T-Chef

T-Chef (智谷天厨) is a Chinese cooking-robot startup founded in 2018 by CEO Kaiping Geng, a PhD who 云启资本 describes as "the person who understands cooking best" . The company builds intelligent wok robots designed to replicate the elusive "wok hei" (锅气) of Chinese stir-fry, digitizing veteran chefs' techniques into reproducible, traceable cooking parameters .

T-Chef has deployed its machines with chain brands including 老乡鸡 and JD 7Fresh, and penetrated corporate catering and enterprise后勤 scenes; it also counts Foxconn, Goertek, and 牧原 among its large-enterprise partners, having landed a record RMB 150 million single order in the sector . In late 2025 the company brought in Vincent as CTO to build out a standalone AI cooking R&D team , and by July 2026 it had turned profitable while closing a nearly RMB 100 million strategic follow-on round led by 招商局创投, with Yunqi Capital and other existing shareholders oversubscribing .

The company is now pushing overseas as a "second growth engine," with its robots already in use at American Chinese restaurants, Japanese izakayas, and Turkish noodle shops—localizing recipes rather than exporting a fixed China playbook . It also planned a rebrand to 仟弈智能 in early 2026 .