Geekplus CEO Yong Zheng: Our Vision Is to Build a Great Robotics Company | Gaorong Future

On July 9, Geekplus (stock code: 02590.HK), a global leader in intelligent robotics, successfully listed on the Main Board of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, marking its official debut as the world's first publicly listed company in the AMR warehouse robotics market.

Geekplus has held the title of world's largest provider of warehouse fulfillment AMR robotic solutions for six consecutive years, offering the industry's most comprehensive range of solutions with the largest customer base and most extensive global operations. As of 2024, Geekplus's business footprint spans more than 40 countries and regions worldwide.

As one of Geekplus's earliest institutional investors, Gaorong Ventures co-led the company's Series A round in 2016 and continued to participate in subsequent financing rounds.

From Technical Moats to Globalization to Commercial Fundamentals

Staying True to the Original Vision, Letting Actions Speak

At this listing milestone, Xin Wang, Managing Director at Gaorong Ventures, recalled his first visit to the company in 2015: "It was in the basement of Tsinghua University's Computer Science Department's FIT building. A few robot demos were running around on the floor. Before long, the company had landed its first pilot warehouse, and even then it showed significant cost and performance advantages over competitors in both software and hardware. China's e-commerce sector was in a period of rapid growth, and demand for warehouse logistics robots was just emerging. Gaorong was bullish on this trend, and even more so on the team led by Yong Zheng, so we placed a firm bet."

Right: Yong Zheng, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Geekplus; Left: Xin Wang, Managing Director at Gaorong Ventures

Reviewing Geekplus's journey to date, Xin Wang noted that "at every stage of development, the company focused on what mattered most at that moment."

In its first two years, the company concentrated on refining its first hit product and securing benchmark cases; during its growth phase, it made the strategically prescient move to launch its global expansion, first successfully landing in Japan in 2017, completing the framework for major global markets before the pandemic, and then building on that foundation and solidifying its lead in the post-pandemic period; in recent years, while maintaining rapid growth, it has significantly improved its software and hardware product platform capabilities, cost control, and operational efficiency, strengthening its commercial fundamentals.

Xin Wang pointed out that "these achievements owe much to Geekplus having an exceptional founding team — one with vision that also keeps its feet on the ground. All four co-founders have maintained their original vision, unity, and mutual trust from day one, letting actions speak rather than words. That's exceedingly rare."

Geekplus founding team

In Conversation with Yong Zheng: Beyond Scale and Sales Leadership

What Matters More Is Technology Leadership

We also sat down with Yong Zheng, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Geekplus, to discuss his entrepreneurial motivations, competitive moats, and global journey. We're sharing this conversation at this listing milestone.

Q: Why did you start this company in the first place?

Yong Zheng: In 2014, I was still working in investment. During a visit to the U.S. to evaluate an Amazon warehouse logistics project, I was struck by their comprehensive rollout of robotic equipment.

E-commerce was booming in both China and the U.S. at the time, and we believed logistics would be one of the first major scenarios where AI and robotics technology would find real-world application. In 2015, I founded Geekplus together with several co-founders.

The name Geekplus carries the meaning of pursuing intelligence and representing the direction of intelligent technology, with the hope that the company would pursue excellence for the long term.

Q: What do you see as Geekplus's strongest competitive moat?

Yong Zheng: We've always believed that Geekplus's first-mover advantage lies in its accumulated technological foundation, which enables the company to respond quickly to any product demand. As a B2B robotics company, as we face an increasing number of increasingly complex client projects, only by strengthening our technology — making our systems rapidly customizable and more flexibly configurable — can we quickly match customer needs.

To this end, we've pioneered numerous industry-leading technologies. For example, we independently developed Robot Matrix, a general-purpose robotics technology platform that provides underlying support for rapid iteration and customized deployment of AMR equipment.

It's worth emphasizing that we firmly believe multi-robot scheduling capability driven by algorithms is the core technical moat in the AMR field, and also our key weapon for pulling ahead of the competition. Our self-developed large-scale multi-robot mixed scheduling system already powers multiple "thousand-unit" projects globally, representing world-class capability.

This cluster scheduling capability not only directly determines the throughput ceiling and operating costs of warehouses, but also serves as the core engine of a business growth flywheel — superior multi-robot scheduling enables more large-scale project deployments, which both drives marginal cost decreases and continuously pushes algorithmic evolution, driving customer value delivery. The resulting strong reputation in turn helps us win new orders.

Q: Geekplus's degree of globalization is second to none in China's tech sector and the global robotics industry. What have you learned from your global expansion?

Yong Zheng: Geekplus first went overseas in 2017, when international markets were still blue ocean. Our first successfully delivered overseas project was in Japan, which gave us tremendous confidence that our product quality and attention to detail were up to standard. From there we gradually began building our overseas presence. Almost without noticing, we've grown into a global company today.

Of course, the expansion process brought a series of challenges and questions: Can our equipment and systems operate stably abroad over the long term? Will frequent maintenance be required? Are costs controllable? How do we obtain national certifications for product patents in each country?

Beyond systematically addressing quality control, after-sales service, overseas patents, and data security, we believe localized operations are the most critical pillar of our globalization strategy. Robotics aren't standardized products that can rely purely on distribution channels — you have to be on the ground locally. To that end, Geekplus has established local teams in key markets across Europe, the Americas, and Asia-Pacific. Today Geekplus has more than 400 overseas employees based locally, providing 24/7 support to resolve customer issues.

We've also observed that our efficient localized delivery and operations system has strengthened customer brand loyalty and repeat purchase intent. For example, U.S. apparel giant S&S Activewear has made five repeat purchases of our products and solutions within three years, completing intelligent upgrades across five logistics centers.

Q: How would you evaluate Gaorong Ventures?

Yong Zheng: Geekplus's vision is to become a world-leading robotics company. Beyond leadership in scale and sales, what matters more is leadership in technology.

We're grateful that from the very beginning of the company, investors like Gaorong chose to believe in our original vision and ideals, and steadfastly supported our continued investment in AI and robotics technology. We're also thankful that throughout the company's development, Gaorong has provided practical advice and assistance across commercial scenario deployment, sales team building, capital markets, and globalization strategy.