AI快跑: Shenzhen 2026

1 Event Chronology and Key Participants

The AI快跑 (AI Express). Shenzhen 2026 event brought together 8 speakers on one stage, representing the full spectrum of the AI + cross-border e-commerce ecosystem: from capital and compliance to video production and brand strategy. Organizers: 经营市场 (Mike) and the AI快跑 platform. Moderator: Harry.

"China's total cross-border e-commerce volume exceeded 2.8 trillion yuan, but the average profit margin dropped from 18% to 9%. Companies that adopted AI tools show 2–5× growth in per-person efficiency — and their net profit is not falling but growing."

— Harry, Moderator AI快跑 Shenzhen 2026

2 Macroeconomic Context: The 2.8T RMB Market and Margin Compression

The conference's key narrative: China's cross-border e-commerce is undergoing a fundamental shift, from the era of traffic to the era of efficiency. Total market volume is 2.8T RMB, yet profitability has halved: from 18% to 9%. Sra noted that in 2025 China reached a trade surplus of nearly 1 trillion yuan, and exports remain a critical pillar of the economy amid slowing domestic consumption and investment.

Global context (Rolling, B News): $2.29T, projected global e-commerce volume in 2026, of which 75% is on mobile devices. Southeast Asia and Latin America are growth zones; Europe and the US are a "red ocean" with slowing growth.

3 AI快跑 "City Partner" Program: Sra

Sra presented perhaps the most ambitious business model of the conference, the AI快跑 City Partner franchise program, aimed at covering all 334 prefecture-level cities in China. Core thesis: "Supply is not the scarcity; demand discovery + community is the source of value." In Tier-1 cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Chengdu), AI products are abundant; in the remaining 328 cities, acute shortage.

Target partner audience: (a) chamber of commerce leaders, (b) audit and law firms with accumulated local trust, (c) government contractors. Sra introduced the concept of FDE (Front Deployment Engineer), engineers working directly on the client's premises to accelerate the "requirement → prototype → feedback" cycle. AI快跑 plans to train its own FDEs to support city partners in the public services sector.

"In an era of rapidly growing productivity, quality supply is not the scarcity. Demand discovery and community strength are the genuine source of value creation."

— Sra, AI快跑 City Partner Program

4 VOC + AI Methodology: Deep User Insights: He Tai

He Tai (何太), former Anker Innovation digital user experience consultant with 5 years in VOC (Voice of Customer), delivered perhaps the most methodologically rich talk of the conference. His central concept : Value Quadrant 4: the intersection of three circles — (1) what the consumer wants, (2) where competitors are weak, (3) where you can excel.

Case 1: Toy Helicopter: The Hidden Drone Pilot Segment

A classic example of AI-driven market redefinition. Toy helicopter manufacturers spent decades positioning the product as family entertainment: "parents buy for kids to have fun." He Tai ran AI analysis through 100,000+ user reviews from Amazon, Reddit, YouTube, TikTok and discovered: parents account for only ~70% of buyers. The remaining ~30%, beginner drone pilots, buy a cheap helicopter for training before purchasing an expensive DJI drone.

Case 2: Pet Auto-Feeder: Platform Data Asymmetry

Analyzing reviews on Amazon alone would show that the main drivers are feeding schedule and portion control. However, on Reddit (where users discuss fears before purchasing) the dominant theme is safety: owners fear the device may harm their pet in their absence. At the price level <$30, material durability is sufficient; at >$120, safety guarantee and multi-pet support are critical.

"AI lets us view the market from a god's-eye perspective — analyzing hundreds of thousands of user voices, identifying tags and insights we would never notice manually. VOC is passive inquiry; it won't replace a focus group in an American living room, but makes it 10× cheaper and faster."

— He Tai, VOC + AI Methodology

5 Compliance Platform: Cold Start of a B2B Marketplace: Winter

Winter, former BCG consultant with 10 years of experience in Germany, is building the highlevel.com platform, a two-sided B2B marketplace connecting Chinese exporters with global lawyers. The platform is in closed beta, with ~100 paying lawyers onboard and 6,000+ lawyers indexed.

Key pain point: TRO (Temporary Restraining Order) on Amazon stores. The seller has 72 hours to respond. Traditional lawyer search channels, through acquaintances, Legal500/Chambers (10 emails → 0 replies), Chinese intermediaries (double commission), don't work under time pressure.

«不出海, 就出局; 一出海, 就出事.»

— Winter, quoting an unnamed Tmall lawyer. Translation: "If you don't go overseas, you're out of the game; if you do, you get into trouble."

LinkedIn as a B2B Channel: The "老登味" Phenomenon

Winter discovered that LinkedIn is the only platform where he can effectively find Western lawyers. His term "老登味" (lit. "old-man flavor," slang equivalent of "LinkedIn voice") describes the specific formal, status-oriented tone required for B2B communication on the platform. Attempts to use Reddit, X (Twitter), and other platforms for lawyer outreach failed.

Winter's Three-Layer AI Framework

6 Investment Perspective: AI + E-Commerce Counter-Cyclicality: Nicole (志成资本)

Nicole, partner at 志成资本 with 10+ years in equity investment, presented the macro picture: venture investment in consumer tech fell by 30%, yet AI + cross-border e-commerce is a counter-cyclical sector. Reason: "it's one of the few areas where Chinese companies can still earn a dollar premium."

The OPC (One Person Company) Phenomenon

Nicole described the OPC phenomenon, solo entrepreneurs managing stores with millions in revenue through AI agents. A traditional cross-border company of 500+ employees (product selection, supply chain, ad placement, operations, customer service) shrinks to 1 person with AI tooling. Her example: a client from Guangzhou who built an AI marketing and visualization system allowing a single operator to manage a multi-channel strategy.

"Don't build what platforms will build themselves. Your advantage lies in the specificity of your vertical and the data you've accumulated. If 钉钉 or 飞书 want to embed your functionality, they'll do it in a month. Your defense is not the product, but domain data."

— Nicole, 志成资本

7 AI Video Factory: LEGO Blocks and Skill Boxes: Oscar (巨星科技)

Oscar, founder of 巨星科技, 9 years in AI, travel blogger. His talk was the most tactical and practically oriented at the conference. Key metaphor: AI video production as a LEGO factory.

Three Eras of AI Video

"AI video has gone from 'crank out 200 clips — the platform will give you traffic' to 'make one clip that passes the Smith Eating Noodles test.' Quality now decides. AI is not for quantity — AI is for rapid hypothesis iteration."

— Oscar, 巨星科技

The "Smith Eating Noodles" Test

Oscar described an evolutionary test for AI video: can a viewer distinguish an AI-generated video of a person eating noodles from a real recording? In 2023 (Sora 1), easy; in 2025 (Kling 2.6), nearly impossible. This threshold is the point of no return for the industry.

LEGO Content Factory

Oscar's methodology is modular video production. Video is decomposed into hooks (first 3 seconds), CTA (call to action), scripts, scenes, personas. Each element accumulates as a "LEGO brick" in a library. AI then combines them randomly, generating 10,000+ variations, from which A/B testing selects 10 working MVPs.

8 AI Agent Ecosystem: From "人找货" to "货找人": Rolling (B News)

Rolling, CEO of B News and founder of 新科影业, presented the most comprehensive ecosystem picture. Under the management of 恒达集团 (3 public companies: HK, NASDAQ), four business lines operate, forming a closed-loop AI-commerce cycle:

AI Native Company

Rolling described an ambitious concept: every business process in the holding should be managed by AI agents. Humans retain only strategic decision-making. MetaHuman digital humans are a key component: scanning real tech bloggers to create 24/7 AI streamers on the 商城 platform.

"From 'people search for goods' to 'goods find people.' This is not an incremental improvement — it's a revolution. AI analyzes user behavior and 主动推送 (pushes) the product before the user realizes the need."

— Rolling, B News / 新科智联商城

9 Brand Globalization 3.0: Cognitive Warfare: Jin Fengguo (冯波出海)

Jin Fengguo (金凤国), founder of 冯波出海, who has visited 40+ countries (including Antarctica) and relocated his entire team to Europe, presented perhaps the most conceptually rich picture. His three-stage model of Chinese export evolution (1.0 → 2.0 → 3.0) became the central framework for understanding the strategic landscape.

Personal AI Consumption

Jin Fengguo is an extreme AI user: 1.06 billion tokens in April 2026 (on his personal computer alone), equivalent to $3,700 at market rates for Claude and GPT. The company uses corporate token purchasing to reduce costs.

AI-Powered Social Selling Tool

One of the most provocative AI applications at the conference: Jin Fengguo and his team created a tool managing 93 fake social media accounts. The accounts conduct automated group conversations, qualify leads, and bring them to the phone call stage, with no human involvement. Each account has its own persona (programmer, salesperson, enthusiast), defined by a prompt.

"In the 1.0 era, you competed with factories; in 2.0 — with traffic; in 3.0, you compete cognitively. A brand is not a logo. It's a mental construct in the consumer's mind that gives you pricing power. Without a brand, you sell a product; with a brand, you grow a fan base."

— Jin Fengguo, 冯波出海

10 Cross-Cutting Analysis: Common Patterns Across Presentations

Despite the diversity of topics and business models, several common patterns run through all 7 presentations, allowing us to map the AI + cross-border e-commerce consensus for 2026.

Pattern 1: Data > Models

This is the strongest signal from the conference. Oscar: "Data assets, not agent strength, that's the moat." Nicole: "Don't build what platforms will build themselves. Your defense is domain data." Winter: "OpenCloud preserves company knowledge even during turnover." Rolling: merging data from media, content, and purchases into a unified profile. He Tai: the entire methodology is built around prioritizing the collection of the right data from the right platforms.

Pattern 2: Agentification

The term surfaced repeatedly in different contexts: OPC (Nicole), FDE (Sra), MetaHuman livestreamers (Rolling), social selling agents (Jin Fengguo), compliance agents (Winter). The conference captured the shift from AI as a tool to AI as an employee. Coze 3.0 (mentioned by multiple speakers) is the infrastructure answer to this trend: multi-agent collaboration with shared context.

Pattern 3: From Volume to Quality

Oscar: AI video has gone from spamming 200 clips to one quality clip. He Tai: "Don't 滥用AI", don't abuse it, instructions must be precise. Harry: margins are falling, survivors are those who use AI for efficiency, not volume.

Pattern 4: Regional Expansion as an Imperative

Sra: 334 cities. Mike: 50+ cities in the first wave. Rolling: Southeast Asia + Latin America. Jin Fengguo: the entire team physically relocated to Europe. Consensus: the tier-1 market is saturated; growth lies in geographic diversification.

11 Technology Stack and Products

The conference revealed a broad spectrum of AI tools and platforms used by the speakers. Below is a summary table of the technology stack.

"Coze 3.0 is the first platform where multi-agent collaboration truly works. You create a project, add multiple agents, give them shared context — and they coordinate. It's not five separate 龙虾, it's a team."

— From the Coze 3.0 Discussion at the Conference

12 Risks and Cautions

Despite the overall optimism, speakers identified a number of significant risks. Let's systematize them.

"If you don't use AI, you lose. If you use AI incorrectly, you also lose — just faster. The main mistake: giving AI a generic instruction and waiting for a miracle. The instruction must be granular down to the platform level, tags, and target metrics."

— He Tai, Warning About 滥用AI (AI Abuse)

13 Forecasts and Final Conclusions

The AI快跑 Shenzhen 2026 conference captured a turning point in China's AI + cross-border e-commerce ecosystem. Below is a synthesis of forecasts, explicitly and implicitly formulated by the speakers.

Medium-Term Forecasts (2026–2028)

What's Next?

The AI快跑 conference is not merely a series of talks. It's a snapshot of the ecosystem at a bifurcation point. Three vectors will define the next 24 months:

1. Infrastructure War. Coze 3.0, Feishu Open Flow, and similar platforms are fighting for the multi-agent collaboration standard. The winner will gain control over the skill marketplace, and consequently, over the monetization of domain expertise.

2. Data as Oil. The speaker consensus is unequivocal: models commoditize, data does not. Companies that have accumulated proprietary datasets (He Tai's VOC analytics, Winter's compliance base, Oscar's video hooks/CTA library) will gain disproportionate advantage.

3. Geopolitical Factor. Jin Fengguo physically relocated to Europe. Rolling focuses on Southeast Asia and LatAm. Cross-border e-commerce is increasingly embedded in the geopolitical fabric, and AI becomes a navigation tool in this landscape (compliance, localization, multi-jurisdiction operations).

"We stand at the threshold of an era where every product is a brand story, every transaction is a data point, every employee is augmented intelligence. Those who don't adapt will vanish. Those who adapt incorrectly will vanish faster. The AI快跑 conference is a minefield map, not a tourist brochure."

— Synthetic Conclusion from 7 Presentations

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📋 Summary Table: Key Conference Metrics