Since the beginning of this year, the A-share IPO market has achieved both rising volume and improving quality, with hard-tech enterprises emerging as the main force. Wind data shows that in the first three quarters, a total of 123 new stocks listed on the A-share market. Among them, 119 came from strategic emerging industries such as new materials, next-generation information technology, and high-end equipment manufacturing, accounting for approximately 97% of the total, with an average first-day gain of nearly 280%.

Viewed through this set of figures, the capital market is becoming a key platform for cultivating new quality productive forces, broadening financing channels for science and innovation enterprises, and powerfully driving the growth of emerging industries. At the same time, the market's positive pricing of sci-tech innovation stocks also reflects, to a certain extent, capital's confidence in the development prospects of new quality productive forces, helping to channel more resources toward the field of technological innovation.

In recent years, the capital market has laid out its strategic planning around serving the real economy and supporting technological innovation, effectively leveraging its three core functions of direct financing, price discovery, and resource allocation to provide full-lifecycle funding support for sci-tech innovation enterprises. A multi-dimensional "seedling cultivation" mechanism continues to help new shoots of emerging industries break through the soil and thrive, promoting the development of new quality productive forces.

First, leveraging the direct financing function to provide risk-appropriate long-term capital for technological innovation. As an important form of direct financing, equity financing requires no repayment of principal or interest, with investors and enterprises sharing both risks and returns. It can accommodate R&D uncertainty and support long-cycle investment, making it naturally suited to the characteristics of sci-tech innovation enterprises—heavy R&D investment and long return cycles. This logic also runs through the design of diverse and inclusive listing standards. The capital market has established multi-tiered and inclusive listing standards, with the STAR Market, ChiNext, and Beijing Stock Exchange developing in a differentiated yet complementary manner, providing financing channels for sci-tech innovation enterprises at different development stages with different growth characteristics. Although each board has its own focus, the direction of serving emerging industries remains consistent. Taking the STAR Market as an example, the scope of application of the fifth set of listing standards has been continuously broadened, extending from biomedicine to more emerging industry fields such as artificial intelligence, commercial aerospace, and the low-altitude economy, enabling long-cycle projects to obtain matching funding support. After sci-tech innovation enterprises go public, refinancing tools such as private placements and convertible bonds follow in succession, forming a relay of long-term capital support.

Second, leveraging the price discovery function to identify hard-tech value through market-based pricing. Through public trading and full competition, the capital market aggregates dispersed information about a company's technological prospects, industry space, and team capabilities into relatively fair pricing, forming price signals for hard-tech enterprises with high technological barriers and difficult valuations, helping capital identify innovation value and form clear expectations, thereby guiding more funds toward innovation fields. Active pricing in the secondary market provides clear exit expectations for venture capital in the primary market. Venture capital can exit smoothly and recoup funds, then reinvest in early-stage projects, forming a virtuous cycle of "investment—exit—reinvestment." The primary and secondary markets thereby become linked, positive expectations are continuously reinforced, and venture capital can circulate sustainably.

Third, leveraging the resource allocation function to drive innovation factors toward emerging industries. Through a survival-of-the-fittest screening mechanism, the capital market pushes innovation resources to concentrate in enterprises with leading technology and self-controllable capabilities, accelerates the clearing of inefficient production capacity, and helps emerging industries improve quality and efficiency. On this basis, mergers and acquisitions further play the role of industrial integration, supporting advantageous enterprises to consolidate upstream and downstream resources, fill shortcomings in key industrial links, accelerate technological iteration and large-scale application, promote industrial transformation and upgrading, and advance the development of new quality productive forces.

Of course, listing does not mean a company necessarily has sufficient investment value—rather, it hands the choice to the market. Whether an enterprise can obtain sustained funding support ultimately depends on whether its technological strength, growth prospects, and governance standards can withstand market testing. Only enterprises with genuine innovation capabilities can withstand market screening and grow stronger with the power of capital, thereby driving emerging industries to achieve high-quality development. It can be foreseen that as the market screening mechanism continues to function, the "seedling cultivation" effect of the capital market will keep emerging, helping sci-tech innovation enterprises grow from "new shoots" into "tall trees" and driving emerging industries to gather into powerful clusters.