Zhou Yuxiang hired food delivery riders to sell AI to factories. Now he’s chasing China’s industrial AI breakthrough

Zhou Yuxiang, the founder of Black Lake Technologies, decided to hire salespeople from traditional Western software companies when he started his AI startup. However, when the company shifted its focus to China's smaller factories, these salespeople found it challenging to navigate the factories' security measures. Realizing the need for local expertise, Zhou decided to hire food delivery riders from popular services like Meituan and Alibaba's Ele.me.

These couriers were able to navigate the factories, understand the layouts, and reach decision-makers more effectively.

Despite their street-smart wisdom, Zhou's new hires lacked product knowledge. Therefore, he put them through a rigorous 5-day training program, which he called a "devil boot camp," where they were tested daily and required to close a contract over the phone by the end of the training. Only around half of the new hires successfully completed the program.

Zhou, a Dartmouth graduate and former investment banker, is now focusing on the shop floor as the most promising market for AI. Black Lake's product is a cloud-based factory-management software that tracks orders, schedules, materials, and output. It also features AI agents that can generate quotes and schedule production on their own.

China has become a testing ground for this idea, but the results so far remain unproven. Zhou believes that AI can not only make existing work faster but also transform how industries operate. He thinks that the "Google moment" – a moment when AI fundamentally changes how industries work – has not yet arrived in China. Instead, AI is currently replacing tasks, not fundamentally restructuring industries.

Black Lake is working on a new platform called PopZao, a website and WeChat mini program that the company has been developing for the past two years.