Innovation Fund for Technology-Based Firms (Innofund / 创新基金)

Innovation Fund for Technology-Based Firms, or Innofund, was the State Council-backed early-stage support route inside Torch Center for technology-based SMEs. It was created in 1999 and aimed at firms that were still too early for ordinary commercial capital. The program used grants, loan interest subsidies, and equity investment, with support sizes in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars equivalent for selected projects. Its niche was early product development, where the technical case existed but commercial traction was still thin. The mix of tools gave it a place between laboratory work and later industrial finance, and it was a bridge for founders trying to move from proof of concept into first market tests. Innofund ended in 2014, and its functions were absorbed into later national science and technology funding arrangements rather than kept as a live Torch Center program. It is therefore best read as a closed historical route, useful for understanding China's earlier SME innovation finance model rather than for current applications.

No upcoming rounds verified. Cadence: Annual.