The current new round of technological revolution is accelerating, and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and blockchain are having a profound impact on the financial industry. Who needs whom in finance and technology? At the 2025 Qingdao Venture Capital Conference, hosted by the Qingdao Municipal People's Government and organized by the Qingdao Municipal Financial Office and the Qingdao Municipal Finance Bureau, the deep integration of technology and finance became one of the hot topics. The attendees believe that in the process of promoting social change through technologies represented by artificial intelligence, the relationship between finance and technology should be that finance provides full lifecycle support for technological development, and technological progress then feeds back and empowers finance, making it more efficient and accurate, and better supporting technological innovation. The two complement and promote each other. Financial support for science and technology innovation and the promotion of technological development cannot be separated from the assistance of finance. Liu Xiaochun, Vice President of Shanghai New Financial Research Institute, said that it is difficult to achieve technology without capital investment, and the growth path of science and technology innovation enterprises is very difficult, requiring a large amount of capital investment in the early stage. The 2025 Annual White Paper on Venture Capital and Venture Capital Industry (hereinafter referred to as the White Paper) released at the conference shows that China's venture capital and venture capital industry is standing at a historic turning point, transforming from the traditional pattern dominated by consumer Internet and business model innovation to a new paradigm centered on "hard technology". Under policy support, the Chinese venture capital industry is facing unprecedented opportunities. The supply chain restructuring caused by technological competition has created huge market opportunities for domestic substitution and independent innovation, and a large number of Chinese enterprises are achieving breakthroughs in the "bottleneck" technology field. From the perspective of investment direction, capital is highly focused on the "hard technology" field that conforms to the national strategic direction. The electronic information industry leads the market with 1569 investments and a total investment scale of 144.448 billion yuan, followed closely by advanced manufacturing and healthcare. In the process of technological innovation industrialization, especially in the early stages of 'from 0 to 1', the traditional financial system is difficult to effectively match demand. ”Former Vice Chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, Chen Wenhui, stated that China is an indirect financing system dominated by commercial banks, with funds mainly concentrated in the banking system. However, the form of financial services varies at different times. In the current stage of the development of new quality productivity, equity investment funds have become an important institutional arrangement, and in the future, government investment funds and corporate venture capital will play important roles. Currently, the government is building a more comprehensive policy support system. A policy support system covering the entire chain of "fundraising, investment management, and withdrawal" is taking shape, from the State Council's release of the "17 Articles on Venture Capital" to the introduction of risk compensation mechanisms by local governments. The White Paper shows that the systematic construction of a patient capital system has become a policy priority, and the government guides funds to strengthen patient capital through long-term survival design, fault-tolerant mechanisms, and phased investment strategies. The diversified innovation of exit channels is also worth paying attention to. The "1+6" policy measures of the Science and Technology Innovation Board and the third set of standards of the Growth Enterprise Market are accelerating their implementation, supporting high-quality unprofitable enterprises to go public for financing; The development of private equity secondary market trading and private equity secondary market funds is worth paying attention to, and the pilot program for the transfer of private equity and venture capital shares is deepening and solidifying. How will China's venture capital industry develop next? The White Paper proposes three paths: first, deep verticalization, shifting from pursuing platform based companies to focusing on "hidden champions" in specific industries, strengthening professional capacity building and post investment empowerment; The second is international restructuring, seeking new opportunities for value creation in the global industrial chain restructuring, and seizing the historical opportunity of enterprises' "going global"; The third is the systematization of the ecosystem, through the deep integration of industry, academia, research, and finance, to build a more complete innovation ecological chain and promote the integration of digital technology to empower production and finance. The attending scholars believe that the depth and breadth of this round of transformation will determine whether China's venture capital industry can maintain its global competitive advantage in the new technology cycle. For investment institutions, venture capital firms that truly understand the logic of the industry, possess long-term patience, and are willing to take risks will become the backbone of promoting high-quality development of the Chinese economy. The empowerment of financial technology progress through technology requires application scenarios, and the financial sector is a very important application scenario. Yin Yanlin, former deputy director of the Office of the Central Financial and Economic Commission, stated that in recent years, new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, and blockchain have been widely applied in the financial industry, reshaping the underlying logic of the industry in all aspects. The boundaries of financial services are constantly expanding, giving rise to numerous new financial formats and presenting remarkable new trends. Intelligence, greenness, digitization, and internationalization are the trends of financial modernization. ”Yin Yanlin believes that in terms of financial intelligence, banks, insurance companies, securities companies, and fintech institutions in China are currently deploying intelligent customer service systems. Among the top ten global patent applications for intelligent customer service, Chinese enterprises account for 6 seats and 65% of patent applications. Artificial intelligence has been deeply applied in areas such as risk control and customer service, and the replacement rate of intelligent customer service in financial institutions has risen to 70%. Some institutions have built intelligent investment advisory systems, which will cover 80% of high net worth individuals, and the scale of intelligent investment advisory management will exceed 5 trillion yuan. Nowadays, AI empowerment is accelerating, and technologies such as generative AI are deeply penetrating into various processes of financial business such as intelligent investment research, risk control, compliance inspection, and customer service. For example, intelligent systems can replace manual labor to complete repetitive tasks quickly and accurately, while intelligent agents assist users in completing business operations such as transfers, bill payments, transactions, and investments; Big data analysis evaluates customer credit risk more accurately and improves credit approval efficiency; The blockchain technology ensures the authenticity and reliability of transactions, and its applications in cross-border payments, supply chain finance, digital asset transactions, and other fields continue to deepen. Li Bo, Senior Vice President of JD Group and President of JD Technology's Financial Technology Division, believes that emerging technologies have brought tremendous changes to daily life and financial services. In recent years, the financial industry has been continuously exploring the integration of big model technology and financial business. We have developed a universal credit intelligent agent to address the pain points of financing difficulties for small and micro enterprises. By analyzing massive structured data, it enables enterprises that were previously difficult to obtain credit ratings to effectively obtain loans. For movable property financing, it can effectively identify and evaluate the value of various types of movable property, provide standardized services for traditional products that are difficult to evaluate, and provide new channels for small and medium-sized enterprises to activate assets. "Li Bo said that no matter how technology changes, the development goal is always to help reduce costs and increase efficiency in the industrial chain and supply chain, and bring new impetus to the development of the real economy. Looking at the digitalization of finance, Yin Yanlin stated that the development plan for financial technology clearly proposes to achieve a digitalization rate of over 85% for major financial institutions by 2027. China's digital finance industry continues to enrich, covering various businesses such as payment, credit, investment, insurance, and credit reporting, making digital payments a global leader. At present, China has become the largest market for global mobile payments, with over 1 billion users on mobile payment platforms and the highest penetration rate in the world. By 2024, the proportion of personal mobile banking users in China will reach 88%, and 93% of enterprises will have opened enterprise online banking. Technology empowerment is the driving force behind financial innovation, and technological iteration will continue to drive business innovation. Yin Yanlin believes that in order to promote innovation in the financial industry and lead new trends in financial development, it is necessary to encourage innovation in both financial institutions and technology companies, and support their collaborative innovation. We need to continuously increase research and development investment, strengthen the application of new technologies, promote innovation in financial products and services, embed financial services into various aspects and links of economic and social development, and better meet the financing needs of different enterprises, groups, and projects. Technology can assist financial institutions in controlling and managing various risks, but it also brings new types of risks to financial institutions, such as the existence of artificial intelligence illusions, personal privacy security, data information security, network operation security, and other new risks. ”Liu Xiaochun stated that it must be recognized that digital technologies such as artificial intelligence can help us improve our risk management capabilities, but relying solely on technology for risk management is the biggest risk. Lu Jing, President and Vice Chairman of Standard Chartered Bank (China), believes that the potential for the application of artificial intelligence is enormous, with various scenarios blooming comprehensively, and its application ability in the banking industry is evident to all. However, artificial intelligence still faces the problem of insufficient accuracy in the context of bank operations, and cannot replace human labor on a large scale. There is still a big gap between artificial intelligence and human operation. Finance is an industry with strict requirements for security and credibility, and it is necessary to maintain the security of financial markets and data, and ensure the accuracy of account processing and records. ”Former Governor of Bank of China, Li Lihui, stated that the cornerstone of intelligent innovation in the financial industry is trustworthy, and it must be coordinated with security and efficiency to ensure that customers, markets, and governments can trust it. Firstly, high reliability is essential. Financial institutions deploying AI models must be equipped with advanced security technology tools that can resist various attacks and avoid occasional security risks. Finance needs to be able to restrain model illusions, prevent algorithm resonance, resist AI fraud, and achieve zero error accuracy. Secondly, it has interpretability of infrastructure, which can display complete reasoning paths and logic, and transform model behavior into understandable rules and visualized processes. Once again, it is necessary to clarify the management relationship between financial intelligent agents and financial customers. If there is a relationship between financial intelligent agents and customers in the future, the legal status of the intelligent agents must be clearly defined in law, and a system for evaluating and auditing financial intelligent agents must be established. Finally, in terms of economy, it can support strong financial technology deep cooperation, carry out industry level financial models and application software, provide financial model services and software services for small and medium-sized financial institutions, support reliable resource sharing in computing, jointly build a financial data ecosystem, and achieve efficient, low investment, and personalized digital financial innovation. Yin Yanlin believes that while new financial formats bring huge opportunities to the financial industry, they also bring a series of challenges, especially the prominent issues of data security and privacy protection. Financial institutions should strictly implement relevant policies and regulations and strengthen data security compliance supervision. At the same time, it is necessary to establish a regulatory system that adapts to new business formats, implement penetrating supervision, strengthen regulatory technology, and effectively enhance financial regulatory capabilities. (New Society)