The AI Smart Glasses Battle of a Hundred Players: A Conversation with the Current Frontrunner on Ditching Cameras and Making Their First Dollar | A Dialogue with Yongfeng Xia of Superhexa

What tradeoffs should a good pair of AI glasses make among functionality, aesthetics, and comfort? In the China market, is it a good bet to benchmark against Ray-Ban Meta, which has already proven itself in both sales and word-of-mouth? With the "hundred glasses war" now underway, who will emerge as the final winner?

This week, we welcome Yongfeng Xia, founder and CEO of Superhexa. Amid the fierce "hundred glasses war," Yongfeng and his team are far ahead — pioneers and pace-setters.

In August 2024, Superhexa launched the "Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses," a smart glasses product integrating eyewear and headphones, weighing from 30.7g (excluding lenses). Unlike many competitors benchmarking against Ray-Ban Meta, the Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses have no camera. In this episode, Yongfeng Xia explains in detail why he chose to build a camera-free AI smart glasses product as his company's first own-brand offering, the backstory connecting the Jiehuan AI Audio Glasses to his earlier products — the "MIJIA Glasses Camera" and "MIJIA Smart Audio Glasses" — and his real-time assessment of the "hundred glasses war" plus his read on where the intense competition is headed.

We also discussed his career journey — from lead writer at Business Value and co-founder of GeekPark, to joining Xiaomi and founding Superhexa — and how he now thinks about success and failure. We hope this offers something for everyone.

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From Media to Hardware Entrepreneur: Yongfeng Xia's Career Journey

🚥 Koji

Yongfeng, thank you so much for joining Crossing. Please start by briefly introducing yourself and Jiehuan.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Thanks, Koji.

I used to work in media — first at Business Value, then as a co-founder of GeekPark. Later, because I was fairly familiar with both the tech and internet circles and had some resource advantages, I got the opportunity to choose the direction I actually wanted to pursue — hardware products. So I joined Xiaomi early on, serving first as product manager for Xiaomi Router, then helping build the Xiaomi ecosystem and participating in investing in and incubating a series of companies. I also made some products I'm genuinely proud of.

By 2018, I moved to the smartphone division. I'd already made so many products by then and wanted to challenge myself with something I hadn't done before — and the crown jewel, naturally, was smartphones. I did a lot of research work there, and the last product I truly completed in depth was the Mi 10 Ultra, which I was quite satisfied with. After that, I left Xiaomi and founded my current company, Superhexa.

🚥 Koji

Had you already decided to make smart glasses at that point?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I actually thought bigger than that. Because life is short — you really can't do that many things. You can't expect to do something this year and then pull off something great next year too. Every endeavor deserves our respect for the time it takes.

So I started from "if I could only do one thing for the rest of my life, what would it be?" and thought about what I should do with my second half. I felt I might be approaching an opportunity where some terminal device could replace the smartphone as people's new go-to portable device. At the time, I believed that compared to our hands, the head sits closer to our sensory organs — all of a person's sensory organs, including the "computing center," are in the head. So Superhexa's vision is to become a company focused on head-worn smart hardware.

🚥 Ronghui

Could you elaborate on your mindset at the time?

After those tumultuous years of Xiaomi's rapid growth, when you were choosing a new direction in 2020 — you mentioned in Zhang Peng's livestream that you'd noticed people were replacing their smartphones less frequently, and you wanted to find a new platform to carry smartphone technology — what was your process for analyzing this opportunity?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Back then, in the phone industry we'd talk about replacement cycles — on average, people swapped phones every eight months. That was at the craziest peak. By the time I was working on phones, people were nearing 36 months between replacements.

There were many reasons behind this. Performance no longer needed huge leaps. Phone quality became more stable, better. Users' daily needs were already well-served by phones from two years prior.

But what I saw was that as the phone industry entered a stable phase, even slightly declining year by year, phones were actually supporting an enormous upstream technology base. Many technologies used in phones were ones other industries hadn't had access to before. As the pond shrinks, these technologies inevitably spill over.

This phenomenon of technology overflow — technology itself needs to find new hardware to carry it. Because every company behind these technologies needs to keep moving forward, and every technology needs to reproduce and expand. Not sure if I'm expressing this clearly, but I saw this as a major trend, one that I believed would ultimately land on head-worn wearable smart hardware.

🚥 Koji

After settling on the vision of head-worn wearable smart hardware, did you go straight to glasses? Did you consider smart earbuds, hats, or masks?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Never considered earbuds.

Because early on, there was already extensive discussion abroad about VR, AR, MR, XR. These technologies had gone through many iterations, but many efforts hadn't succeeded. Plus, we wanted to interact with the eyes from the start. The eyes are the most direct — whether toward the digital world or the physical world, they're crucial organs. So we positioned on glasses right away, so you could intuitively see things.

Then the question became: starting from the phone perspective, which components were mature enough to work well on the head? At the time, camera seemed like a good direction, so my first product was glasses-style first-person shooting camera. Meanwhile you'd see what you were shooting in real time right in front of your eyes — that was roughly the product.

Jiehuan's Market Breakthrough: Deep Partnership with the Traditional Eyewear Industry

🚥 Koji

In August 2024, Jiehuan held a solid launch event. It's been about half a year since then — what would you say are the most important developments?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

For Jiehuan, because we're also a Xiaomi ecosystem company with ongoing Xiaomi collaboration, our differentiation from Xiaomi's audio glasses comes down to a few points.

First, our software flexibility — the ability to quickly respond to AI's rapid, day-by-day evolution.

Second, as a glasses product, we can reach channels that traditional digital products can't — eyewear channels.

I believe the integrated offline user experience of fitting and service can't be replaced online. Jiehuan has received tremendous support from the entire eyewear industry — that's the biggest development.

Our store expansion has been extremely fast. Starting from our partnership with Baodao in late September last year, then Boshi, and many well-known domestic chains including Sam's Club — the speed and results exceeded my expectations. To date, we've expanded to over 800 offline stores, roughly 100-plus per month.

🚥 Koji

Why is the traditional eyewear industry willing to help you? Wouldn't they see you as "barbarians at the gate" trying to steal their lunch?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

From the traditional eyewear industry's perspective, they also believe eyewear may have reached a point where industrial upgrading is necessary — they're seeing omens of massive change approaching. Especially for the major eyewear retail chains with real strength — having spent decades in this industry, they won't allow themselves to miss out when sudden transformation hits.

This process of joining in follows investor logic. They need to find products, and the companies and teams behind them, capable of long-term partnership while ensuring they don't miss this opportunity and industry shift.

And that's when we happened to appear. Because although we're AI audio glasses, within the broader AI glasses category Jiehuan was probably China's first product with relatively high maturity, clear strategic thinking, and a business model genuinely friendly to traditional eyewear. There weren't many options at the time.

🚥 Koji

Have any traditional eyewear giants invested in you? You mentioned the business model involves being product-friendly and pricing-friendly — could you elaborate?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

No investment.

Compared to traditional digital products, we leave slightly more profit margin for channels. Though still far less than traditional eyewear's own margins.

🚥 Koji

You mentioned the company's expansion has exceeded initial expectations. You probably didn't anticipate such rapid expansion or such strong support from various parties.

Could you be specific about where reality diverged from your expectations?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Before the AI glasses concept emerged, I'd been thinking that our own brand should enter eyewear stores. But at the time, honestly, I reached out to people in the traditional eyewear industry, through introductions too, contacted many people — they ignored me. Yeah, wouldn't reply to WeChat messages, and in-person visits were difficult.

But once AI glasses entered the picture, the industry suddenly became enthusiastic about eyewear going smart. Since we couldn't accept the traditional eyewear profit distribution model — it's completely unworkable for consumer electronics — we couldn't simply enter this industry the way traditional brands do. We needed their strategic support.

By strategic support, I mean top-down support. It required their bosses to agree to evaluate us, to trust us, and to push things down from above. Only then would we have a shot. That starting phase was pretty tough — you can probably imagine. After all, I'm a proud person too (laughs).

🚥 Koji

As a proud person, have you done anything that most shattered your pride?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Nothing that devastating, honestly. It depends on what attitude you bring to it, right?

For me, I hadn't experienced this in a very long time. Probably only back when I was a journalist and sometimes couldn't land interviews with big shots — and that was over a decade ago, because later on, I could basically get whoever I wanted.

Because of glasses, that feeling came back. Not exactly dejection, but you need to do some mental preparation.

🚥 Koji

Are you worried that these traditional eyewear channels embracing you so enthusiastically are treating Jiehuan as an experiment? If they find sales are good, might they borrow your experience and enter this market themselves?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Not worried at all.

From start to finish, my mentality about hardware has been very open. If they want to enter this space, I support and encourage them. In the end, the product speaks for itself.

🚥 Koji

Is the reason you're so confident that you think the smart glasses market isn't easy to enter, and even if other manufacturers want in, they'll struggle to succeed?

I'm getting that sense from what you've said.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I just feel that if we're making this product, before we've started making money — let alone serious money — they're in the same boat as us, facing the same challenges.

For example, we're all making this kind of product, nobody's profitable, we're all carrying the load — but I think I can carry it longer than them, because I'm only focused on this one thing.

For example, they lose money year one, lose money year two, and by year three they probably can't sustain it. I don't believe success is right around the corner, not something you can make quick money on in the short term.

Product Innovation and Design Philosophy: From Ultra-Light Glasses to Hinge Patents

🚥 Ronghui

We're recording this podcast right now, and Yongfeng mentioned he's wearing smart glasses — for podcast listeners who can't see, and if he didn't point it out, you'd have trouble noticing he's wearing AI glasses.

Could you briefly introduce what this product is for listeners unfamiliar with Jiehuan AI glasses, and what innovations your current pair has compared to known products on the market?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

If you don't normally wear glasses, I'd say you can probably skip this product. Because I believe for someone with zero habit of wearing glasses or sunglasses, the functionality isn't enough to make them start.

But if you do wear glasses normally, then I recommend ours. Because first, beyond just wearing glasses, you don't need to carry any additional electronics — you can wear them as conveniently as ordinary glasses every day.

Whenever you need something like headphones, you can use it. And it won't create any new burden on your ears, nor will it be inconvenient like headphones when you're driving or running outdoors. It can stay connected to you anytime, anywhere — that's the first point.

Second, compared to previous generations, I'm personally very proud of these glasses.

Because we've achieved an unprecedented weight for smart glasses, around 27 grams. It's approaching the weight of ordinary traditional glasses.

At the same time, we've done extensive optimization on appearance and wearing comfort. We invested tens of millions of RMB to bring this product to users. So yes, give it a try — it might change how you use headphones and go about daily life.

🚥 Koji

After wearing these glasses, do you still use traditional headphones?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I didn't stop using headphones because of the glasses — I'd already stopped for a while.

Because we have so many online meetings daily, wearing headphones gives me headaches. If I wear them too long, I sometimes even get migraines, which forces me to stop.

Later I checked — I apparently already had some mild hearing loss symptoms, like some elderly people. So yes, I haven't worn headphones in a long time.

🚥 Koji

I also use the Mijia Audio Glasses, but I have one problem: battery life.

When I put them on, they automatically connect — same as putting on AirPods and having them link to my phone. But from the moment they connect, I get some battery anxiety. With headphones I don't have this anxiety, because I know when I'm not using them, I'll take them out and put them back to charge. So basically when I'm out all day, those headphones are definitely charged. But with glasses, say I put them on at 7 AM, I roughly know by 7 PM the glasses probably won't have sound.

How do you view this problem? If battery life can't reach 16 hours, 18 hours, has it not yet reached the point where users can really treat it as headphones?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

We already have over 150,000 users. We regularly observe user behavior and communicate with people. If you're running out of power before getting home, or right when you get home, your usage must be very heavy — probably exceeding 90% or even 95% of our users.

For these users, we have a very classic recommendation: buy another pair. Then you won't have battery anxiety, right? Because one person wearing one pair of glasses while carrying another glasses case is completely normal behavior. But honestly, people like this are relatively few. Most people use them 10 hours a day at most. If they talk less during those 10 hours, less microphone usage, more listening time, they can go even longer — actually a full day is enough, completely enough.

"Audio First, Camera Back": Jiehuan's Differentiated Product Strategy

🚥 Koji

I'm curious about your product positioning — your glasses don't have a camera. I suspect everyone you talk to asks: why this choice?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Strategically, we genuinely believe that the first phase of smart glasses that can actually land is AI glasses. Within AI glasses, although we currently only do the audio part, behind audio we have an internal framework we call Voice UI, which in my view is already very clearly and well designed.

AI glasses will involve cameras, but not these current camera-equipped glasses.

I'm not sure if I've made this clear — first-person shooting has nothing to do with AI. But first-person shooting, including for Meta, is currently their core function. This function also makes it particularly resource-intensive, particularly power-hungry, makes the glasses bulkier and heavier, and makes the whole system more complex.

I believe future AI glasses and first-person shooting aren't on the same trajectory. So others might do it, but I won't make shooting glasses.

🚥 Koji

Do you think this is the most important decision you've made since starting Jiehuan?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

This was the direction I set from day one of making audio glasses. Because I came from first-person shooting glasses, so I deeply know how it consumes resources and costs.

🚥 Ronghui

Here you could introduce to listeners: from the first-generation Mijia Glasses Camera, to Mijia Audio Glasses, to the current Jiehuan series — what were your main considerations through each iteration?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

After making the glasses camera, some pretty vertical users really loved it — and I still think the product was well-made, fairly complete except that it wasn't useful for most people.

Later I realized something: smart glasses can't tackle two challenges simultaneously. One is the technical challenge, the other is the market challenge — market education and user adoption.

The first challenge's difficulty is reaching a very baseline level of looking good and feeling comfortable as glasses. Sunglasses shouldn't exceed 50 grams total (everything included), optical frames the lighter the better above 20 grams. But if you pile on a lot of tech, it very easily crosses that line, to the point where people can't accept it.

Second, for this market, people have no concept of what smart glasses can do. Some ethereal things, including the metaverse, for the general public is cool but incomprehensible knowledge — they can't have any personal experience of it. For them, glasses are what they see in daily life; their anchor point is that kind of product.

If smart glasses can't deliver significant value — say, increasing a user's monthly income by 10,000 yuan — it's hard to convince users to accept a product that's uncomfortable or unattractive to wear.

After choosing these glasses, they look ugly, or wearing them hurts your nose, but you should still choose them — users won't accept this, you can't persuade them. Not just us, the entire smart glasses industry faces this problem.

I only understood this after finishing the glasses camera, so afterward I was full of reverence for eyewear. I decided to first conquer the market and user challenge, then gradually evolve toward smart and smarter through technology stacking. That was the core reason for the shift from glasses camera to audio glasses.

Product Roadmap Confidence: Lessons from Meta Ray-Ban

🚥 Koji

After seeing Meta Ray-Ban's success, did you ever doubt your choice?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

No doubt, because I'd already thought it through clearly. As I mentioned, under 50 grams for sunglasses is okay. But China isn't a sunglasses market, so for me the choice became: do I make smart sunglasses for the European and American markets, or smart optical frames for the China market.

Choosing the China market was the natural, obvious move for me. After all, when I made this choice, Ray-Ban Meta didn't even exist yet, right? Their first generation was called Ray-Ban Stories, and it fell short of expectations — lost quite a bit of money. So I chose audio glasses, then smart optical frames. This market choice was the natural conclusion.

🚥 Ronghui

I was looking at the MiJia Glasses Camera's old Indiegogo page today. That design really resembled Google Glass (laughs).

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

There are similarities, but functionally it's far more powerful than Google Glass.

We threw ourselves into that product with full passion and effort. It was quite difficult to execute. Actually, it's still widely used in some B2B markets today — it's just not a successful mass-market consumer electronics product.

🚥 Ronghui

Comparing Jiehuan AI Glasses with the MiJia Audio Glasses, my immediate impression is that the product has been dramatically simplified.

Could you share the most important simplifications, and how these changes specifically affected costs?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

These are two different product categories — it's not purely subtractive design.

The glasses camera had no speaker, no audio driver, so we actually added speakers. Our starting point for this product was: if we're going to make smart optical frames, they first need to look good, and second they need to be comfortable. These two points are absolutely core for any pair of glasses. So we defined them as our Tier 0 functions.

The reason is simple: if a pair of glasses is powerful but looks ugly, consumers won't buy it. If it looks good and functions well, but causes discomfort to your nose, ears, eyes, or head after two hours of wear, that also won't work.

For glasses, when you pursue these two qualities — and the all-day wearing experience — you naturally arrive at certain parameters. For instance, the weight ceiling needs to be under 30 grams. At the time we defined it as under 40 grams, because we felt we couldn't achieve under 30 grams.

Beyond weight, the overall volume needed to give industrial designers sufficient creative room. Without relatively ample space to work with, making something beautiful becomes impossible — the fundamental conditions aren't met. In the end, it becomes like industrial designers are forced into a thankless task: stitching things together to make them merely resemble glasses.

That's not the situation I want designers to face, and it can't produce genuinely pleasing aesthetics. Based on these two foundational conditions, we believed only two technical directions had a chance: first, near-eye display technology using Micro LED plus optical waveguide; second, the audio solution we ultimately adopted — 3A dual speakers, using wired or TWS configurations, creating glasses centered on audio that could partially replace headphone functionality.

We researched both directions, even running through repeated devil's advocate exercises, debating with ourselves. "This audio approach isn't cool at all." "This near-eye display definitely has utility." But our research kept telling us: if you start from user value, you should choose audio. So we chose the audio glasses direction.

Previously, Bose and Amazon both released audio glasses, and their solutions were all wired — meaning a cable connecting the left and right sides of the frame. We didn't choose that approach. Instead, we developed from scratch what we called a hinge with German mechanical quality: extremely convenient, hot-swappable, yet remarkably robust and durable, enabling complete frame replacement. Then, building on mature TWS earphone solutions, we worked to create an ultra-long-battery-life audio glasses product with abundant frame options.

🚥 Koji

Is this the hinge you mentioned earlier that cost 10 million?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Battery R&D investment exceeded over 10 million. The hinge can't be precisely tallied, but it consumed enormous time. Just physical prototypes alone went through more than ten iterations, each requiring 1-2 weeks of repeated insertion/removal testing and review.

🚥 Koji

You've invested heavily in batteries, hinges, and other product details. As an industry pioneer, do you worry these investments are essentially paying tuition for the entire industry?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I firmly believe we're on the right path.

In the first small stage of smart glasses' first phase, I believe Jiehuan qualifies as the first smart glasses product that truly reached mass consumers and that people were willing to buy. I have this optimistic mindset, and increasingly there's evidence to support it. It creates value for users — people see it and want to buy it, rather than trying it once and returning it, or just playing with it at a friend's place and being done.

Yes, that's the conviction. Because I'm optimistic about the future, I need to build the moat quickly now. If you don't build the moat now, you warm up the market with great effort only to have someone else pick the peach — so what then? So you need to run fast enough, invest decisively enough. When everyone else doesn't understand, you've already sprinted 1000 meters ahead.

🚥 Koji

This reminds me of something Xing Wang once said: the more confidence you have in the future, the more patience you have for the present.

🚥 Ronghui

What do you consider your moat to be?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

First, I believe our understanding leads the market by at least 3 to 6 months, and possibly 12 months ahead of many others. Not absolutely ahead — relatively ahead. It's a time-based lead.

Second, we approach this with genuine reverence. After thinking it through thoroughly, we've moved forward solidly. We've researched how to make glasses look better, feel more comfortable, how to improve call noise cancellation, whether people care more about sound quality or wearing comfort. Sometimes these are completely contradictory — you need to make tradeoffs. We've already validated these questions, but others haven't. I can just give them the answer. They'll still debate it: "But I want better sound quality," right?

None of these steps can be skipped. Unless we've achieved universally recognized success, and competitors start making completely similar products — until then, I think every step is hard to skip for anyone. Meanwhile, we've filed for extensive patents, and we haven't relied on solution providers.

Beyond the hinge and battery, our entire architecture — hardware and software — is fully self-developed. The overall R&D investment, I believe, would be very difficult for small-to-medium or startup companies to achieve. But without doing so, you can't make a product this good. Because the supply chain has no mature solutions available for them to choose from.

This isn't simply doing software or shell design. If the electric vehicle industry's maturity a few years ago was 100, then the current AI audio glasses industry's maturity is probably only 20-30. In this process, I've already filed over 300 patents. Including sales channels — whether Xiaomi's digital channels or my own eyewear channels — from supply chain to R&D to product to channel, none of this is something others can build in the short term.

🚥 Koji

I heard you say "good-looking" and "comfortable" are your high-priority goals.

How do you define "good-looking"? This isn't easy to answer — ten thousand people might have ten thousand aesthetics. You can't offer as many frame options as traditional eyewear, because digital products have various constraints. I see you've made eight frame styles so far.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

We actually will offer a very large number of frame options.

🚥 Ronghui

What's the reference basis for these frames? Typically, eyewear brands might commission renowned designers to endorse product aesthetics, or reference best-selling products on the market.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Actually, what you're asking isn't a smart glasses question — it's an eyewear question.

I can only say that China has the world's largest upstream eyewear resources. Global eyewear brands either manufacture in China or partner with Chinese factories. With the right connections and channels, you can understand the vast majority of eyewear design and development trajectories.

As long as you respect the industry and are willing to learn, within the eyewear industry you'll discover the origins of different styles — aviator, Boston, browline — their corresponding trend contexts, and why certain styles endure. When you understand eyewear's basic categories and how each type connects to specific demographics, you've mastered the industry's fundamentals.

After learning these basics, you can consider how to innovate at key points — how to make your aviator style distinctive? Is it possible to apply technologies from smart products to eyewear design? Could certain technologies from Apple products or Xiaomi phones optimize eyewear as a category? Whether these optimizations truly produce practical effects still needs validation through extensive user testing after the finished product launches.

The whole process can be summarized: first learn from existing mature experience, avoid reinventing the wheel; after mastering fundamentals, gradually add innovative elements using cross-domain resources.

🚥 Koji

Is this your first time doing a fashion and aesthetics-related consumer product?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Fitness bands don't count.

🚥 Koji

I'm not sure whether fashion attributes were treated as S-tier priority when you were making Mi Band, the way they are now with glasses?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

We don't deliberately pursue fashion — we genuinely strive to make products more beautiful. If aesthetic design naturally creates new trends, fashion will follow.

🚥 Koji

Do you think in the prescription eyewear industry, it's hard to say one brand's products are more beautiful than another's?

Beauty is actually a baseline rather than a competitive advantage, since every brand offers hundreds or even thousands of products. In this situation, how can aesthetics become competitiveness?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

First, as I just mentioned, to solve the frame variety problem, you need to solve the natural hinge-swapping problem. Because if you're designing numerous frames with the electronic components integrated, that's basically a dead end. When we say beauty is diverse, achieving that diversity for digital products is quite punishing. So in the end you might find the only solution is the hinge.

But we have over 11 patents just on the hinge alone — it's quite difficult to design around. There are some, I wouldn't say copying us, but peers or products that I feel have drawn inspiration from our approach. To work around our patents, they ended up with terrible results. This isn't an isolated case — they wanted to circumvent our hinge patents to achieve multi-frame variety, and it's extremely difficult.

At the same time, you can view my hinge as a standard interface. I can directly license this standard interface to all frame manufacturers, or even to individual designers. These designers just need to buy our hinges from us, and they can use them with their own frames, even niche brand frames. Then their frames become directly compatible with our glasses, and users can purchase them directly.

So beyond our officially launched frames, under this standard hinge system, there are probably at least around 100 cooperating non-brand frames. This is what we discovered when we deconstructed the beauty question — the hinge is crucial, and this point has gained recognition from some friends, particularly traditional eyewear brands. For instance, some eyewear brands actually have collaborations with us that you might see online.

🚥 Koji

So through hinge technology you've achieved design diversity, and diversity means you don't have to define what beauty is — instead you provide various choices, letting users find what they consider beautiful.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

It also ensures that the temples — the electronic components — remain fully standardized.

🚥 Koji

After the launch event, all kinds of people must have come looking to collaborate, right? From Huaqiangbei to suppliers, celebrities looking to build personal brands, to traditional channel owners.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Celebrities did reach out, but mostly just to get their hands on the product for personal use.

🚥 Ronghui

I'm curious why you haven't partnered with any celebrities?

Huawei and Meta Ray-Ban both have celebrity collaborations. Meta Ray-Ban spent heavily on a 90-second Super Bowl ad this year featuring three well-known stars. Huawei seems to have brought in Jordan Chan.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I don't think Huawei's eyewear products have ever used brand ambassadors.

If we were making smart sunglasses, we'd definitely pursue celebrity endorsements and fashion brand partnerships. But optical glasses are different from sunglasses — there's no massive brand equivalent to Ray-Ban or Luxottica Group. When most people in China think of well-known eyewear brands, what comes to mind are chains like Baodao and Doctor Glasses.

This is probably a natural phenomenon shaped by a century of optical industry development — public awareness is concentrated on eyewear retailers.

Whether celebrity endorsements or fashion collaborations, eyewear brands have certainly tried these approaches before, yet they never became dominant brands**. I believe the reason is that their profit margins weren't substantial enough to support large-scale advertising to capture greater market share — they could only operate in a small loop. That's my understanding.**

🚥 Koji

My earlier question was really about this: over the past six months, among all the people you've met, who left the deepest impression on you?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I've met a lot of people. No one left a particularly deep impression, but I do have one significant observation:

The scale of forces being drawn into this AI glasses wave exceeds anything I've seen in any previous product's development. That's my most striking realization.

In the earlier mobile internet era, we mainly engaged with investors, peers, engineers — occasionally some interaction with IDC. When doing smart hardware, you'd typically coordinate with internet-related parties first, then hardware supply chains and sales channels.

But AI glasses involves not just internet and consumer electronics — it requires deep collaboration with the traditional eyewear industry as well. After the product launch, I clearly felt I was meeting 50% more people than with any previous product. We've essentially talked to almost every relevant internet company out there.

🚥 Koji

Why so many more people?

Is it because this product has drawn broader attention and everyone wants in, or because the supply chain itself is more complex? It doesn't sound that much more complicated than other products.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Because three very large domains all believe AI glasses falls within their territory.

With previous products, at most two domains would think this way. Now, the eyewear industry sees these as their glasses; consumer electronics sees them as their smart hardware; the internet industry views them as AI.

🚥 Koji

From your perspective, which of these three industries might ultimately achieve the greatest victory?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

From an extremely long-term perspective, I believe it will eventually belong to consumer electronics — though this is the very, very end, say 50 years from now.

🚥 Koji

50 years?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

It's not easy to determine a winner among these domains.

But in the initial stage, it necessarily starts from eyewear. We're in that very beginning right now, and I'm not sure how long this initial phase will last. So the ultimate landscape is still too distant to call.

🚥 Koji

Think back — what consumer products have gone through 50 years of evolution to produce completely different outcomes across industries? Phones and computers didn't seem to take that long.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

We previously collaborated with Maoyuanchang Glasses, a time-honored Chinese brand with roughly 160 years of history.

That's also an eyewear product. Of course, the 50 years I mentioned was a figurative expression — meaning a timeframe so distant that I can't predict specific developmental milestones.

But I believe that if there ultimately is a successful leading enterprise, it will definitely be a consumer electronics company.

🚥 Koji

Could you share that story you told me before? About how traditional eyewear veterans reacted when they saw your glasses.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

The context was that we were at an eyewear exhibition. Our product hadn't launched yet, but I secretly kept a pair in my backpack while talking with them. We were discussing Jiehuan, and mid-conversation I suddenly pulled out the glasses. Their shock upon seeing it exceeded my expectations.

People who've been in the traditional eyewear industry for a long time tend to have certain professional convictions and pride. But seeing this product genuinely stunned them. One gentleman said: "Of all the smart glasses I've seen, this is the first one that actually scares me." Because he sensed how rapidly the iteration from smart ring to glasses had progressed. He believed this could genuinely replace traditional optical glasses in a relatively short timeframe. It was seeing this product that made him realize the timeline was much faster than he'd imagined.

🚥 Koji

Did such an evaluation surprise you? Or was it within your expectations, given you've invested five years?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I was still somewhat surprised.

After we'd developed the glasses, especially when consulting many eyewear industry experts and showing them to industry leaders, they'd always point out areas for improvement and offer guidance — clearly there were places we couldn't perfect. Many of these were limitations of technology or materials themselves, not that we didn't want to do better but simply couldn't. Since our previous interactions had mostly been about seeking advice and accepting their guidance, receiving this kind of evaluation was somewhat surprising.

🚥 Ronghui

Beyond the surprise, did you feel happy? After all, you'd traveled such a long road to get here.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Somewhat happy, but limited. Maybe like the happiness of a child who scored 90 on all three subjects.

🚥 Ronghui

Has there been any moment during this period that made you especially happy?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I don't seem to have experienced particularly intense happiness in a long time. Though this isn't quite relevant to our discussion today. My moments of real happiness fall outside this topic (laughs).

🚥 Ronghui

That's fine — could you share something that made you especially happy? Something to brighten everyone's day.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

This might be similar to many people's experiences. I bought Xiaomi stock again when it was trading in the low teens.

🚥 Koji

This share might not make many people happy, haha.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I think it's completely different for Xiaomi employees holding nearly free options or stock versus someone like me who'd already left Xiaomi yet put all my capital into Xiaomi stock. It demonstrates my conviction in Xiaomi was extremely strong.

🚥 Ronghui

You mentioned not having felt especially happy in a long time — is that because you have a stable personality with emotions that don't swing dramatically, or because hardware is simply too grueling?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I think it's more about who I am as a person. I have some good friends, including companies I previously incubated like Roborock and HMI — many of them are filled with passion for the world and have all kinds of hobbies.

But I'm relatively more muted. Not many things particularly interest me. I don't find life especially remarkable — I'm easily contented, but rarely genuinely overjoyed.

🚥 Ronghui

Is it because you used to be a journalist and saw too much of everything?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Perhaps. It's somewhat like "dopamine syndrome" — if you've previously experienced massive dopamine surges, you subsequently stabilize.

I typically set very few goals for myself — roughly one thing each for work and life per year. Every morning I think about how my annual priorities are progressing. With fewer goals, things are more predictable, and I adjust my expectations fairly often, so it's hard to create surprises.

🚥 Ronghui

When did this habit develop? Has it always been this way, or did it start at some point?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

It's been a long time. This is just who I am. I believe you can't accomplish many things in a year, nor in a lifetime.

🚥 Ronghui

This attitude of simplifying complexity — while it may not sound like an especially active or energetic state — is also a way of living, and it has its value.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Yes, I think it's quite good.

I'm someone without much "lingering regret." I feel everything is fine, nothing to regret.

🚥 Ronghui

Earlier in our conversation, you said something that left a deep impression on me — that with smart glasses, you'd go "all in" for the rest of your life.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Yes, because I can only do one thing, haha.

If you're only doing one thing, its milestones all require considerable time. This keeps you from being idle — you need to keep pushing forward. But it doesn't mean being tense every single day. Only during certain critical phases — intense competition periods, periods of rapid market change, or technology breakthrough periods — might you need to be more fully committed for a year or two, or two to three years. Over the long term, you can relax when it's time to relax. The key is to keep at it consistently.

The Track Worth Full Commitment: Long-Term Vision for AI Glasses

🚥 Ronghui

What life dreams does this endeavor carry for you?

Or, as we mentioned earlier — you originally wanted to do AR, then chose the eyewear path; Meta Ray-Ban's success boosted the industry; plus AI's contribution has, in some ways, proven this is a massive market. Perhaps it's not a single factor, but taken together, what forces led you to decide to go all-in on this for the rest of your life?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I believe this field requires long-term commitment.

So long that without full commitment, it simply can't be completed. Of course, if it gets completed ahead of expectations, I won't insist on continuing indefinitely. After reaching a certain stage, I have two other dreams I'd like to pursue — but if there's no time, so be it.

Mainly, I believe this endeavor's cycle will be quite long. It starts with AI, but in the future AI will become an essential element of all head-worn smart hardware. By then, there may no longer be talk of "AI glasses" — because all glasses will have AI capabilities. Right now AI is the catalyst, expanding the boundary value of glasses and enabling faster mass adoption.

Once this phase completes, we may be talking about AR, seamless interaction, how to rapidly switch between the physical and digital worlds, how to place digital layers around your attention — scenarios like Iron Man or Ready Player One.

Further down the line, there might be technologies that replace smart glasses entirely — brain-computer interfaces, for instance, that could achieve everything smart glasses do directly in your brain. But that's beyond the scope of what I want to pursue. I'll stop at that earlier stage I described.

I may have rambled a bit — not sure if that answered your question clearly. Actually, one of the two things I mentioned earlier: if this venture actually succeeds, I might go back to being a journalist.

🚥 Ronghui

That's exactly what I was so curious about.

I came across a description of you somewhere: you got into product work to complete the loop of "becoming the best internet product journalist."

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Because you know, what journalists fear most is information asymmetry between themselves and their subjects or stories. Back when I was working on an Alipay story, I went to work at Alipay for a month. But a month felt insufficient — you still get a very one-sided view. So when you're covering a story, you feel like you're having an equal conversation, but really they're standing on bricks while you're standing on cotton, floating up to reach the same height. It's unsettling.

But if I become a journalist again later, say I still have a fund, I have supply chain resources — I can say, "Let's have a real talk. Don't try to fool me." That gives you access to information other journalists simply can't get. Though you shouldn't treat journalism as a profit center; you need a separate business model for that. Keep them apart. I think journalism suits idealists better — people whose material needs are already met and who have real leverage over information.

🚥 Ronghui

I saw in your background that you graduated from Beihang University and could have gone to work at a company like Huawei, but chose journalism first.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Yes. As a journalist, I had an advantage others didn't: my Beihang degree.

My biggest weakness was writing character profiles — those "so-and-so's transformation" pieces, or asking profound questions about life choices. I was better at using logical thinking to map out company models and product models. During the period when the internet was rapidly penetrating the entire business world, that cross-disciplinary background helped me enormously, letting me rise to a relatively senior position faster. I had strengths and weaknesses — the humanistic stuff, I genuinely wasn't good at.

🚥 Ronghui

Can you talk about the decision to join Xiaomi at that time?

Looking back, the timing was excellent. What convinced you to go to Xiaomi? And I noticed in that GeekPark livestream you described it as "a dream come true." That's quite a weighty phrase.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Joining Xiaomi had an element of serendipity. It happened to coincide with GeekPark being at peak influence when Xiaomi was founded.

From Xiaomi's very first day, because of my relationships with several core figures — Wanqiang Li, for instance, whom I'd known since his Kingsoft days, and some intersections with CEO Lei Jun — I was aware of their entrepreneurial plans early on, but hadn't initially considered joining.

Later, a major internet figure invited me to join his company for two or three consecutive years, always around Spring Festival. The third time he reached out, I was watching TV with my wife — some Hunan TV program, I think — and he said the company was well-funded, preparing to enter hardware, knew I was interested in hardware product management, and wanted to talk in detail after the holiday. Considering the "third time's the charm" principle, I decided to take the opportunity seriously.

When Ali knew about this, he suggested I talk to CEO Lei first. So we arranged a meeting — we talked for about eight hours. He gave me three options: one, join Shunwei Capital to do TMT investing (which in retrospect may have been the prototype of the生态链 strategy); two, become a product manager for Xiaomi TV, which at that point had no product managers yet; or three, be product manager for the Xiaomi router. In that situation, you pretty much had to accept his offer. Because when you've been talking for that long, it's awkward to ask for the bathroom, and he wasn't going either — so you might as well say yes.

🚥 Koji

So basically it was "CEO Lei, please let me use the bathroom, I'll take your offer" (laughs).

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I didn't say that — everyone can imagine the scene for themselves.

🚥 Koji

There probably aren't many people CEO Lei has talked with for eight hours?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Before 2013, probably quite a few. After 2013, not so many — he really became too busy.

🚥 Koji

Has anyone else in your life talked with you for eight hours?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I've had quite a few — I used to be an in-depth interview journalist, so talking for a full day was common.

🚥 Koji

Outside of your journalist identity?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

For example, when Youku went public, I talked with Victor Koo for an entire day. There were several similar eight-hour conversations.

🚥 Ronghui

Does this mean you actually really wanted to join Xiaomi?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I deeply respect CEO Lei, and by 2013 Xiaomi had already proven itself — it had a halo effect.

At the same time, I greatly admired someone with an internet background who could actually do hardware well — that kind of talent is extremely rare. So the final decision wasn't just because I couldn't use the restroom.

🚥 Ronghui

Why did you choose the router?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

The router project had a grand vision at the time, though it wasn't fully realized later. Before the first-generation product was even completed, Xiaomi launched its生态链 strategy, and I became the first employee of the生态链.

🚥 Ronghui

Looking back, what do you see as moments when you stood at a crossroads in life? I imagine joining Xiaomi was certainly one of them.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Yes, though I didn't feel it at the time. Actually, thinking back, I was probably among the fastest-rising people after joining Xiaomi.

Considering I was a complete outsider: joined in 2013 as product manager, senior product manager by year-end, product director in 2014, senior product director in 2015, and VP of the division by 2016. From an ordinary product manager in the second half of 2013 to division VP by 2016 — and the生态链 was quite influential at that point. Looking back, it was timing, luck, and perhaps some of my own choices.

🚥 Ronghui

There's something I'm curious about and admire. I used to be a journalist myself, and I've experienced and heard about friends' situations.

Journalism differs significantly from typical corporate work: journalists usually complete tasks one after another, not in parallel; and media organizational structures are relatively simple — you don't need to think about collaboration with peers, bosses, or teams. That's a completely different work mode from being in a company, and you were entering an entirely new field with a massive shift in how you worked.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I think I was relatively lucky in this regard.

When I went to work on the router, the situation was that there were zero product managers for routers — it was just me interfacing with — I counted later — eight different technical teams, each with a highly accomplished leader, and I was the sole product manager. I had no peers; my peers were all engineers. Later, working on the生态链 was also starting from scratch, going from no peers to gradually hiring and building the entire team.

When a company is in rapid growth, like a nation expanding its territory, there are abundant opportunities. These opportunities may not fundamentally differ from entrepreneurship — small things may grow large, or they may disappear. Only during rapid growth does this state exist. I even feel that launching a project for us was no different from you launching a podcast. But it only suits that stage — later, in large systematized companies after stratification sets in, it's not like that.

So honestly, what you described — I didn't really experience much of that. Of course, compared to the real transition from outsider to competent hardware product manager, with all its difficulties, these things I mentioned were minor in comparison.

Life Decision Model: Choose the Path That Doesn't Make the Future More Complicated

🚥 Ronghui

Returning to crossroads moments — would founding Hive (蜂巢) be the next one? Were you worried about failing?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I remember CEO Lei once said that when he founded Xiaomi, he put in — I forget the exact amount — something like $100 million, and when it was gone, it was gone. That was basically the attitude.

Like stock trading — you can commit, but there's a stop-loss point. For me, if my misjudgment caused the company to shut down, I'd take 100% responsibility, but I could fully accept it. That's perfectly normal.

Because entrepreneurship, especially first-time entrepreneurship, has a high failure probability. So even if I failed, I might suffer somewhat, but it would be okay — not completely unacceptable. And from a positive perspective, second-time entrepreneurship has a much higher success rate. So after my first failure, my probability of success the second time would increase.

🚥 Ronghui

Which counts as the second time?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

If Hive fails, and I start again in a similar direction with corrections, the success probability would be higher than now. This is purely objective big data statistics.

🚥 Ronghui

Looking back and summarizing, what decision model do you have when facing life's crossroads?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

The core principle is: Don't let your next step put you in a more difficult position.

Some directions may quickly bring you to another intersection requiring an even harder decision. This is a maxim from Texas Hold'em: "Don't do things that make the situation more complicated."

🚥 Koji

Do you have examples of friends or subordinates who made career choices that made their future more difficult?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I can't think of a specific example offhand, but you always face this in life — especially when you haven't thought things through clearly. Sometimes there's a path that makes choices simpler.

For instance, when you say no, you eliminate 80% or 90% of possibilities, making your subsequent choices simpler. But if for various reasons you hesitate, or don't follow your heart, and say yes, you'll face a more complicated situation than before.

If I need an example: when I left Xiaomi, someone wanted me to come in as a partner. If I'd agreed, I believe at least half the information would have been new to me. And even with a friend I deeply trusted, their expectations of my abilities might have exceeded my actual abilities. After agreeing to be a partner, you'd likely face a complex situation. For me, even with a close friend or a genuinely promising company, I probably wouldn't choose to go there as a partner — I'd rather start from zero myself.

The "Hundred Glasses War": Challenges and Future of the Smart Glasses Industry

🚥 Ronghui

Back to the industry. Tell me what you're seeing and feeling.

Everyone's talking about the "Hundred Glasses War" right now. What's your firsthand experience? In the interview you mentioned there really are over 100 competitors now. Listeners probably see daily announcements about who's launching what, but they don't have a real sense of what it actually feels like.

Can you describe the current landscape? Like how far costs have dropped, whether there are lots of copycats trying to follow a similar path, stores approaching you for partnerships, that kind of thing.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

The so-called "Hundred Glasses War" is actually narrower than it sounds — over 100 companies copying Ray-Ban Meta's smart glasses.

I'm relatively calm about it because I'm not facing serious competitive pressure yet. Most companies are imitating Ray-Ban Meta, and everyone thinks this space is relevant to them.

Think about it: first, it's glasses as a form factor, and Ray-Ban and Meta represent two different industries. Second, it went viral in the United States through videos on TikTok and Instagram, getting massive traffic. Plus it's AI-related. All of this makes various parties feel like this domain connects to what they do.

Most players in the market haven't thought things through very clearly, but they're using Ray-Ban Meta's success to validate the direction. At the same time, through process of elimination, they're filtering out previous glasses projects that didn't work, converging on a similar development path.

But here's the current reality: many AI glasses companies haven't secured the funding they expected — capital is more cautious. Second, they're predictably running into the hard problem of actually making glasses. Manufacturing glasses is much harder than other products.

So companies that originally planned to launch in the first half of 2025 will likely push to the second half. The real market frenzy hasn't arrived yet, because most products aren't finished. Currently most offerings are AI-focused with a Ray-Ban Meta-like form factor.

🚥 Ronghui

The real excitement hasn't started yet.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Right, the second half of this year should get pretty lively.

🚥 Ronghui

What do you expect it to look like? Based on what you know about who's preparing what.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

At peak there might be at least three product launches per week.

🚥 Ronghui

All sunglasses form factor?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

All kinds of form factors — it's just a matter of swapping lenses, which actually shows product diversity. I don't think most participants have thought very deeply about this.

I've shared this view before:

This will be a quick battle. 100 companies might become 50 in a month, then 20 the next month, then it's game over. Companies might fall in batches, even collapsing before competitors attack them.

🚥 Ronghui

By "falling" you simply mean no one's buying?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Companies could collapse from broken capital chains, or from products no one wants. In some cases, the founder might even end up on the dishonest debtor list.

🚥 Ronghui

Why haven't VCs been as generous as expected with this space over the past six months? What's behind that?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

As people understand AI glasses and smart glasses better, they realize these founders haven't figured things out either.

Plus this really isn't something you can pull off as a small side project. It actually takes quite a lot of money, so companies doing this generally aren't cheap — because if they're cheap, they can't build the product.

The previous investment logic was: after pouring money into foundation models, VCs would invest in agents and applications. Then AI hardware. And the best form factor for AI hardware would be Ray-Ban Meta, so they'd invest in AI glasses — that was the broad trajectory. But with AI glasses, you'd think with 100 companies in the market, at least 80 would get funded, right? Otherwise why would all 100 be doing this? But from what I understand, whether it's funding progress or amounts raised, it's not that much.

🚥 Ronghui

To summarize: many companies are copying Ray-Ban Meta's product. But as you mentioned earlier, this product isn't very friendly to Chinese consumers — Chinese people don't have a strong habit of wearing sunglasses, plus the product complexity is extremely high.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

That's my current view, but it may not be accurate. I genuinely believe this now, but I can't say for certain. Society is so highly internet-ified now that herd effects could happen — some hotspot explodes and drives related product sales. Can't rule that out, but that's beyond product logic.

Commercialization Challenges for Smart Glasses: Aiming to Be the Industry's First Profitable Company

🚥 Koji

Final question — as a seasoned professional and founder who's been at this for five years, what do you hope to achieve with this startup? What result would you consider success, what would satisfy you?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

What's that saying — "desire is hard to satisfy."

I think with this startup, "desire is hard to satisfy." It's difficult to reach a state where I'm truly content.

🚥 Koji

Does that ever-scrolling bar scare you?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

No, because I compare myself to those doing worse.

🚥 Koji

That's a great approach, haha. Worth learning from.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Yes, this industry is extremely tough. I recognized this when I started, so I'm mentally prepared. But this space also has an extremely high ceiling — achieving moderate success would be hard to feel satisfied with.

The difficulty is that over the past 20 years, every single smart glasses project and startup has lost money, one hundred percent. Some say the money America has spent on smart glasses R&D would be enough for Oppenheimer to build the atomic bomb ten times over — hundreds of billions or even over a trillion dollars. So much top global talent poured in, and they created an industry with a one hundred percent loss rate. Isn't that bizarre?

🚥 Koji

Do you think this time will be different?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

If I can achieve profitability, even just one yuan, I might be the first profitable smart glasses company in the world.

Proving out this model would mean a lot to me personally. But I won't take aggressive measures just to become profitable — like cutting half the staff to hit that goal.

Achieving sustainability on the basis of healthy, normal company development — that's crucial to me. Looking at competitors doing worse than you, you won't feel anxious. You asked if I'd feel anxious, and my answer is not in a negative way. But given how ambitious my vision is, it's genuinely hard to predict when I'll get there, so I'll just follow the trend. I won't get swollen-headed thinking I'm already amazing, and it's also hard to reach that state where you're 80% done with your goal.

🚥 Ronghui

When you mention glasses investment, do you mean smart glasses specifically, or including AR, Vision Pro, all of that?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

I mean all smart glasses, regardless of functional positioning.

🚥 Ronghui

So you're counting all of that together?

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

All of it — Google Glass, Vision Pro, Quest, Pico, all of it.

🚥 Koji

Looking forward to the day you achieve "earning that one yuan." Hope you'll come back to Crossing for a happy podcast episode when that day comes.

👦🏻 Yongfeng Xia

Sure, hope this podcast recording created some value for you all.

🚥 Koji

Thank you, great work.

Subscribe to the "Crossing" Podcast

🚦 Crossing is Steve Jobs's metaphor for Apple — standing at the intersection of technology and liberal arts, where great products are born. AI is transforming every industry. We find, interview, and bring together a new generation of AI founders and proactive actors in the AI era. Together with them, we explore and embrace new changes and new possibilities.

👦🏻 Host Koji: I co-founded Jiepang/The Fair/Tangdao, and started AI Hacker House, a community space for the new generation of AI founders. I believe technology, especially AI, is the greatest value creation opportunity for our generation. Feel free to reach out to chat, bounce ideas, and connect on what's next. Koji on Jike, Koji's website

👧🏻 Host Ronghui: I've worked at a dollar-denominated VC and spent five years as a Silicon Valley correspondent, following tech development and business stories. Feel free to reach out to chat and exchange thoughts. Ronghui on Jike