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Articles
Ten Thousand-Word Interview with Duolingo Co-Founder: From 12 Years for 100 Courses to 148 Courses in One Year — How AI Drives Super App Growth
When a major technological shift hits, you have to be willing to challenge every company's underlying assumptions.
A Group of Gen Z Kids Used Flyers, All-Nighters, and Scholarships to Get This Bird Game to ChinaJoy
Writing code to build a world is a kind of magic, something that defies all reason.
Venture Where No One Has Gone Before | Z News
July is drawing to a close, and we invite you to join us in witnessing the growth of our portfolio companies and what's new at ZhenFund.
Are Models and "Shells" Both Undervalued? ZhenFund's Yusen Dai's Mid-2025 AI Review --- The past six months have been a turbulent period for AI. On one hand, DeepSeek's breakthrough has reignited global enthusiasm for Chinese AI; on the other, the commercialization path for large models remains unclear, and the market is growing increasingly anxious about when AI will generate real returns. Against this backdrop, I believe it's necessary to take stock of where we stand at this mid-point in 2025. **The Core Question: Are Models and "Shells" Both Undervalued?** Over the past two years, the AI industry has cycled through several narratives: from the initial frenzy over foundation models, to the subsequent boom in AI applications ("shells"), then a period of disillusionment as applications failed to deliver, and now a renewed focus on models following DeepSeek's success. But I want to propose a contrarian view: **both models and "shells" may be simultaneously undervalued by the market right now.** This might sound paradoxical. Let me explain. **Why Models Are Undervalued** The market's current skepticism toward model companies stems largely from two concerns: the commoditization of models (will they all become undifferent
In 2025, the "Sedol moment" for industries far and wide is only just beginning.
CellX Founder Ziliang Yang: Starting from Mycelium, Let 10% of People Eat the Future First
As humanity keeps moving forward, more and more people will seek out new alternatives.
Born in the '90s, Built an AI Unicorn in Three Years: The Stubborn Teenager Behind the Windsurf Acquisition
A 50% win rate is more thrilling than a 100% success rate, because it means you're standing on the true frontier of technology.
Manus Founder Walks Through: How to Systematically Build Context Engineering for AI Agents?
If model progress is a rising tide, we want Manus to be the boat, not a pillar nailed to the seabed.
Fiverr CEO's Leaked Internal Memo and His 10,000-Word Response: 99% of AI Companies Are Froth
AI won't help ordinary developers go from 1x to 10x. It will only turn 10x developers into super developers.
Genspark Founder Jing Kun: AI Will Bring a 3-Day Work Week, Ushering in the Era of Vibe Working
We release new products almost every week, and 80% of our code is written by AI.
Zhifei Li's AI Experiment: One Person, Two Days to Build "Lark for the AI Era" — and a Renewed Faith in AGI | Z Talk
A listed-company founder's hands-on experiment offers a preview of how we'll work in the future.
Podcasts
Day 500 of the Agent Era: What's Disappearing, What's Being Born, and Why We Should Stop Investing in GUI-Thinking Software
A Conversation with Kunpeng: Interactive Movie Games With Real Actors Suddenly Took Off — The Dream He'd Chased for Ten Years Finally Got Noticed
Dropped Out of Columbia to Build the First General-Purpose Learning Agent
A Conversation with ZhenFund Partner Yuan Liu: One Week with Manus, Ten Years with Red Xiao
New Year 2026 Conversation with Koji: The Year of R
Tsinghua PhD Crosses the Desert, Searching for the iPhone Moment of Green Hydrogen
The First Streamer in China to Beat *Black Myth: Wukong* with Motion Controls, Defeating a Boss with a Wave of a USB Device
Tsinghua '97 Alumnus Qin Yudi: From an Abandoned Garage to AI Energy Management, He's Always Been Flying Close to the Ground
A Conversation with Jekka Founder on Human-Level AI Agent Customer Service: AI's Boundaries, Large-Scale Implementation, and the Endgame
