From co-building a Joint Industrial AI Lab to joining SPARC, Gtrontec continues to deepen cooperation with the University of Hong Kong
On October 14, Gtrontec CEO Jun He attended HKU Innovation Week 2026, participated in the launch ceremony of the Strategic Partnership Alliance for Research and Commercialization (SPARC) and a luncheon exchange, and was interviewed by the Hong Kong Economic Times. By joining SPARC, Gtrontec has further expanded its industry-academia-research collaboration with HKU on top of co-building a Joint Industrial AI Lab.
This year's Innovation Week showcased over 120 research outcomes, focusing on bringing research outcomes to market. SPARC, launched at the same time, brings together more than 30 enterprises and institutions to provide a platform for collaborative research and application of outcomes. Gtrontec will bring technical needs from manufacturing sites into this network, hoping to combine HKU's research strengths to drive industrial AI to solve real production problems.
The cooperation began in April 2025. Gtrontec and HKU signed an agreement to co-build a Joint Industrial AI Lab, planning to invest tens of millions of Hong Kong dollars over five years to support construction and operation. Research directions cover supply chain operations optimization, AMHS intelligent material handling scheduling, agents and hyper-automation, and AI large models and industrial big data platforms. The five-year cooperation arrangement provides a foundation for sustained investment in industrial technology topics that require repeated research, validation, and improvement.
The first R&D project defined by both parties focuses on the AMHS automated material handling system, aiming to achieve a breakthrough in AI algorithms for scheduling thousands of OHT overhead hoist transports. In semiconductor fabs, overhead hoist transports handle material handling tasks, and task allocation and path coordination must match production rhythm. When a large number of devices operate simultaneously, reducing waiting and improving overall efficiency requires understanding both algorithms and production constraints. HKU's operations optimization research and Gtrontec's engineering experience are complementary on these specific issues.
Having long been rooted in pan-semiconductor manufacturing sites, Gtrontec has accumulated deep understanding of equipment, processes, and production flows, and built over 30,000 industrial mechanism and data models. These accumulations provide a basis for handling equipment abnormalities, analyzing quality issues, and optimizing production arrangements, and also enable the company to participate in joint research with top universities with clear industrial needs. Recently, Gtrontec was positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the IDC MarketScape: China Industrial AI and Agent Platform 2026 Vendor Assessment, and its industrial AI implementation capabilities have gained industry recognition.
Joining SPARC this time expands channels for the two parties to deepen joint R&D, technical exchange, and talent cooperation, and continues the layout of being based in Hong Kong, serving China, and reaching globally that was established when the Joint Industrial AI Lab was co-built. Gtrontec will continue to use Hong Kong as one of its R&D bases and a fulcrum connecting to overseas markets, combining HKU's research strengths with its own manufacturing experience to promote the R&D and application of industrial AI and supply chain management technologies, and expand to overseas regions such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East, serving manufacturing enterprises' needs to build intelligent factories across borders and improve supply chain resilience. Through continuous R&D investment and industrial resource connection, Gtrontec will work with HKU to explore the application of research outcomes in global manufacturing and help Hong Kong develop into an international supply chain management hub.
