Yu Yinan has often moved toward new technology waves before they fully arrived.
After earning his PhD, Yu did not enter academia, as many of his peers did. Instead, he joined China’s internet sector. In 2015, after Yu Kai asked him, “Shall we go build artificial intelligence chips together?” Yu joined the founding team of Horizon Robotics as employee number one.
In the years that followed, Horizon Robotics grew into one of China’s most closely watched autonomous driving technology companies. It listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2024. According to 36Kr, it was the largest Hong Kong IPO that year.
At the end of 2024, Yu left Horizon Robotics and founded Vbot, aiming to bring capabilities developed in autonomous driving over the past decade into consumer-grade robots.
Yu has a streetwise decisiveness that is not always associated with technical founders. In his later years at Horizon Robotics, he managed supply chain, sales, finance, and other functions. After starting his own company, he had to oversee the full business. Decisiveness and discipline became part of the job.
