Former Meituan PM: Chinese AI products are built with fundamentally different market logic

A former Meituan product manager involved in AI projects says Chinese AI development accelerated aggressively around 2025 after DeepSeek sparked industry-wide interest in AI agents. Almost every business unit at large Chinese tech companies launched AI initiatives. The key difference is market-driven: Chinese tech companies optimize for extreme cost efficiency because the domestic market demands it. The former manager noted that more Chinese tech workers are choosing entrepreneurship as AI lowers the barriers to building products independently.

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