Zhongguancun Forum Observation: What is the next "Lobster"? "It is very close to people"

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（Source: China News International）

China News International and Weijing, March 29 (Zhou Yihang, Xie Jingwen) “I’m very busy every day, and I hope someone can help me compile the scattered hot topics and industry developments that I pay attention to every day, and proactively push them to me within a fixed time window. That’s the experience I need—it improves my efficiency, and I’m willing to pay for such AI.” During the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference, Wang Ai, Honor’s Chief Marketing Officer for embodied intelligence, told China News International and Weijing.

What kind of AI can gain market recognition and truly enter users’ everyday lives has become the focus of attention for both the industry and the investment community. At the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Conference “AI Future Forum: Leapfrogging · Investment · Symbiosis,” multiple investors and industry experts shared their observations and judgments around this topic.

In Liu Qin, the founding partner of Wuyuan Capital’s view, although each round of technological transformation’s content is vastly different, overall, new technology will give rise to new species that match its characteristics—defining a brand-new paradigm—thereby changing people’s behavior patterns, reshaping the industrial ecosystem, and ultimately influencing people’s mindsets. From the perspective of tech investing and venture capital, the key to this AI wave lies in identifying the new species under a technological paradigm: finding products that can change how users use them, rewrite industry layouts, and ultimately reach people’s mindsets.

Zhou Kui, a partner at Sequoia China, said that recently, “lobster” has drawn a lot of attention, and people have strong reactions to AI agents. The core may be two expectations: first, that agents will have stronger execution power and be able to complete various tasks continuously; second, that agents can gain a richer set of information—especially in the future, after connecting to devices with sensing capabilities—so they can understand users more deeply and be closer to them.

“Truly intelligent agents will definitely be very close to people. But right now, we’re at the stage where the first door is being opened. There’s still a long way to go, and many problems that need to continue to be explored.” Zhou Kui said.

Chen Rui, Co-Chief Investment Officer at Junlian Capital, told China News International and Weijing that from an investment perspective, they are more optimistic about AI that can truly land, has application scenarios, and brings industrialization value. He said the core is that AI must empower industries in a real way—improving industrial efficiency and creating industrial value—and at the same time, it can also empower individual productivity, such as improving personal learning and work efficiency. He pointed out that both AI’s technology and its applications are working toward this direction, and these capabilities have begun to be gradually realized.

In Yang Zhilin’s view, founder of Moonshot: compared with traditional conversational products, today’s agents can run long enough to complete more complex tasks. When users ask a question, the agent will not provide a complete answer in a few seconds; it may take a long time to work—more like a person.

“(Agents) need to complete complex tasks. Unlike conversation (products), it’s more of a process without a state.” Yang Zhilin said. Technically, there are many challenges as well—training difficulty, data accumulation, and the requirements for context will all be higher. In terms of outcomes, agents can improve productivity to a large extent, potentially reaching ten times or even a hundred times the original baseline.

Li Ming, Academician of the Royal Society of Canada, told China News International and Weijing that in the AI era, an AI product that users use frequently must have characteristics of controllability and transparency. He said AI outputs should be clearly distinguished from human creation. When providing content, it should clearly inform users of the source, so users can choose independently whether to accept it. This boundary-setting for AI is both a prerequisite for safeguarding human autonomy and the foundation for building user trust.

Taking the example of conference submissions and peer review tasks largely completed by AI, Li Ming said that current AI applications are in a self-circulating state and represent an “average value” situation. He said that at this stage, AI products can still efficiently integrate existing human knowledge and occasionally make breakthroughs in scientific research fields, but these breakthroughs fundamentally still build on human knowledge. AI more often accelerates the process rather than opening an entirely new path.

Lin Yonghua, Vice President and Chief Engineer of the Beijing Zhiyuan Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, told China News International and Weijing that AI products that can attract users need to have several key traits. They must be able to truly solve real problems and hit users’ pain points, turning technological value into practical utility. At the same time, such AI capabilities should lower the usage barrier, integrate into everyday usage scenarios, and be convenient and smooth to use. In addition, whether the price is affordable directly determines whether users can use it over the long term and at high frequency.

When talking about the current development stage of the AI industry, Lin Yonghua pointed out that although different AI applications vary somewhat, overall,

Chinese users are in a relatively favorable environment. China has a rich open-source model ecosystem. Many companies can quickly deploy based on these models and provide services externally. The intense competition among service providers will also push more affordable solutions into the market.

(For more reporting leads, please contact the author of this article, Zhou Yihang: zhouyihang@chinanews.com.cn)(China News International APP)

(Opinions in the article are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. Investing involves risk; enter the market cautiously.)

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