Shanghai Shibei Hi-Tech Co launched an innovation center on May 6 at Stanford University, marking a step in their collaboration with the Silicon Valley of the United States.

"The innovation center will provide a channel for promoting Sino-US exchanges in research, industry, talents and capital," said Liu Qinyu, vice-general manager of the high-tech industrial park located in the north of Shanghai.

"It will facilitate Shanghai's big data industry development as well as the city's plan to develop into a technological innovation center with global influence.

"The fast development of big data in China needs a large amount of talents in this area, and the state-of-the-art technology and research on big data in the US will greatly assist the development of China's big data market," she added.

Liu also noted that the center will create a platform that allows Chinese companies to explore the overseas market while channeling high-end innovative technology and talents to Shanghai.

According to Liu, the innovation center in the US will be focused on technological research and development, materialization of research findings, talent sharing and exchange, industrial incubation and financing services, as well as market cooperation and exchange.

Chen Mingbo, director of the Shanghai Commission of Economy and Information Technology, said that this cooperation between Shanghai and Silicon Valley, a world-renowned tech hub, "will surely have huge and positive impact towards the two areas' development in big data industry's technological innovation, materialization and development."

Shanghai plans to achieve a series of tech advancements by 2020.

They include making more than 3,000 data sets from government service websites available to the public, establishing three big data bases, having 50 key enterprises focused on big data and raising the core industrial value of big data to 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion).

Approved by the National Development and Reform Commission in February, the National Engineering Laboratory for Big Data Distribution and Exchange Technologies was launched by Shanghai Data Exchange Corp in March.

The laboratory's preliminary goals include realizing open access of government data, government-enterprise data fusion and data trade among enterprises.

"The application of big data will bring about huge economic returns," said Tang Qifeng, CEO of Shanghai Data Exchange Corp, who is also councilor of the newly-launched lab.

"If all data in 2016 are completely used, that would create about 10 trillion yuan in revenue."