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Digital Fireworks: The High-Octane AI “Showdown” That Lit Up CNY 2026

The Chinese New Year has evolved into a critical milestone for the global AI and robotics industries.

Gone are the days when the holiday was solely about dumplings and firecrackers. Today, it is a grand technological arena. Chinese tech giants are rushing to deploy their latest models and apps, turning the festival into a spectacular display of innovation where intense competition drives collective progress.

This year, the competition was fierce. While Tencent sent me digital red packets (hongbao) totaling 5 RMB and Alibaba’s Qwen treated me to a digital voucher for a cup of milk tea via their cloud ecosystem, it was ByteDance’s Seedance v2.0 that truly won me over.

I purchased a full-year subscription immediately. It is incredibly fun to use, and I genuinely need its exceptional image generation capabilities for my future work.

Meanwhile, on the hardware front, robotics unicorns went all-out to demonstrate their capabilities. On the Spring Festival Gala—the most-watched TV show globally—humanoid robots displayed agility and speed that rivaled Bruce Lee or Jackie Chan.

But who are the architects behind this vibrant ecosystem?

Chinese media outlets Cailian Press and STAR Market Daily recently released the “2025 Top 10 AI Personalities.” This list serves as a “Who’s Who” of the leaders powering the dynamic AI & Robotics rivalry we are witnessing in early 2026.

Here is the breakdown of the titans driving this tech renaissance.

2025 Top 10 AI and Robotics
They all wear glasses

🎨 The GenAI & Ecosystem Architects

Leading the charge in a golden age of software innovation.

1. Zhang Yiming (张一鸣) | Founder, ByteDance

Zhang Yiming
  • The 2025 Shift: Zhang spearheaded ByteDance’s aggressive pivot to an “AI First” strategy.
  • The Impact: This strategy culminated in the dominance of the Doubao ecosystem and the launch of Seedance v2.0. He is the driving force behind the viral app that won the holiday consumer race through superior multimodal generation.

2. Liang Wenfeng (梁文锋) | Founder, DeepSeek

Liang Wenfeng
  • The 2025 Shift: DeepSeek shook the global industry by releasing DeepSeek-V3 and the R1 reasoning models, proving high-level reasoning could be achieved at a fraction of US compute costs.
  • The Impact: While ByteDance captured the consumer spotlight, Liang’s models quietly powered the backend reasoning for countless developer tools and academic assistants used during the holiday.

3. Yang Zhilin (杨植麟) | Founder, Moonshot AI

Yang Zhilin
  • The 2025 Shift: Solidified Kimi as the go-to assistant for long-context processing.
  • The Impact: Kimi acted as the “smart secretary” for millions during the break, summarizing end-of-year reports and handling complex travel itineraries where other models fell short.

4. Yan Junjie (闫俊杰) | Founder & CEO, MiniMax

Yan Junjie
  • The 2025 Shift: Achieved major breakthroughs in video generation with Hailuo (Snail) and voice synthesis.
  • The Impact: His tech fueled the massive wave of AI-generated “greeting videos” that flooded WeChat moments this year, adding a futuristic twist to traditional well-wishes.

5. Zhang Peng (张鹏) | CEO, Zhipu AI

Zhang Peng
  • The 2025 Shift: Built a robust ecosystem around the GLM models, focusing heavily on AI Agents and enterprise integration.
  • The Impact: Zhipu’s agents powered the customer service bots that handled the massive surge in logistics and ticket bookings during the Spring Festival travel rush (Chunyun).

6. Zhou Jingren (周靖人) | Head, Tongyi Laboratory (Alibaba)

Zhou Jingren
  • The 2025 Shift: Established Qwen (Tongyi Qianwen) as the gold standard for open-source models in China.
  • The Impact: The infrastructure behind the Alibaba digital vouchers and the stability of the cloud during peak transaction times were driven by the intelligence stack he built.

🤖 The Embodied AI & Robotics Pioneers

Taking AI out of the screen and putting it into the physical world.

7. Wang Xingxing (王兴兴) | Founder, Unitree Robotics

Wang Xingxing
  • The 2025 Shift: Successfully mass-produced the G1 humanoid robot, bringing costs down to consumer levels.
  • The Impact: His robots were the primary performers executing the high-agility dance moves on the Spring Festival Gala, showcasing the fun side of serious tech.

8. Peng Zhihui (彭志辉 / “Zhihui Jun”) | Co-founder & CTO, Agibot

Peng Zhihui
  • The 2025 Shift: Rapidly iterated on the Yuanzheng humanoid series, bridging the gap between LLM brains and robotic bodies.
  • The Impact: A key player in the “Gala spectacle,” demonstrating that robots can now handle delicate interactions and precision tasks, not just backflips.

⚙️ The Hard Tech & Industry Anchors

The invisible hands ensuring the software runs and the factories produce.

9. Chen Tianshi (陈天石) | Chairman, Cambricon

Chen Tianshi
  • The 2025 Shift: Navigated immense supply chain constraints to deliver the AI chips necessary to train China’s massive models.
  • The Impact: He provided the compute stability that prevented server crashes under the heavy holiday traffic load, keeping the digital festivities running smoothly.

10. Yin Qi (印奇) | Chairman, Lifan Technology / Co-founder, Megvii

Yin Qi
  • The 2025 Shift: Transitioned from computer vision software to redefining intelligent manufacturing and the automotive sector.
  • The Impact: His work represents the fusion of AI and EV/Auto, crucial for the millions of smart cars on the road during the family reunion migration.

🎓 The Special Tribute

11. Andrew Chi-Chih Yao (姚期智) | Dean, College of AI at Tsinghua University

Andrew Chi-Chih Yao
  • The Role: Turing Award Winner and Academic Godfather.
  • The Legacy: He is the “Teacher” of the industry. Many of the names on this list (including Yang Zhilin and Yin Qi) are his students or “Yao Class” alumni. He is the intellectual source code for the 2026 AI explosion.

The Takeaway

As we settle into 2026, one thing is clear: The gap between “demo” and “daily use” has closed. Whether it’s the Seedance v2.0 subscription I just bought or the robot I watched on TV, AI is no longer a buzzword—it’s the operating system of the Chinese New Year.

This isn’t just a battle for market share; it’s a collective leap forward.

Which of these technologies do you think will have the biggest impact on your workflow this year? Let me know in the comments! 👇

#ChineseNewYear #AI #ChinaTech #Robotics #GenAI #ByteDance #DeepSeek #Innovation #2026Trends

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