parent investment incubator, which was set up by the Beijing municipal government's financial fund and four local state-backed enterprises as major investors, started operating last June.

Editor: Ben Armour