Tsinghua PhD Crosses the Desert, Searching for the iPhone Moment of Green Hydrogen

Hyde Hydrogen Energy founder Changsheng Yao remembers spending most of his time on the road: on boats, on trains, trudging through deserts with a worn-out bag. Inside, he always carried company brochures and business cards, steeped in the entrepreneurial spirit of China's reform-and-opening era.

One June day in Saudi Arabia, hot enough to melt the soles of your shoes, Yao and his team caught the earliest flight to visit Saudi Aramco, the global energy giant. The night before, they'd slept in Dubai Airport's Terminal 2 free rest area—navy blue benches, a few barely-reclinable sofas, like a nineties-era train station. Hyde Hydrogen Energy would eventually become Aramco's first investment in the Asia-Pacific hydrogen sector.

Founded in 2021, Hyde Hydrogen Energy focuses on providing continuously leading green hydrogen solutions for global energy transformers. At Shell's Bremen facility in Germany, at Shengyuan Ordos, at Xing'an League in Inner Mongolia—green hydrogen produced from wind, solar, and hydro power is replacing coal, natural gas, and other fossil fuels to achieve zero-carbon emissions. In 2021, ZhenFund led Hyde's angel round and has been a partner ever since.

Yao studied under Academician Ouyang Minggao, among the earliest wave of Chinese scientists to throw themselves into new energy. His decade at Tsinghua University shaped his commitment to innovation, to truth, to beauty. He understands that many things are determined by first principles—they don't change. As long as there is a steady stream of renewable energy, combined with AI and robotics, human society can move toward a kind of infinite prosperity.

Over the past five years, the world has experienced a reshaping of the energy landscape. In the next five years, he believes the iPhone moment for green hydrogen will arrive—driving the AI era through affordable hydrogen energy.

Understanding Green Hydrogen, Green Hydrogen's iPhone Moment

2:25 — Knotting together two trillion-dollar markets, converting clean electrons into green molecules

4:19 — Why does green hydrogen have a color? Zero-carbon emissions, turning light and wind into hydrogen energy

6:12 — Providing users with solutions for hydrogen production from renewable energy

7:00 — Green fuels will achieve their first commercial closed loop in shipping

10:21 — The cost decline of green hydrogen follows first principles

12:34 — Defining products from the perspective of customer demand scenarios

The Next Five Years: Born Global

14:32 — First landmark hydrogen projects are being deployed worldwide

17:58 — True globalization is deep localization

20:04 — 2024 as year zero of globalization, becoming Saudi Aramco's first hydrogen sector investment

23:08 — Driving the AI era through affordable hydrogen energy

Imagining the Future World

25:22 — The company's advantage lies in rapidly iterating product offerings

27:57 — Green hydrogen reshaping the trillion-dollar energy landscape, approaching an inflection singularity

30:32 — Infinite energy, AI, and robotics leading humanity toward infinite prosperity

34:00 — Persisting in non-consensus pursuits; first principles don't change

36:38 — New things are always non-consensus, but never one person's non-consensus alone

From Campus to Entrepreneurship

38:49 — Daily life means finding opportunity amid business travel

40:10 — A decade at Tsinghua shaped commitments to innovation, truth, value creation, and aesthetics

45:04 — Four years into entrepreneurship: the vision hasn't changed, but it's harder and bigger than imagined

48:44 — Hyde Hydrogen Energy's keywords: technological innovation, globalization, and altruistic integrity

48:56 — The superpower is the ability to earn trust, persisting in sincerity

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Executive producers: Cindy, Menmen

Post-production: Yanaego

"True Words" is a general business podcast produced by ZhenFund, where the fund's investment team shares the latest hot topics and industry insights with leaders across fields.

Founded in 2011, ZhenFund is one of China's earliest angel investment institutions. Since its inception, ZhenFund has been actively seeking out the most outstanding entrepreneurial teams and era-defining investment opportunities in artificial intelligence, chips and semiconductors, robotics and hardware, healthcare, enterprise services, new energy, cross-border expansion, and consumer lifestyle.

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