Differentiated Understanding
Each episode features a guest with a unique perspective on a critical issue, phenomenon, or business trend, helping listeners see things differently. The podcast is hosted by Grace Shao and is associated with the Substack publication aiproem.substack.com.
Episodes
Autonomous Computer Agents, Token Economics, and Dual Use-case of LLMs with Simular AI Ang Li
In this episode, I speak with Ang Li, co-founder and CEO of Simular AI, about the rise of computer use agents and his vision for computers that can increasingly do work on behalf of humans. We discuss why computer use matters beyond the current wave of API-based agents, particularly for the vast amount of enterprise work still carried out through legacy desktop software that was never designed to
DeepSeek’s fundraising, unique Chinese market ticks, and what’s ahead with The Information
Hello everyone, I've been on the road, so I'll be delaying this week’s written post and next week’s podcast episode. Apologies in advance.In this episode, I’m joined by Asia Bureau Chief Jing Yang and Senior Reporter Juro Osawa from The Information to unpack DeepSeek’s surprising shift toward external capital, its unique investor structure, and what its rapid revenue growth reveals about the econo
A closer look at the economics of the Chinese Iabs with Bernstein’s Robin Zhu
In this episode, I’m joined by Robin Zhu, one of the sharpest observers of China’s technology and AI landscape.We talk about some of the biggest names in Chinese AI, from Z.ai, Moonshot and DeepSeek to Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance. But rather than just looking at who has the biggest or most talked-about models, we get into what each company is actually good at, how they’re approaching the fronti
From 3D Design Software to Spatial Intelligence: Manycore’s Next Chapter
In this episode, I speak with Bei Shen, CFO of Manycore Tech, the Hangzhou-based company behind Kujiale in China and Coohom overseas. Manycore started as a cloud-based 3D design software company serving designers, furniture brands, retailers and property developers. Today, the company is expanding into spatial intelligence, using its 3D data, simulation capabilities and software to explore applica
China’s pragmatism, state-market hybrid, and how that shapes AI and capital with Baiguan’s Robert Wu
In this episode, I speak with Robert Wu, the founder and CEO of Baiguan . Our conversation focuses on two questions that increasingly overlap: how AI is reshaping the business of information, and how China’s distinctive mix of pragmatism, markets and state involvement shapes the way new technologies get adopted and financed.We start with the professional data industry. As AI agents become a new or
Qoder joins again to talk about China's workplace agent war. Redirected focus on EMEA & APAC
Show NotesHi all,Christian Hu from Alibaba’s Qoder joins the podcast again to talk about the fierce domestic workplace agent competition. For context, Anthropic and OpenAI have decided not to allow access to their models and products in Greater China; thus, the competition for models and agents is largely driven by domestic players. For workplace agents — coworker-style products — the most popular
From Sourcing Engine to Agentic Commerce with Alibaba's Accio Agent
In this episode, I speak with Ziwei Chen, product marketing lead for Accio Work at Alibaba.com, about Alibaba’s effort to turn decades of sourcing data and commerce know-how into an agentic business platform for small and medium-sized businesses. Accio began as an AI sourcing engine, but Accio Work is designed to support a broader workflow, from product strategy and supplier selection to store ope
The Future of Agentic Payments with Clink Founder Patrick Wu
In this episode, I spoke with Patrick Wu, Founder and CEO of Clink, about what payments need to look like in an agentic commerce world. Patrick previously worked on payments infrastructure at Amazon and AWS Payments, and later led global payments at Temu as the company expanded market by market. His view is that payments today are largely built for humans at checkout, but not yet for agents acting
Pony.ai’s Founder and CEO James Peng on What It Takes to Scale Robotaxis
When James Peng founded Pony.ai in 2016, many in Silicon Valley believed autonomous driving was only three to five years away. But he expected it would take at least a decade, because the challenge was never just teaching a car to drive. Commercialization also required regulatory approval, public trust, reliable fleet operations, and a cost structure that could support large-scale deployment. Ten
From Beauty Apps to AI Agents: Meitu’s CFO Gary Ngan on the Future of Visual AI
In this episode, I spoke with Gary Ngan, CFO of Meitu, about how the company is evolving from its roots in consumer photo editing into a broader AI-native visual creation platform across photo, video, design, and agents. For many investors, Meitu is still associated with beauty editing and selfie apps, but Gary frames the company today as an AI application company serving both leisure use cases an
Paul Triolo on Chinese labs makings chips, SMIC, Huawei and the importance of AI governance
Hi all, we’re back with the podcast. This is the perfect time for Paul Triolo to join us as he gives us a preview of the upcoming WAIC and walks us through some of the top-of-mind questions we have about China’s AI space right now. I do want to apologize for a bit of the echoing in the background; lesson learned to always use headphones going forward.In this episode, I speak with Paul Triolo, part
Future of mobility, a deep dive into the forces driving the Chinese EV revolution with Tu Le
Hi all, I’m really scared to even share this episode because the last time I recorded an episode with Kyle Chan and mentioned cars, I got ripped online. So I just want to emphasize again that for car enthusiasts, I AM NOT A CAR person. I am here to learn. Haha, ok now that I’ve made that disclaimer…Joining me today is the ever-so-knowledgeable Tu Le. He is the founder and managing director of Sino
Where does Europe fit in the so-called China-US AI race?
Joining me today is Alex Lu, who offers a unique perspective. Alex works at the intersection of three very different AI worlds: China, Europe, and enterprise transformation. Having spent more than a decade in France and now advising European companies on AI adoption (often Chinese models), he offers a perspective that is often missing from the broader AI conversation, which is typically framed as
China’s internet ecosystem, manufacturing base, batteries, EVs, robotics, and semiconductor becoming an AI-enabled industrial system
In this episode of Differentiated Understanding, I spoke with THE TP Huang, an independent China tech analyst known for his work on fintech, EVs, batteries, AI, semiconductors, and the broader China industrial ecosystem.The conversation traces China’s technology evolution from the early internet era to the present. TP argues that China’s internet ecosystem was shaped by a combination of censorship
China's open-source ecosytem and the future of AI bootstrapping with ex-Hugging Face APAC head
Joining me today is Tiezhen Wang (Tom), formerly of Hugging Face, where he worked with researchers in China, Australia, South Korea, Japan and across APAC, to help make open-source models more discoverable, usable, and visible to the global developer community. In this conversation, Tiezhen explains why Hugging Face became the GitHub for models and why open source is not just a distribution mechan
Nathan Lambert Reflects on China’s AI Labs: DeepSeek, Open Models, and the 'Race' with the U.S.
Joining me today is Nathan Lambert, author of Interconnects AI and a post-training lead at the Allen Institute for AI. Nathan recently returned from a major tour of China’s leading AI labs, where he met with researchers and teams building some of the most impressive open models in the world.In this conversation, we discuss what Nathan saw on the ground: how Chinese AI labs differ from their U.S. c
AI x education, a contentious but unavoidable future. Designing tech for children with Dex's Reni Cao
I spoke with Reni Cao, the CEO and co-founder of Dex. Dex Camera is a language-learning camera for kids. Reni is a dad, a former product lead at YouTube, and on a mission to build technology that does good for kids and gives digital autonomy back to parents. We dive into his personal story from his high school days that drives his passion for AI, and why he believes the current education system is
There's more to Korea than just chips. TheVentures CIO on the country's AI stack
In this episode, I spoke to a leading South Korea VC, TheVentures’ CIO Ethan Cho. He argues that South Korea’s low fertility rate and aging population put pressure on Korea to be one of the world’s fastest adopters of AI technology, similar to its rapid embrace of high-speed internet in the early 2000s. While not a leader in foundational LLMs like the US or China, Korea’s strength lies in applicat
Assembled co-founder John Wang on building a AI native support system for enterprises
In this episode, I sit down with John Wang, the co-founder of Assembled, to explore how AI is revolutionizing customer support. Having transitioned from a Stripe engineer to an AI startup founder, John shares his unique insights into the evolution of support tools. We delve into how these tools have shifted from being mere cost centers to becoming strategic assets that enhance customer experiences
Matt Sheehan on China’s AI Policies: Employment, Anxiety, Safety, and State Priorities
Today, I’m joined by Matt Sheehan who writes this insightful newsletter. Matt is a senior fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He researches China’s AI ecosystem, Chinese tech policy, and how technology shapes the country’s political economy.Matt lived and worked in China from 2010 to 2016 and later led China tech research at the Paulson Institute’s MacroPo
Tencent's QClaw goes global, aims to serve the average consumer user, with PM Shuyu Zhang
Amid Anthropic’s success with coding products, many AI labs and companies have also tried to lean into that vertical. OpenAI has stepped back from courting consumers and shut down its video model division, Sora. Alibaba, meanwhile, has more recently begun releasing closed-weight proprietary models and is reportedly pushing the Qwen team to find clearer paths to monetization. The Chinese tech giant
Sovereign AI, Open Source, and the Gulf’s Big Bet with Interconnected Kevin Xu
Every panel on AI and geopolitics seems to default to the same cliché: “the US–China race.” In this episode of Differential Understanding, I wanted to sit with someone who has actually lived inside DC, Silicon Valley, and the US–China tech corridor, and ask whether that framing still makes sense.My guest is Kevin Xu, founder of Interconnected Capital – a global hedge fund focused on the picks and
EVs taking on AI OS and the Delivery War. The Chinese Tech Winners Beyond BAT with Alan Zhang
In this episode, I sit down with Alan Zhang (Principal & Portfolio Manager at Ox Capital Management) to map China’s tech landscape through an investor’s lens. We break down how Alibaba, Tencent, and ByteDance are approaching AI, and why the “AI OS” is the real endgame. Finally, we analyze what’s changing in China’s consumer internet, EV ecosystem, and embodied AI pipeline. We also unpack China’s d
Z.ai/ Zhipu: one of the first major LLM start-ups to go public. Competition with giants and aims for AGI
In this episode, I sit down with Zixuan Li, who leads the chat API and global partnerships at Z.ai, one of China’s leading LLM labs (one of the four tigers) and now one of the first to head toward an IPO. Z.ai started as THUDM, a Tsinghua data-mining lab best known in open-source circles for GLM and CogVideo, and has since grown into a model-as-a-service platform powering millions of devices and t
What the U.S. Misreads About China’s Tech Rise with Kyle Chan
In this episode, I sit down with Kyle Chan (Brookings Institution) to unpack the thinking behind his provocative New York Times op-ed, “In the Future, China Will Be Dominant, the U.S. Will Be Irrelevant.” We start with the DeepSeek moment and why it surprised the West, why it didn’t surprise many China-watchers, and why Kyle sees it as only “the tip of the iceberg.”From there, we zoom out into the
AI Governance From Brussels to Beijing: George Chen on APAC’s Different Path
Most AI policy conversations still orbit around Washington and Brussels, but Asia-Pacific is already writing a very different rulebook. In this episode, I talk with George Chen, Digital Partner at The Asia Group and former Meta policy executive, about how AI is actually being governed, built, and deployed across APAC, China, and the global south.George traces his own path from journalism to big te
Why American Investors Should Have a Pulse on China with James Wang
In this episode of Differentiated Understanding, I talk with James Wang, general partner at deep-tech fund Creative Ventures, author of What You Need to Know About AI: A Primer on Being Human in an Artificially Intelligent World, and writer of the newsletter Weighty Thoughts. James has sat on nearly every side of the table — Bridgewater investor, startup founder/CTO in healthcare, engineer at Goog
Unlocking the Future of Startups and Super Individuals with Bei Zhang
In this episode, I speak with Bei Zhang, VP of Growth at Tanka, about the company’s mission to empower AI-native founders. The conversation covers why persistent, organization-wide memory is the missing ingredient for truly proactive agents, how Tanka stitches together chat, email, calendars, and documents into a single “remembering” teammate, and what agentic work could look like over the next 12
From Coal to Compute: China’s Grid Meets the AI Boom with David Fishman
David Fishman is a Principal at The Lantau Group who advises on energy development, infrastructure, and electricity markets across East Asia, with a focus on China. His expertise spans power-sector policy and economics, grid development, project bankability, and transaction support, backed by regulatory and economic intelligence across China’s solar, wind, coal, nuclear, hydro, transmission, and p
Is this the Cursor of China? Alibaba's Qoder team on agentic coding, Qwen, and international ambitions
“So our philosophy here is to integrate the globally optimal models and give users the best results.” — Hang Yu, Head of Product at Qoder, AlibabaThis is the first episode in a series of founder and builder dispatches, featuring interviews with the people creating the future. If you are a founder, builder, or investor in this space and would like to share your story, please reach out.Today, I am j
E-Commerce Evolution: AI and Live Streaming in Retail, with former Alibaba executive Sharon Gai
“Retail is simple. Retail is just how do you sell something, and make someone’s eye light up. AI or any technology you add to it, is just another way to do that,” — Sharon Gai, retail tech and AI expert, former Alibaba executive.Joining me today is Sharon Gai, an expert in AI and innovation, with a focus on retail. She was an executive at Alibaba, where she advised brands and heads of state in cra
The Visible Hand: China's Strategic Economic Planning with EIU Chim Lee
Joining me today is Chim Lee, Senior Analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. He works in EIU’s China and Asia teams, and is based in the company’s Beijing and Hong Kong offices.He leads EIU’s research on China’s advanced technologies, Climate change, Energy, Semiconductors, and Artificial intelligence, and also covers how China’s industrial policies link up with the broader diplomatic and macr
AI Plus: Understanding the Intersection of AI and Economic Growth
In this conversation, I spoke with Tom Nunlist from policy consultancy Trivium, about China’s AI Plus plan and its implications for the economy and society. We discussed the role of digital infrastructure in AI adoption, the transformation of production relations, demographic challenges, and the government’s role in connecting academia and industry. The conversation also covers the complexities of
China vs. US: Tech Optimism vs. Doomism and Education System Differences with Natalia Cote-Munoz
Joining me today is Natalia Cote-Munoz, a policy strategist, writer, and International Strategy Forum (ISF) Fellow— a program by Schmidt Futures that supports rising leaders at the intersection of geopolitics, technology, and public service. Natalia has served in the U.S. State Department, leading foreign policy think tanks and crisis diplomacy roles. She is a graduate of the Harvard Kennedy Schoo
Capital and Distribution in AI, and the Rise of Neoclouds with Kevin Zhang
Kevin is an investor at a family office, where he leads AI investments across asset classes. His career has spanned roles as a venture capitalist, startup founder, and software engineer, with experience in both Silicon Valley and New York, before moving to Asia. He brings deep technical and product expertise across domains from machine learning to enterprise software. In his spare time, Kevin writ
Chinese internet darlings, the decoupled VC sector, and open-source leaders, with Jing Yang, Asia Editor of The Information
In this conversation, Jing Yang, Asia Bureau Chief of The Information, a former WSJ reporter, discusses the evolution of China's tech landscape over the past decade.We explore the corporate strategy and positioning differences between established tech giants like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent and newer entrants like Pinduoduo and Shein. Jing also talks about her reporting on Shein and Temu and their
The Rapid Evolution of China's Tech Sector & an Insider Look Into the AI Startup World with Wency Chen
In this episode, Wency delves into the details of her journey, from working at a leading Chinese-language tech publication to joining an international VC firm, and now writing about China’s AI and tech ecosystem for a global audience. Wency provides a holistic view of the different players from the LLM startups to the leaders in consumer applications and to the rising domestic Nvidia challengers.
Investment themes from China's internet era to AI era with Tech Buzz China Founder Rui Ma
For long-term China tech investors and journalists, she needs no introduction. Rui Ma is a leading voice in the space, a trusted China internet analyst. She is the founder of TechBuzz China. She began her career in traditional finance and then early-stage investing. In recent years, she has advised AI companies and established herself as the founder of an AI school to prepare the next generation f
Navigating the AI Revolution in Organizations with Diana Wu David
Joining me today is Diana Wu David, Director of Futures at ServiceNow. Diana is ranked number #2 futurist in the world by Global Gurus. She ran her own business for nearly a decade called Future Proof Lab where she worked with C-suite executives and boards to help them create future-focused, resilient organizations. She is an expert in guiding professionals and leaders in this ever-evolving busine
China’s AI and Tech Diplomacy with Professor Brian Wong
Dr. Brian Wong is a HKU-100 Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong. His research examines the ethics and dynamics of authoritarian regimes and their foreign policies, historical and colonial injustices, and the intersection of geopolitics, political and moral philosophy, and technology. At HKU, he serves as a Fellow at the Centre on Contemporary China and the World, sits
China's Supply Chain Advantages' Impact on its AI and Tech Development with Cameron Johnson
Today we speak to Cameron Johnson, who delves into the complexities of global supply chains, particularly focusing on the dynamics between the US and China. We explore the implications of trade policies, the evolving role of Asian countries in manufacturing, and the intersection of AI and technology with supply chain management. Cameron shares insights from his extensive experience in the field, h
China vs. Silicon Valley: AI & Tech Culture with Jasmine Sun
Welcome to the first episode of Differentiated Understanding. Today we speak to Jasmine Sun, and we dive into everything from her recent trip to China, covering China as an ABC, how the capital in China vs. Silicon Valley shapes the markets, and talent flow.Every episode, I bring in a guest with a unique point of view on a critical matter, phenomenon, or business trend—someone who can help us see
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