How young founders are reshaping China's tech industry

When DeepSeek emerged as one of the most closely watched names in global AI, and Unitree's humanoid robots appeared on China's Spring Festival Gala stage, many people focused on the products themselves.

But behind these breakout moments is another trend: a new generation of young Chinese founders moving into technology.

Unlike the internet entrepreneurs of the previous decade, many of today's Chinese tech founders are building companies in AI models, robotics and advanced manufacturing – industries that require long research cycles, engineering-heavy teams and large-scale industrial supply chains.

From DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng to Unitree Robotics founder Wang Xingxing and AgiBot co-founder Peng Zhihui, a growing number of entrepreneurs born in the 1990s are becoming central figures in China's next wave of technological innovation.

One of the most discussed names these years is Liang Wenfeng, founder of DeepSeek.

DeepSeek drew international attention after releasing its open-source AI models that delivered competitive performance at significantly lower training costs than many Western counterparts. The company's rapid rise also highlighted a broader shift in China's AI ecosystem: more young teams are focusing on core model architecture, engineering efficiency and open-source development rather than purely consumer-facing products. 

DeepSeek has continued to attract attention for its open-source model releases and long-context research. Its official Hugging Face page for DeepSeek-V4-Pro describes a preview model supporting a context length of one million tokens.

In robotics, another closely watched figure is Wang Xingxing, founder of Unitree Robotics.

Unitree first became known internationally for its quadruped robots, but is now rapidly expanding into humanoid robotics. This year, Wang revealed that Unitree aims to ship between 10,000 and 20,000 humanoid robots globally in 2026. He also showcased fully autonomous multi-robot coordination technology, allowing groups of robots to navigate and perform movements without external positioning systems. 

In a previous interview with CGTN, Wang said that AI-powered robots can improve industrial production efficiency and that humanoid robots are moving toward wider industrial and service applications.

Another representative entrepreneur is Peng Zhihui, widely known online as "Zhihui Jun" across China's social media platform. 

After gaining popularity for building experimental hardware projects online and later working at Huawei, Peng co-founded AgiBot, one of China's fastest-growing embodied AI startups.

AgiBot is focusing on humanoid robots and embodied intelligence systems designed for industrial and logistics scenarios. 

In March, AgiBot announced the rollout of its 10,000th embodied robot. Peng said the real test for humanoid robots is not whether they can perform isolated actions, but whether they can work continuously inside factories.  

For outside observers, the significance may go beyond any single company.

China is increasingly producing a generation of engineers and entrepreneurs who are not only participating in global technology industries, but also trying to shape the next generation of foundational technologies themselves.