"20 Days Overseas, Earned What We Made All Last Year": How AI Products Go Global | BlueRun Ventures AI Annual Outlook
The Posture of the "Number One" and the "Silent Majority"
In 2026, if you ask an AI founder, "What's your target market?" the answer probably won't be a single country. It'll be "global."
For the previous generation of internet companies, globalization was an optional "second growth curve." For this generation of AI founders, it's become a mandatory question.
Moonshot AI President Yutong Zhang sees a clear driving force: "Plenty of companies overseas have already proven that AI commercialization isn't linear growth — it's exponential. Nothing this year, ten times next year, another ten times the year after." That kind of explosion signals real demand underneath.
At a more fundamental level, AI is flattening the world's language barriers. As Yuanli Intelligence founder Fan Zhang puts it, in the NLP era, processing different languages required entirely different technical approaches. Under the new AI paradigm, language is just one representation. The algorithmic capabilities and product know-how that Chinese teams have accumulated are inherently globally applicable.
What we're seeing, then, is a wholly new entrepreneurial landscape: companies registering on Day 1 with global ambitions; users spread across Egypt, Nigeria, and Denmark; robots collaborating with Mercedes-Benz on European factory floors; products being tested by 60-year-old camping enthusiasts in the United States...
These "born global" species — how do they lay out their initial strategy? What new needs and user profiles do they discover when they venture deep into foreign markets? And in 2026, how will they adjust the pace of their global expansion?
This is the third installment of BlueRun Ventures' annual AI outlook. We interviewed founders from portfolio companies including Moonshot AI, Galaxy Universal, and Yuanli Intelligence, attempting to piece together an AI globalization route map for 2026.
If you have fresh perspectives on AI and globalization, we'd love to hear from you in the comments.
Nearly every respondent gave the same answer: globalization is non-negotiable. But the logic behind it varied.
Moonshot AI President Yutong Zhang noted, "You should be thinking about overseas markets from Day 1 of founding." In 2025, Moonshot AI made a strategic pivot from closed-source to open-source, seeking to build its technical influence within the global technology community.
Going global has delivered remarkably positive results for Moonshot AI. According to media reports, less than a month after the K2.5 model launch, the company's revenue over a roughly 20-day period exceeded its total revenue for all of 2025; and overseas revenue has already surpassed domestic revenue.
Fan Zhang of Yuanli Intelligence believes that in the AI era, the world is flatter than ever before. "Under the AI paradigm, there are far more latent spaces beneath the surface, and language is just one representation. What this means is that the user behavior insights, product interaction knowledge, and underlying technologies we've developed in the Chinese market apply equally to global markets."
Jia Peng, CEO of Zhijian Dynamics, runs the numbers on cost: "Doing embodied intelligence means becoming productive force in the physical world. Hardware costs, data collection costs — if you're relying solely on the domestic market, the ROI simply doesn't work. The state of labor markets in Europe and America is enough to make embodied intelligence viable and profitable."
Wang Tao, founder of Sentin Robotics, focuses on market size. A longtime outdoor enthusiast who lived in the United States for years, he knows the pain points intimately: the U.S. outdoor population base reaches 120 million, and most go in "family groups" — parents with children and even elderly relatives in tow. These users' core need isn't extreme performance; it's a sense of safety and companionship. "North American compliance policies are strict, but once you clear certification, you've built a stable market moat."
Some companies' product DNA itself dictates a global perspective.
Whisper, founder of Trooly.AI, starts from customer needs: "Our clients are cross-border sellers and hard-tech companies. They want to research overseas users but face time-zone gaps and language barriers. A local U.S. merchant can grab someone off the street to chat; a Chinese client struggles to find an American user to interview." Solving this asymmetry is inherently a globalization business.
Whisper even offered a counterintuitive take: "Making money on Day 1 is actually a pretty dangerous signal — it means you're already late to the party."
If the previous generation of going-global companies (like DJI and ByteDance) represented "spillover" after succeeding in China, this cohort of AI companies is designed for global markets from the ground up. Their product logic, cost models, and technical architecture are all built on the premise that "the world is flat." This is the new baseline for AI-era founders.
When founders carry their "flat world" assumption into foreign markets, they discover that the world remains concrete and complex.
First, the complexity of content. Qiuqiu, founder of Daqian Technology, identifies the core challenge: "Content that's widely consumed in a country is fundamentally a reflection of social sentiment. You need to tap into 'universal emotions,' but you must also respect local context."
Her solution: "Find the 'greatest common divisor' of universal emotion, then do the heavy lifting on localized expression. That means truly understanding the people of that country — their state of mind, their feelings." This ability to deliver "global core + local expression" is becoming the core competitive advantage for content companies going global.
Second, the red line of data compliance. Yang Mengyang of Kaiwuji warns: "For cross-border business, training data must be 'clean.' When partnering with B2B clients, once data enters the model, you must ensure it's not used by third parties." Compliance isn't a nice-to-have; it's a ticket to play. Whisper of Trooly.AI has designed an extremely transparent compliance approach: "I tell clients directly — Trooly.AI doesn't do secondary training on client data. We pay extreme attention to our partners' strategic security."
On the BD and brand communications front, the only shortcut is "the founder's personal commitment."
Whisper is notably "radical" on this point: "For key accounts, it's unreasonable if the CEO doesn't show up." He's been grinding on his English presentation skills, preparing to take the stage himself.
The Moonshot AI team, meanwhile, has chosen to go deep in communities like Reddit. After releasing the K2 and K2.5 models, all three co-founders — Zhilin Yang, Xinzhou Zhou, and Yuxin Wu — hosted AMAs (Ask Me Anything) on Reddit, responding through the night to questions and skepticism from global users. This direct dialogue may build more credibility than any advertising ever could.
Facing complex global markets, no one has a standard answer. But in our conversations with founders, we identified five distinct strategic paths.
On Galaxy Universal's route map, China remains the foundation — home to the world's most complete supply chain and most complex industrial scenarios. Galaxy Universal founder He Wang notes: "What Galaxy Universal has accumulated in China isn't concepts. It's data沉淀 from large-scale real-world scenarios, continuous interaction with actual customers, and repeated refinement of product reliability."
Overseas, the strategy is "two-pronged": First, vertical penetration — in warehousing, logistics, and other domains where Galaxy Universal has established advantages, pushing deeper into foreign markets. Second, ecosystem — deep partnerships with global leaders like Bosch Group and Toyota, becoming part of their global ecosystems.
Sentin Robotics has chosen to "put down roots." Their 2026 plan is highly specific: establish partnerships with North American offline outdoor retail chains, invite core outdoor enthusiasts into beta testing, and build dedicated R&D testing scenarios. From R&D to testing to sales, they're completing a full localization闭环.
Hillbot's posture is "probing." Founder Zheng Han explains: "We'll actively prepare, but strategically we'll be cautious — first feeling out where the boundaries of collaboration with overseas companies lie." He admits he wants to observe when global conditions might reach a kind of "tacit stability." "Though this era hasn't left us with many choices, we have to at least try — try to build a truly global company."
DINQ's keyword is "sprint." For 2026, the team's task list is clear: complete the product development闭环 for both PC and mobile, then accelerate global market布局. For a company connecting global AI talent, once the product matures, scale becomes the moat.
Trooly.AI's strategy is "circular acceleration." Whisper's logic: use marketing to collect feedback, use feedback to iterate the product, then push forward again — accelerating in cycles. "If you're not delivering something new, you're just wasting the efficiency of the business world," he says. "Your company shouldn't exist." In his view, globalization isn't a one-time conquest; it's round after round of cognitive iteration.
No single strategy is the right answer. Every company can become truly global in its own way.
Once these companies embark on their global journeys, what they see isn't an abstract market — it's specific individuals. These user profiles are reshaping founders' understanding of "AI users."
Kelvin Sun, co-founder of DINQ, shared a striking discovery: "We used to assume that only 'Haidian District and the Bay Area' were doing AI. But on the DINQ platform, users come from Egypt, Nigeria, Denmark, New Zealand... many not even 18 yet." They're concrete young people "building AI," using AI to make a living. They don't care which country made the model; they care whether it solves their actual problems.
Sam Gao, co-founder of DINQ, added: "Not every company needs to hire a researcher on a multimillion-yuan salary. Finding someone who understands agents and can embed AI into workflows — that already solves most pain points."
Whisper of Trooly.AI observed a difference in habits: "Overseas users are extremely skilled at using tools. When they encounter problems with a product, they'll search for information and figure out solutions themselves."
In embodied intelligence, Zheng Han of Hillbot offered a counterintuitive view: "China's factory labor efficiency is already quite high; the optimization space left for robots may not be that large. Overseas, by contrast, with higher labor costs and more room for efficiency gains, is better suited for experimenting with new embodied technologies and testing how much efficiency gain the technology can actually deliver."
He Wang of Galaxy Universal observed that mature overseas markets face more severe aging and labor shortage problems than China. The demand is real. The key is who can actually deliver problem-solving capability in the physical world.
And Wang Tao of Sentin Robotics is himself the archetypal user of his company's product. As an outdoor enthusiast, he often spends weekends with over ten kilograms of gear on his back, gripping the leash of an excited, running child. So he decided to build a robot that can both carry loads and provide interactive companionship, solving the pain points of outdoor recreation.
In product research, Wang Tao discovered two overlooked groups: women campers aged 30-40, who care more about the robot's safety (collision avoidance) and convenience (assisted packing); and outdoor enthusiasts over 60, who need the robot's load-carrying function and also want relief from the loneliness of being outdoors. Both groups also value interactivity. These needs haven't been fully explored domestically, but in mature overseas consumer markets, they already constitute细分赛道 with extremely strong willingness to pay.
In the "blue ocean" of the global AI market, these Chinese companies are serving the "silent majority" — Egyptian teenagers, Danish technicians, American seniors. Perhaps they are the true destination that AI needs to reach.
As a fund with a global vision, BlueRun Ventures looks forward to exploring the "new continent" of the AI era alongside more founders.
🎙️ The AI New Continent in Your Eyes 🎙️ The article mentions that AI is serving the "silent majority" — Egyptian teenagers, Danish technicians, American seniors. Have you encountered any unexpected AI users? What interesting things are they doing with AI?
Share your vision of the AI new continent in the comments. Through March 15, we'll select five readers with "unique perspectives" to receive a special BlueRun gift~
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