Abstract：As a strategic emerging industry, the low-altitude economy serves as a key focal point for developing new quality productive forces and driving economic transformation and upgrading. Traditional capital, constrained by its limitations such as the pursuit of short-term returns and quick profits, struggles to meet the long-term funding needs of the low-altitude economy. There is an urgent need for patient capital to leverage its advantages in risk resilience, long-term commitment, and forward-looking vision to provide robust support for the growth and expansion of the low-altitude economy. The theoretical logic of patient capital empowering the low-altitude economy is reflected in three aspects: stimulating corporate innovation vitality by bridging funding gaps and mitigating the negative effects of technology spillovers; facilitating cross-chain resource integration in the low-altitude economy by optimizing the allocation of factors such as capital, talent, and data; and ensuring the implementation and refinement of policies for the low-altitude economy by leveraging policy guidance. In practice, however, the empowering effect of patient capital on the low-altitude economy is undermined by three challenges: insufficient supply of patient capital, which restricts the innovation efficiency of the low-altitude economy; information asymmetry in patient capital, which constrains the allocation of factors in the low-altitude economy; and uneven regional development of patient capital, which hampers the promotion of policies for the low-altitude economy. Moving forward, efforts should focus on three key directions to optimize the pathways through which patient capital empowers the low-altitude economy, thereby providing solid support for accelerating the construction of China’s modern industrial system: first, smoothing the supply cycle of patient capital to stimulate innovation vitality in the low-altitude economy; second, breaking down information barriers in patient capital to unlock the value of factors in the low-altitude economy; and third, optimizing the spatial distribution of patient capital to address gaps in policies for the low-altitude economy.
2025, Vol. 42 
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