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(23 March 2026) The Hong Kong and China Gas Company Limited (“Towngas”), together with a number of industry-leading enterprises and institutions, announced the official launch of the Hong Kong RISC-V Alliance (HKRVA) (“Alliance”). Building on this foundation, the Alliance will actively invite and collaborate with other stakeholders in the next phase to advance its development, jointly build the RISC-V ecosystem, and deliver benefits for all parties.

The 2026-27 Budget highlighted that, through strategic investments and partnerships with leading enterprises, the Hong Kong Investment Corporation Limited (“HKIC”) has actively promoted the R&D and industrial implementation of RISC-V technology, including participation in the establishment of the Alliance to facilitate cross-sector cooperation and international collaboration among industry, academia and investment circles in the Greater Bay Area.

With Hong Kong as its core pivot, the Alliance aim at creating an open, collaborative, and international RISC-V industrial collaboration platform. Leveraging Hong Kong’s unique advantages, the Alliance will transcend geographical and industrial barriers, connect global chip design enterprises, terminal application manufacturers, research institutions, investment institutions, and standards-setting bodies, and build a collaboration network featuring “seamless information exchange, shared resources, and joint project execution”. It is committed to positioning Hong Kong as a key global hub for RISC-V industrial exchanges and collaboration.

Driven strategically by the HKIC, the Alliance is jointly founded by leading enterprises and institutions from various segments of the industrial ecosystem. The founding members are Towngas, Shanghai StarFive Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (“StarFive”), China Mobile Hong Kong Company Limited, xFusion Technologies International Co., Ltd., and Open Source International Technology Innovation Co., Limited. StarFive serves as the Alliance’s inaugural President unit. All members will work in synergy to connect the entire industrial chain, covering industrial investment, chip research and development (“R&D”), ecosystem building, and real-world application, forming a complete cycle from technology development to industrial application.

RISC-V technology is currently in a phase of rapid development. In its initial stage, the Alliance will focus on leveraging Hong Kong’s role as an international platform and application hub, including active involvement in the transformation of global chip technology. Together, the founding members will drive forward the following four areas of work:

First, Deepening International Linkage and Alignment with Global Standards. The Alliance will strengthen Hong Kong’s role as a bridge for facilitating in-depth cooperation between the Chinese Mainland and the international RISC-V community, and promoting technology exchange through the “going global” and “bringing in” strategies. It will seek to actively participate in setting international rules in this domain to enhance Hong Kong’s international influence in the open-source chip field.

Second, Exploring Cutting-Edge Technology and Unlocking New Applications. The Alliance will deepen industry-academia-research-investment collaboration, advance the underlying technologies of open-source chips, and increase Hong Kong’s technological contribution to the international open-source community. Earlier, through the partnership between the HKIC and StarFive, significant breakthroughs have been achieved in the R&D and implementation of RISC-V chips: successfully launched the world’s first RISC-V architecture data centre management chip, “Lion Rock Chip” in Hong Kong, and propelled the adoption of the “TGSE Chip”, a RISC-V smart IoT chip for smart city implementation in Hong Kong. Building on these achievements, the Alliance will collaborate with local universities to organise academic exchange activities and technical workshops, transforming cutting-edge laboratory research results into commercialised industrial solutions and shortening the path from R&D to commercialisation application. 

Third, Cross-Border Integration and Large-Scale Industrial Application. Guided by the “use case-driven and application-led” approach, the Alliance will seek to unlock the potential of RISC-V across diverse commercial and industrial contexts, while actively exploring, identifying, and advancing real-world use cases. It will establish an “Application Demonstration Zone” to pilot RISC-V-based smart terminals or edge computing solutions, leveraging Hong Kong’s distinctive contexts such as smart city, smart energy, and fintech.

Fourth, Professional Education and Talent Cultivation. The Alliance will support the promotion of open-source technologies, by cultivating early interest among young people, and contribute to nurturing specialised talent to strengthen Hong Kong’s technology talent pool. At the university level, the Alliance will collaborate to offer RISC-V-related short-term courses or professional certificate programs, and support students in contributing to the open-source community. At the secondary school and introductory level, chip experience workshops and internship programs will be organised to spark young people’s interest in hardware design and open-source technologies. 

Ms Clara Chan, CEO of the HKIC, said, “The open-source nature of RISC-V provides an ideal and fertile ground for technological and product innovation. The HKIC will continue to uphold the principles of openness, collaboration, and mutual benefits, driving the development of an end-to-end ecosystem from chip design, packaging and testing, to scenario-based applications. With the establishment of the Hong Kong RISC-V Alliance, the HKIC will continue to leverage the guiding force of patient capital, bringing together leading enterprises across the industrial ecosystem to jointly build Hong Kong into a global hub for open-source chip R&D, talent cultivation, and application. Together, we will contribute ‘Hong Kong’s strengths’ to China’s self-reliance and self-improvement in science and technology and the prosperity of the global open-source ecosystem. In the next phase, the Alliance will actively invite and unite other stakeholders to participate, pooling collective expertise in building a robust RISC-V ecosystem.”

Mr Thomas Xu, CEO of StarFive and inaugural President of the Alliance, noted, “The launch of the Alliance marks a new stage of industrial collaboration for Hong Kong’s RISC-V ecosystem. All Alliance members, based on their respective positions in the industrial chain, will fully leverage the technological and commercial innovation advantages of RISC-V's open standards, to drive coordinated development across standards, core technologies, products and applications. As the inaugural President unit, StarFive will actively play its leading role, working alongside other members, research institutions and universities in Hong Kong, and connecting global industry, academia, research, investment resources, to build Hong Kong into a key hub that bridges the Chinese Mainland and the world and drives innovation in open-source chips.”

RISC-V is an open standard architecture based on Reduced Instruction Set Computer. Unlike traditional closed chip architectures (such as x86 and ARM), RISC-V features open-source, neutrality, modularity, and high scalability, allowing developers to customise freely for specific scenarios. It has now become the world’s third major underlying architecture, leading the global transformation of computing architectures. The development of this technology, combined with the power of artificial intelligence, is expected to accelerate R&D and manufacturing for a wider range of applications and terminal devices.

As the sole public utility among the founding members of the Alliance, Towngas aims to accelerate the Group’s digital transformation in smart energy, the Internet of Things (IoT), and smart home applications through its participation in promoting RISC V open source chip technology. The RISC V chip “TGSE Chip”, jointly developed by Towngas and StarFive, has already been successfully adopted in smart gas applications on the Chinese mainland and is now being progressively introduced into Hong Kong’s smart gas meters. Going forward, the Company will further apply RISC V technology to scenarios such as smart kitchens and smart homes, enhancing operational efficiency, strengthening data security, and delivering higher quality services to customers.

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