China's version of the "Tech Fire Festival" debuts in Shanghai for the first time, with muShanghai creating a global geek "pop-up city"

null

From May 10 to June 6, 2026, the “Pop-up City” experiment organized by muShanghai kicked off in Shanghai. The experiment was initiated by the international open-source community The Mu and co-hosted by the Hongqiao Alibaba Center. Whether they are code-writing geeks, scientific researchers, or disruptors aiming for big changes, everyone will find their place here. The organizers hope to co-build a “parallel city” belonging to global geeks with the participants.

This 28-day experiment will gather developers, researchers, and entrepreneurs from over fifty countries worldwide to explore new possibilities for human-technology collaboration in the AI era.

Global innovation forces resonate in Shanghai

“My foreign friends who first came to China once said, ‘China is different from what I imagined. You must hold a The Mu here so the world can see the real China,’” recalled Sun, the initiator of muShanghai.

Since its launch, this experiment has attracted over 2,000 applications worldwide, with more than 800 passing the review of muShanghai. They are evenly distributed across the United States, Argentina, Canada, Japan, France, South Africa, the UK, and China, among more than fifty countries. The participant lineup is quite luxurious, ranging from former OpenAI engineers and founders of startups with millions of dollars in funding to core contributors of OpenClaw like Vincent Koc and Dave Morin. Top global tech talent will collide here across disciplines.

“Talent from China goes abroad, and international talent comes in—showing the world China, and ultimately, showing the world you,” Sun said. “We’ve set the stage; now we’re waiting for you to co-create.”

Four themed weeks to build an immersive innovation ecosystem

This 28-day “Tech Fire Festival” will unfold around four major themed weeks, with nearly 100 events in total. As a grand kickoff, ClawCon 2026 Shanghai will gather core contributors of OpenClaw worldwide to deeply discuss AI development trends and open-source ecosystem building.

AI Week (May 11–15): The Model Day will invite guests like kimi, Zhìpǔ, Ant Bailing, and Jiēyuè Xīngchén to share hardcore insights; the AI Safety session will gather global safety researchers and cryptographers; the Consumer App session will feature multimodal large models like MiniMax, ZPilot, and other behind-the-scenes teams of Chinese AI consumer products, dissecting product iteration logic on-site.

Biotechnology Week (May 18–22): Topics will progress from using technology to fight aging, to equipping labs with AI brains and robotic arms, and rewriting the fundamental code of the material world. There will also be a longevity experiment month led by Yale PhDs, where researchers will use themselves as test subjects to explore the boundaries of life sciences.

Robotics Week (May 25–29): Activities like robot fighting competitions, cyberpunk fashion shows, and hardware supply chain pop-ups will deliver visually stunning tech spectacles, showcasing cutting-edge achievements in robotics.

Culture Week (June 1–6): Moving beyond pure technology, topics will include future social forms, cyberpunk culture, and independent game creation, allowing technology and humanities to collide and fuse here.

Notably, every Friday during the first three weeks, large outdoor “Innovator Markets” will be held, and in the final week, exhibitions related to science and culture will take place. All participants can bring their projects for on-site display, testing, and交流, promoting rapid idea implementation and efficient collaboration. muShanghai will implement a Build in Public content mechanism throughout. We have designed a complete set of practices to encourage everyone to openly share projects, processes, problems, progress, and phased results, iterating through real feedback.

Hongqiao Alibaba Center, empowering the “First Stop for Entrepreneurship in China”

This month-long event is expected to reach over 100k people. As a co-host, Hongqiao Alibaba Center positions itself as an international innovation community and ecological development hub, leveraging space, commerce, culture, ecology, and government services to support overseas talents settling and developing in China.

The “Tech Fire Festival” initiator, The Mu, is the first international entrepreneurial community to settle in Hongqiao Alibaba Center and also one of the first international open-source合作社区 of Hongcheng OPC. The park’s leadership stated that Hongcheng OPC is committed to providing global entrepreneurs with one-stop services for coming to China. This partnership with The Mu is a key move in Hongqiao Alibaba Center’s strategy to build an international sci-tech innovation ecosystem.

This event is not only a cutting-edge technology gathering but also an important window for China’s innovation ecosystem to connect with the world.

The Mu: An open-source community “building cities from scratch” worldwide

Behind muShanghai is The Mu community, which has successfully operated in Argentina, San Francisco, and other locations.

In Argentina, the Crecimiento project has gathered 2,500 developers, incubated over 1,200 projects, and raised over $20 million; in San Francisco, The Mu helped transform Frontier Tower, a 16-story building, into a landmark of innovation, and hosted The Mu’s first offline developer meetup; it is also the only startup community for the 2025 Osaka Expo.

From planning to project approval took seven months, during which the muShanghai team overcame multiple challenges such as compliance reporting for foreign activities and resource network rebuilding. On the opening day,孔福安, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Executive Deputy Director of the Shanghai Hongqiao International Central Business District Management Committee, along with Lou Yongqi, President of Shanghai University of Engineering Science, Minhang District Vice District Chiefs Ke Xiaolin and Wang Ximei, and others attended. The muShanghai core team and co-creation partners from home and abroad jointly introduced the upcoming four weeks’ themes and exciting activities.

AI may be changing the world, but it cannot replace the infinite possibilities sparked when we meet and collide.

About The Mu

The Mu is a global community organization promoting open-source collaboration and innovation, dedicated to providing immersive co-creation spaces through the “Pop-up City” model, facilitating cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary knowledge sharing and technological breakthroughs.

About Hongqiao Alibaba Center

Located in the core area of Hongqiao International Open Hub, Hongqiao Alibaba Center is Alibaba Group’s key industrial office space in Shanghai. It aims to create a benchmark space service for global tech talents, supporting international developers, entrepreneurs, and enterprises coming to China. It offers not just office space but an ecosystem development plan tailored for international talents.