Held on the Alibaba Hongqiao campus in MinHang. NIO weekly factory visits, Frank Ji's longevity week, AI Security Day at Alibaba HQ, embodied-AI supply-chain matching. Drop in for a day, a week, or the full month.
One ticket. Full month access. No upsells.
Be clear-eyed about what you need to arrange yourself.
Each week features dedicated programming, company visits, and builders from that vertical. Attend any track — no need to specialize.
AI Security Day at Alibaba HQ (Phala, AI Safety Hub, Social Layer, Wiseport, Roost). Large-model meet-up, AI-applications session, OpenClaw demo night, agent-coordination experiments, Chinese B2B sales without guanxi. Builders shipping with both Chinese and Western model ecosystems.
Frank Ji + BuddySphinx run a five-day longevity arc on mubio.chicken-dice.me: bio-age & interventions Mon, AI for future health Tue, green bio-health Wed, intelligent care hardware Thu, open flow forum Fri. Plus BioBloom hackathon, cyber-longevity quantified-self track, blood drive.
Embodied-AI supply-chain matching led by Aili Liu (The Future Factory). Robotics hackathon. Human-robot creative workshops. NIO EV factory visit on Thursday. The side of AI that walks, drives, and picks things up.
Generative tea gatherings, AI Childlike Creator Lab, Wisdom Card workshops, Future Broadcasting, Life Card sessions, Ordinary Wonders gallery, Screenshots Faire. China's creative side, inside Alibaba's campus. Tencent and NetEase as the global giants you're meeting people from.
Yes, $149 for one day feels steep. For a week it's fair. For the full month it's a steal.
Most people come for 7–14 days. Pick the week (or weeks) that matter. Drop in. Drop out. Same ticket.
📅 Live schedule on Luma — opening ceremony, factory visits, hackathons, community calls. The muShanghai organizers publish every event there. See the full calendar on Luma →
Not a hotel ballroom. muShanghai takes over floors and spaces across the Alibaba HQ campus in Shanghai's Future Sci-Tech City for the entire month — a purpose-fit environment for builders who need to get real work done and run into the right people while doing it.
The Alibaba Shanghai HQ campus — muShanghai's home for the full month of May 2026.
The muShanghai campus layout. See the full venue guide →
The venue sits in the heart of China's tech ecosystem — near Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, inside the Alibaba HQ campus. Builders, engineers and operators from the companies below either work next door or come in for talks, tours and intros.
Within 10 minutes: Alibaba, ByteDance/TikTok, Tencent, NIO · Within 60 minutes: Huawei, Flexiv, NetEase, WuXi AppTec, Pharmaron · Within 2 hours: DeepSeek, Unitree, AstraZeneca China
Applications are rolling in from across the world. A sample of the orgs sending people:
Plus builders from Tsinghua · Shanghai Jiao Tong · CUHK-Shenzhen · NUS · ETH Zurich · Harvard, and founders from Network School and Frontier Tower.
Builders from across China, the US, EU and beyond. Here's what they wrote in their applications:
People who've been following China's tech scene remotely and hit a wall. They read the papers, track the repos, ship with Chinese models — but know there's a gap between following from afar and being embedded firsthand.
Builders in active co-founder search mode. Looking for Chinese manufacturing partners, distribution channels, or technical co-pilots. They want to leave with LOIs, not LinkedIn connections.
The velocity coming out of Chinese AI labs and hardware companies is staggering. People want to understand the culture, workflows, and decision-making behind it — not just the outputs.
Alumni from previous Mu events in Chiang Mai, Buenos Aires, and Accra who come back for the density: high-signal people, fast trust, real projects in days instead of months.
Applicants so far from Argentina, USA, China, Singapore, India, South Korea, France, Malaysia, Thailand, Kenya and more.
muShanghai is organized by The Mu, founded by Bohao Sun. The Mu has run pop-up city programs across Argentina, Thailand, Africa, Europe, and the Middle East before bringing the format to Shanghai.
This is their biggest one yet. Partners include the Shanghai MinHang government and Alibaba. The vision: a permanent Global Gateway for international builders in China.
Founded The Mu after running builder communities across four continents. Negotiated the MinHang government partnership and the Alibaba connection that made muShanghai possible at this scale.
Computational biology PhD. Built a biotech company from zero to $3M first round. Now connecting Western capital with Chinese biotech pipelines.
Designer and venue lead at The Mu for three years. Ran visual design and space planning across the global pop-up cities — now leading the muShanghai campus design and event production. The reliable executor behind what actually gets built on the ground.
Based between Shenzhen and Shanghai. I heard about muShanghai through a contact, flew to Shanghai to meet Sun, and ended up helping organize the international side. I write about what's actually happening in China's tech scene at First Foreigner.
I heard about muShanghai through a friend, flew to Shanghai to meet Sun, and ended up helping organize the whole thing. Here's the full story.
Read my storyIn 2024 the same team ran muBuenos Aires — a six-week pop-up city that brought 500+ builders to Argentina. It's where Crecimiento, the org now running the Aleph pop-up city series, was born.
Past Mu pop-ups. Buenos Aires & Accra, 2024.
Santi Cristobal, now MD of Crecimiento, on how it started:
“On April 28, 2024… during The Mu's pop-up city in the heart of Buenos Aires, a group of dreamers from across the globe came together to ignite something bold.”
Crecimiento then ran Aleph — later declared of Scientific, Technological, and Economic Interest by the Legislature of Buenos Aires City, with coverage in La Nación, The Defiant, and Cointelegraph.
Crecimiento (@crecimientoar), April 2026:
“This May, we're all heading to Shanghai. The entire Crecimiento team is very excited to see what @sunbh_eth and the @themu_xyz team are building with muShanghai.”
muShanghai is The Mu's next one — same founder, bigger partners (Shanghai Minhang government, Alibaba), and the first pop-up city of this scale inside mainland China.
Six foreigner-friendly hotels within walking distance of the Alibaba campus — from a 4-star European brand to budget Chinese chains under 400 RMB/night. Pricing, booking methods (self-booking with discount code or group-booking via muShanghai), platform tips, and the breakdown of each option live in the dedicated guide.
I'll send you what I learn on the ground in Shanghai — venue updates, who's coming, practical tips for China, and honest takes on whether this is worth your time. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
I'm Dominik. I help organize muShanghai and write about China at First Foreigner.
Answers from the organizers and the muShanghai community.