Where Chinese AI
meets the world
Chinese AI founders are going global. American AI companies are entering Asia. Singapore is where both sides land first. The AI Duet sits at this intersection — with the access and perspective to tell the stories that neither side sees on its own.
I'm Ellen. I talk to Chinese AI founders in Singapore every week for my podcast 离线时间. The AI Duet is where those insights — and my own analysis — reach an English-speaking audience.
More about me →YC Just Named the Model. Two Founders in Singapore Have Been Running It for 18 Months.
Y Combinator spent fifteen years funding software and almost no services. Its latest batch has nine AI-native service companies — an AI law firm, an AI accountant, an AI insurance broker — and a Startup School session teaching founders how to build one. The thesis is clean: don't sell software to accountants, do the accounting. I sat down with two founders in Singapore who arrived there on their own, eighteen months earlier, and who have already hit three walls the thesis doesn't mention.
He Was Painting Walls in Australia. Now He's Putting Chinese AI Hardware in Harvey Norman.
Chris Liu was a product manager at Weibo and Alipay, then a three-time founder. He landed in Australia in 2024, went undercover in a furniture store, and spent a few days as a painter's assistant. On why Australia is the market everyone skips, why you can't sell AI tools to a country of small businesses, and why closing deals there is easier than in China.
Every Major Food Brand Has No AI Strategy. She Spent 10 Years Inside the Industry Learning Why.
Aria Wang went from ADM — one of the world's four largest agricultural traders — to INSEAD to building AI agents for food and beverage companies. On why tech and food can't understand each other, how AI-simulated consumers hit 90% correlation with human panels, and what she learned winning a Google DeepMind hackathon with no technical background.
From Tencent's AI Lab to Replacing Your Accountant
Mao Hua spent eight years building Tencent's AI systems — from IoT to voice to computer vision. Now he's in the US, turning a finance agent into a full-service accounting firm. His take on why the cloud is about to get radically simpler, and why your MacBook will run your company's AI within two years.
He Built Asia's Largest Startup Accelerator at Huawei. Now He's Replacing the SDR.
Leo Jiang went from BT and Vodafone to building Huawei's Spark program — 7,000+ startup applications across five continents. Then he left to build an AI sales agent. On why outbound sales is the perfect AI use case, why SaaS is ending, and why the future is agent-to-agent commerce.
The Case for Edge AI: From NIO's Data Center on Wheels to a Medical Device on a Desk
Hu Chenchen went from Tsinghua professor to Xilinx Asia CTO to NIO's chief expert to AI startup founder. His thesis: the last decade belonged to the cloud, but the next decade belongs to the edge. A medical AI device that costs 1/20th the power and 1/60th the volume just proved him right.
What Singapore's EDB Actually Tells AI Founders About Setting Up Here
I brought an AI infrastructure founder to meet EDB. Practical takeaways on EP applications, tax incentives, and why most founders get the order wrong.
How an AI Company Became Singapore's 6th Largest Egg Trader
Five people, 2,000 restaurants, and a WhatsApp-first supply chain. The most interesting AI company in Singapore sells eggs.
Why Maritime Needs AI Brokers, Not Platforms
Shipping isn't Manbang for the ocean. A Singapore startup shows why AI optimization beats marketplace matching.