Tencent's QClaw goes global, aims to serve the average consumer user, with PM Shuyu Zhang

Amid Anthropic’s success with coding products, many AI labs and companies have also tried to lean into that vertical. OpenAI has stepped back from courting consumers and shut down its video model division, Sora. Alibaba, meanwhile, has more recently begun releasing closed-weight proprietary models and is reportedly pushing the Qwen team to find clearer paths to monetization. The Chinese tech giant has also launched Qoder, a Cursor-like product under the Alibaba umbrella, which we interviewed last year.

But despite all this, Tencent remains notably committed to the mass consumer market. The OpenClaw frenzy has already led to five different Clawbot-style products emerging across its ecosystem. Joining me today is Shuyu Zhang, Senior Product Manager of QClaw, to break down the thinking behind that frenzy, from the cultural logic to the business rationale to the product design choices shaping it all.

QClaw is to be accessible to everyone on April 21. It is the first consumer-grade AI agent built on OpenClaw. No technical setup, scan a QR Code, and the agent will be live in 3 minutes.

Product link: qclawsg.qq.com

Waist list: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeIfEzlOV8jq_tGMbV5mqTSALyufE0kZ933XqE3Fnha1_CRfA/viewform?usp=publish-editor (Founding Claw — limited 20,000 slots)

Every episode, I bring in a guest with a unique point of view on a critical matter, phenomenon, or business trend—someone who can help us see things differently. Season two will host a series of guests from early-stage investing, as well as builders, founders, and product managers.

For more information on the podcast series, see here.

To find the previous episodes of Differentiated Understanding, see here.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to OpenClaw Frenzy in China

02:30 Shuyu Zhang’s Journey and Insights on AI Accessibility

05:27 Cultural and Societal Factors Driving AI Adoption in China

07:48 Understanding OpenClaw’s Popularity and Usage

10:36 Exploring Tencent’s AI Product Ecosystem

13:33 QClaw’s Integration and User Experience

15:45 The Philosophy Behind QClaw’s Design

18:14 Raising the Claw: The Concept of Personal AI

22:48 Incremental Value in AI Products

23:33 User Experience as a Priority

27:55 Understanding User Needs and Safety Concerns

33:07 Business Model and Global Expansion

Transcript (AI-generated)

Grace Shao (00:00)

Thank you so much for joining us today, Shuyu. I’m so excited to have you on the first day. I understand it’s such a pleasure to have you here. I’m really excited for today’s topic because it’s something that’s kind of been at the top of mind for a lot of people. Why was there a massive open call frenzy in China? Why did it take off? The thinking behind it all. How did WeChat go about opening up to this whole new era of agentic AI within WeChat development? And there’s no better person to talk about this topic than you. So first of all, for the audience, please start with telling us about yourself, your role. How did you end up here?

Shuyu Zhang (00:35)

OK.

Hi, everyone. I’m Shuyu, product lead of Qclaw. Also, the architect behind it’s overnight growth story in China. I achieved breakout success with zero marketing spend. I got a master’s degree of finance from Washington University in San Luis, then worked for Alibaba Group as head of AI product in Sanyo for four years. We mostly crafted AI product for business there. Almost everything we did was about AI for work. But one day, I decided to do something different. I want to get more exposed to consumer side.

to experiment with the chemistry of AI for common people. Tencent is famous for its consumer side products I want to work with and learn from consumer product experts here. So I came here last September. Yeah.

Grace Shao (01:15)

Really cool. And I think one thing that really kind of resonated with me is when we’re talking about AI agents right now, how a lot of times, you know, the products still don’t feel that intuitive for non-technical people. And you yourself joked and said, you know, look, you’re like a social science and liberal arts student. You’re not a technical person yourself, but you’re able to lead the product design for this. And your mission is really to make QClaw more accessible to non-technical people. Tell us about that and the thinking behind it all.

Shuyu Zhang (01:43)

Okay, okay. Actually, the story starts when I was working for Alibaba. Initially, we worked for the engineers to help them improve their working efficiency with AI. But later I found out that this group is overly served. They only account for like 1 % of all of the people, but

Every day there are lot of products designed exactly for them. And I think this is still the major theme of AI revolution since 2023, where people think the way to AGI lies. But these groups also are easily unsatisfied. They raise a lot of questions about the services that the AI provided, and at the same time, they’re afraid to be replaced. So I think the vibe is strange. So when I’m moving to a new environment to Shenzhen, when I was hanging around, I found a lot of interesting common people are using AI.

And they’re getting a lot of happiness and convenience, even though the product capabilities for them are not the most advanced and designated for their needs. They’re still satisfied. There are two interesting stories. The first story is when I was getting home on the plane during spring festival, I met a 12 year old girl. This girl looks smart. She was playing with some toys. And after that, she was playing with a chatbot during waiting for the plane to take off. I was shocked.

Because in the past, when I am younger, we usually play games during while we’re waiting for the plane to take off. But the youngest generations are playing with chatbots. This is interesting. And she’s using it to either cut the photos and even make phone calls with the chatbot. And when I talked to her, he also told me that when their friends are hanging out, the 12 years old girls are hanging out. They’re playing with the chatbot too. And I was really shocked by that story. And the second story is during the early January, Yang Liping was doing opera in Shenzhen. And I went there too. And a 50 year old lady sitting next to me, I cleared at her phone screen. The phone storage was actually out of use.

But she didn’t delete the chat box applications in her phone as well. She only reserved WeChat, TikTok and the chat box applications in her phone, even though it’s already full because she might not use the very advanced phones. Yeah. And then I found out that for common people, the requirements or the needs for AI exists as well. And problems widespread for the problems, not widespread, for the problems widespread, but not complicated. But the supplies for them are far from enough. And I know there are a lot of people are chasing higher and stronger AI, but the gap between the bottom and the ceilings, 90 % of the people are between them. I want to make a product that can feel and satisfy these people’s needs. Yeah, that’s my story.

Grace Shao (04:30)

That’s really interesting. think it really ties into a theme that we’ve been writing a lot about AI-prone, which is also about how China is really embracing it as a full on mass market product versus I think in the West right now, AI is still really used by a select group of knowledge workers or certain kind of demographic. I do want to double click on that, which is what do you mean by the young girl is playing with AI? What was she doing actually?

Was it interactive with their friends or were they trying to build products or what were they doing?

Shuyu Zhang (05:00)

Okay. The young girl, when she was playing with the chat bot applications, she actually sent a photo of her roughly taken, not in a very good light or in a very good background. And she just asked that, asked that application to curve it for me to make me look prettier or make me look funnier. She’s not actually a, because I asked, I also asked her a very interesting question. I asked, do you post TikTok shorts or Instagram?

She said, I don’t because I don’t like to show enough my life to the public, but I just like to see my photos in the funny way. don’t even though I use AI to, you know, process my photos, I’m just enjoying it by myself. I don’t want to it to other people. And the happiness of the AI processing of the photos is already enough for her. And this is the first scenery she’s using. And the second scenery is that she actually stays at school all the time. She didn’t go home during the from Monday to Friday. So she told me when she missed her mother, because her mother worked in Shenzhen and is a working mother, her mother doesn’t have a lot of time to, you know, FaceTime with her or the teacher doesn’t allow that as well. Because when she go back to the dormitory, the roommates are silent. They can’t do that, but she can always talk to that chatbot. It’s like a companion. And that also makes me feel warm actually, but also little bit sad for her. And the third scenery for her is that she told me she would call the chatbot because the chatbot never blames her and the chatbot always holds her words because sometimes for I don’t know, for the young generations, a lot of their topics are hard to get for the friends, but She said, chatbot is always a good friend because the young generations, they don’t actually care about the or they don’t know about the appearance of people or the words behind the words. But the chatbot is always blunt and sincere and always happy to chat with. Yeah, this is the three scenarios she’s using it.

Grace Shao (00:00)

Following up on our previous conversation about why Chinese people seem to have a much more optimistic approach to AI and why did the open claw, why did open claw take off in China, like such like wildfire.

Shuyu Zhang (00:15)

Okay, so I think Chinese people in general, embrace technology with open arms. They have a strong, better self mindset. They believe that new tools can help you learn faster, work smarter and live better. People want to upgrade themselves. And the second point, and also this is a key, for over a decade, Chinese tech companies have been quietly lowering the barriers using technology. They make complex things simple. You don’t need to be an engineer to call a DD or take out on Meituan or buy anything online. It just works. So people naturally expect that new technology will make life easier, not harder. That’s exactly what Qclaw and Tencent’s lobster products did. They took OpenClaw’s powerful but geeky core and wrapped it into a simple IM plugin. The barrier to entry dropped from weeks of learning to 10 seconds. That’s why lobster caught fire in China. not because it was the most advanced AI in the world, but because someone finally made it useful for everyone.

Grace Shao (01:13)

I think that’s a really interesting take and I think in general it kind of ties together to the bigger kind of sentiment as well where overall the reputation of Chinese big tech such as Alibaba, dance and tents that still are perceived quite positively by the average person to be an employee there is something very prestigious, ⁓ very like sought after. Whereas in the US, I think in the last couple of years, there is a bit more contention or negativity around the big text, whether it’s monopoly or behavior or even the capital allocation that they’ve really received that’s unfair compared to the rest of the country. overall sentiment is a bit different. I think that really did contribute to this as well.

Shuyu Zhang (01:58)

Yeah, exactly.

Grace Shao (07:00)

I think that’s really eye-opening and I think I’m not trying to hijack this whole conversation, but to me when I hear that, I think I want to like you said, the companionship is really great and the ability to help the child feel more connected to her mother is great. But at the same time, I do feel like there is some concerns or worries about that. ⁓ I did notice that the Chinese regulators recently pushed out some regulations around actual child use of AI.

which we’ll have an expert to join us one day to talk about this. But I think it’s interesting to showcase a phenomenon of China really embracing this at a mass scale. On that note, I don’t want to go too deep into the child use today, but on that note, I do want to ask you, why is it that China seems to be so amazed and enthused about AI, and especially this time with the open-claw embrace?

Obviously at Tencent’s headquarters, saw pictures going viral where people were lining up and getting open-clawed saws. Various big tech, whether it’s Alibaba or Baidu pushed out similar products like yours, like Qclaw. Could you explain to us from the big picture, is it cultural? Is it societal reason? Is it a top-down policy reason? Is it commercialized as a business reason? Is it product design, like you said? What is it that really drove like everyone going AI.

Shuyu Zhang (08:16)

Okay, so the first background of Chinese AI is that since 2023, since the chat-chip goes out and after that Baidu, Alibaba and also Tencent and also most importantly DeepSeq, it’s widespread of AI, their LLM makes AI widespread in China already because during last, the one before the last Spring Festival, almost like 200 million people use DeepSeek every day. So the basic foundation of people knowing AI in China is already widespread. And why OpenClaw is also going wild in China this year? Because OpenClaw’s capability is quite different from other products that people are familiar with currently. So this is the first decision point. more about the culture thing.

Firstly, China is a fast developing country and Chinese people are diligent by nature. And every generation, people of every age want to be a better self. So during this race, anxious middle-aged actually is a very big contributing factor. And also fear is also a big pusher. They always fear, you know, when they’re getting old, they will be lagging behind. So they want to, you know, learn more things.

learn what the new generations or the techie guys are doing. Yeah, this is the first decision point. And the second point is that hiring a personal assistant or secretary here is not common, but everyone wants to be an emperor because there are so many operas and TV series and soap opera shows recently about how the past generations, how the ancient times, how the emperor times. Yeah, everyone wants to be an emperor. So texting a message, gets the people done your job. Everyone wants it. So as long as you make the product simple enough and convey strong similarity with being emperor by sending messages through WeChat, really suits people’s taste. Yeah, I think this is two big factors about culture and society reasons here.

Grace Shao (10:18)

It’s interesting because basically they’re saying involution itself needs you and has made everyone want to adopt a new technology faster. It’s something I’ve never thought about. On the second point, am curious, like jokes aside about the Emperor thing. What is it that like the average person, like what are they using OpenClaw for though?

Shuyu Zhang (10:36)

Okay, actually there are two big categories. The first category is still for the common people because they don’t, even though they know OpenClaw is wild, they don’t know what to use it about. So they still use it like Yuanbao or Doubao or the other phone. They just like asking, yes, yes, yes. They still use it like the chat bots. the second part, they already use it in a more advanced way. They used it to earn money.

Grace Shao (10:53)

which are chat bot products. Yeah.

Shuyu Zhang (11:04)

Like for example, ask QClaw to seek jobs for them, like scanning the boss or the Liepin website and apply for the job.

Grace Shao (11:12)

Which are LinkedIn, Chinese LinkedIn, Craigslist, or indeed kind of like websites. Yeah. Okay.

Shuyu Zhang (11:18)

Yes, yes. And the second part, they use it to operate the social media account like Red Note or they even use it to operate X account, get some posts from X and watch it to write on other social media platform. Yeah. And the third condition is that they actually, trying to use it for like investing suggestions, how to invest in some stocks, what’s the price to get in and should they keep it or sell it.

Yeah, these are the main categories, but they are all about making money.

Grace Shao (11:49)

I see. That’s what fascinating. I want to get into case studies a bit more later. But before we get into this further, I want to help our listeners understand, can we, provide a base framework? Right now there are five claw bought like products within just Tencent ecosystem. And Qclaw is one of them, right? Which falls under WeChat, the product WeChat. Can you help us understand like these products first?

Shuyu Zhang (12:13)

Yeah, sure. The five claw product here is different for the users and are different between the target users. First, Qclaw and also WorkBuddy, we’re targeting at consumer and the Lighthouse, they’re targeting at enterprise side needs. And also there is a product called Claw Pro. They’re targeting at enterprise for the enterprise who want to make their stuff. Everyone has an ⁓ enterprise size claw and also the cloud desktop they’re targeting also at the enterprise side. Yeah.

Grace Shao (12:44)

I see that that’s just a good framework to have. So, okay, let’s get into the product pieces and your strategic intent then. OpenClaw is the open source framework ecosystem, while QClaw is Tencent’s package localized layer built on top of it. Can you actually help us understand how that works? What does it mean to have an OpenClaw integrated into a Tencent ecosystem?

Shuyu Zhang (13:04)

Okay, sure. Okay. So open cloud is actually a package of codes. If you install them on your laptop and connect it with LLM APIs, you can have a personal assistant already on your desktop. But that were required to handle like command lines, which is very technical skill. Even though I’m a product manager, I don’t know how to run command lines before after my engineers taught me to. Yeah. So purchasing and also purchasing APIs from providers is also not familiar for common people.

and also connecting with WeChat channels or like the other channels is also not that so easy before we do it there. OK, so we made all of these coding execution into visible and simple product features, which are already educated to common people. For example, we made the channel connection by making it just scanning a QR code and you can already get a QR code onboard on WeChat.

Grace Shao (13:33)

Mm-hmm.

Shuyu Zhang (13:59)

And also we make all of the LLM API purchasing processing invisible. We don’t need them to purchase a game. We are reincarnate in the product. And also the installation part in the past, people might need to, know, NPM run open claw, but now they only need to download the applications and double click it’s on.

Grace Shao (14:19)

see that that’s really helpful for people who don’t understand technologies, understand how this works, including myself even, I was a bit troubled. So I want to understand the thinking behind the QClaw product, right? You kind of talked about it, the frankly, the more cultural aspect of like how this came about and your own personal mission. What was the business decision really for WeChat? Like why did WeChat push out QClaw?

Shuyu Zhang (14:43)

Okay, so the thinking behind QClaw, how did that come out? Actually, aside from the thinking that I want to build a product that is easy enough for common people to use it, I still have the following thinking. The first is, ⁓ what’s the vibe of the product we should use? Is it work or life or both? Because the chosen, the choice of the vibe will be different for different people. How do we categorize that the work it can do for us? Because in the past, I think all of the AI products categorization are hard to get because most of time you just categorize, for example, something like finance or.

⁓ work usage or something like information gathering. my God, who knows that? So, and also there are a lot of times that work and life are mingled together. So if you’re designing an agent or a product features for everyone, if you’re trying to do that, that’d be hard. For example, if I want to build a finance agent, common people might just want to, you know, like search the stock price of something for me.

or recommend whether I buy or sell. But if for the professional users, their requirements will be higher. For example, they want, they wanted to, for example, write a quantitative trading strategy for me or something like that. Actually, the depth of capabilities providing would be hard to define here. And also it may discourage users if not handled properly because ror example, if for the pro users you’re designing it too easy, they would think, this is useless. This is far from replacing my interns or something like that. And if it’s designed to be too complicated, the common users would think, my God, this problem is not just designed for me. I don’t deserve to use that. And people are born to have fearness towards their unfamiliar domains. So I think technology or products should

undermine these fears or lower the barriers here. So in that way, we actually divide the categories of QClaw in three ways, which will be in international version. We categorize in three ways. First, QClaw it up. For the things you don’t want to do, but I have to let QClaw do it for me. That’s QClaw it. And also,

QClaw daily for the things I need to do every day, but I don’t want to forget a break. And the third QClaw up for the things I can achieve by myself and the expertise support. We divide the categories in these three ways. So everyone would have the it daily and up requirements. And we will also be more flexible or more concentrated focus on what types and what level of capabilities we’re providing.

This is the first thinking behind that. Yeah, because I think that the categories are complex and I want to make it simple and direct and focused to the people’s needs. They will know this, oh, this is for me. This is not too hard or something I don’t deserve. This is something I deserve to use and it would really help me. And the second thoughts behind that is, it’s a line we draw in selecting the building clause for agent.

since we already raised a lot of full grown claw. Because in China, a lot of people find it hard to raise a claw. They have to educate it. They have to do a lot of configs. So it’s hard for them to raise. But we...

Grace Shao (18:05)

Sorry, one moment. Explain the

context of what raising a claw mean. Like in Chinese right now, the buzzword is 養龍蝦. Explain to people what that means.

Shuyu Zhang (18:14)

Yes. So raising the club, a lot of people for common people, they were thinking like feeding all of my knowledge, what I know, who I am, what I want, what I like to it. They take into your input and they know what to generate in this mind. And also there is a mechanism called dream during the dream. They were, they were rethink about everything you, you told it today and they would generate something called memory.

And in the later usage, they will use this memory to know you better. So you will know that after daily’s inputs, after daily’s talk with it, your claw will know you better. And every instructions you give it will be better than the common AI products that don’t know you. That is called Yang Longxia or raising the claw.

Grace Shao (18:59)

It’s so funny. It’s

basically providing the technology, the context, but then when it gets better, better people say they’re like lobsters are growing, growing. It’s a funny analogy. I don’t know how it caught up, but it’s hilarious. Yeah. But yes, please continue. Thank you for that context.

Shuyu Zhang (19:12)

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, yeah. And I also think Yang Longxia or raising the claw is interesting because it’s like raising a kid or raising a pet. Because in the past, I think everyone still remembers there is a product called QQ Pet on QQ of Tencent. And I think back in my days, I was like seven to nine years old. I also raised a pet by myself, even though it died twice. Yeah.

Yeah, I really enjoyed raising a pet, like feeding it every day or just bring it up on the website and see it on my desktop every day. I think that is interesting for me. And I think a lot of people would want that this kind of companion of AI and they also enjoy the feeling that something is getting smarter or clever because of them. There is connections between them and the AI. They will bring a great joyness here.

not just something, for example, something that is already very supreme, high end package well and bring it to you and you just use it. You don’t feel connections with it. I think this is a very different feelings here. OK, so keep going with my point. ⁓

Grace Shao (20:22)

No, I think it’s funny

because I do think you touch on something basically like how Chinese tech companies gamified as well. So that’s how it also helped the mass market adoption that we were talking about earlier. And you just reminded me like when I was young, we all had Neil pets. think any millennial people in the West would know that. And like, even though they’re a virtual pet, you actually had a strong emotional connection with it. So I kind of see what you mean by this where

A lot of people might have not even found a purpose or use case originally, but even just building that context, that relationship with the AI that actually helped, you know, adoption rate. then sooner or later you try to find ways to make it more useful. Right. But yeah, please continue.

Shuyu Zhang (21:03)

Yes.

Yeah, exactly. OK, so after I saw that trend and also I saw the problem here, I think if we’re giving them some ground-claw, we should bring incremental value or incremental user experience to these people. And because this is important for the product perception, because if we’re the same like the chatbot about what we can do, people wouldn’t think or people wouldn’t take it seriously.

people will still think, okay, this is just another chatbot, but I want to bring incremental value to them. For example, before, in the past, when people want to make some travel plans using AI chatbot, they can only say like, I’m going to like Shenzhen for three days trip. Can you design a trip for me? Because in the past, like even though AI might be different in every answer, there are 80 % of the answers are similar.

or told you like to go to some park or some supermarket or some something like that or the hotels to say but if you’re using claw it would told you okay based on your fondness based on your habits based on the things you told me before i think some blah blah blah hotels would be better for you and some restaurant which is closer for example to your hometown or the flavor is similar to what you have told me that you like

This would be the incremental value. also the claw can also like book the flights, book the hotels, or just, you know, make transactions with the restaurants and ask for example, I’m going to spend my birthday there. Can you arrange something for me? All of the things is incremental value of QClaw AI can bring to people compared with the common air products. And I think this is the second thought behind it.

I want to do something that brings incremental value. Yeah. And I think these are the considerations here.

Grace Shao (22:48)

So I think one thing that’s quite interesting is Qclaw is obviously built out by the Tencent team. However, it can be accessed not only through your own WeChat Wecom, which is the WeChat Enterprise product. It can also be accessed through ByteDance Lark, which is like the Slack product within ByteDance. What is the thinking behind that? Why did you open up to your competitors essentially?

Shuyu Zhang (23:06)

Okay, so these are all channels, channels where people are already living in. We want QQL to keep company with users either in life or work or any interface. So limiting any channel will bring inconvenience to users. For us, the user experience is ultimate mode. So we don’t really care about the other, you know, so-called the business consideration. I think the user experience is the most important thing for us. Yeah.

Grace Shao (23:33)

That’s a very WeChat answer. feel like Alan Zhang has been kind of known to always prioritize user experience over any other kind of thinking, whether it’s commercialization or even, you know, sometimes functional adjacency within other products within the Tense Umbrella. So interesting. OK, so I have more questions. Something we talked about prior to recording was that you said WeChat is the default entry point for QClaw.

And that’s still a huge mode or advantage for you guys, especially certain features that you guys introduced, such as like scanning the QR code for downloading or installing a claw has been a big selling point. Walk us through kind of why is that and why WeChat, QCOP being built within WeChat is something so powerful.

Shuyu Zhang (24:22)

Okay, so actually there is a very simple reason before that and after that I will explain a more complicated one. The very first simple reason is that during the initial launch, we only had five engineers and me in the very first place. And we started to develop this product after spring festival, but we launched it in March 9th, I remember. So the time is very limited, but there are so many things to be productized.

of OpenClaw. What is the choice here? Because I want to make it simple. I want to make it user friendly. I want to make it widespread. So the first two things need to be adjusted by us. We need to do deletions. And the third part, we need to do adding items. Because before that, actually WeChat is not supported by OpenClaw officially. So we just

watch all of the files on the WeChat open platform and found out that there is actually a way to connect WeChat to OpenClaw. Then we just implemented it. And actually we don’t have more time to do that. So I think, okay, if I only have one time to make a decision or I only have one chance to select the channels, what would I choose? Of course I would choose WeChat because not everyone use some other working messaging applications.

But almost everyone in China use WeChat, even though whether you are like four or five years old even, or you’re 70, 80 years old, everyone use that. so that is why I choose it for the first channels. And the second reason is that people are mostly adjusted to use WeChat. And WeChat can be also connected through scanning QR code, which is the user experience other products can give them.

because other products, you see it on the light, like the tutorial, you need to go to the open platform of that product. need to copy your user ID, which is a very long link, and you need to copy the token or pin or something that is so technical terms. People would get scared by that. But we already have a very simple user experience, ⁓ user interface method that is getting QR code.

Why don’t we just do that? And also, also through the past years, mobile payment through scanning QR code is also widespread by Tencent. Tencent made scanning QR code and making payments widespread in China. And everyone, either they’re like the merchandising, the business, big business or small business, they can have their own QR code. And everyone is

used to scanning the QR code and connect everything. That is why we choose WeChat as the default selection.

Grace Shao (27:04)

I think that’s interesting because it’s like basically what headlines been missing. A lot of it is also just the native user experience and the ease of people to even access this kind of new technology because I think like you said, a lot of people are not maybe not scared, but it’s intimidating, right? It’s intimidating to try out new things and a lot of what’s out there in the market right now feels very technical. And if you’re not a technical person, you’re not following the progression of AI like closely. It’s

It feels intimidating to even try these new products out. Yeah, so I want to bring the conversation back to the real life usage, right? Because that’s a thread we kind of been talking about throughout our conversation. You really focus on bringing AI agents to the average show, the average person to the mass market. What is it that people really, really want out of this? Is it?

purely for gimmicky use, it’s for fun. You know, the case that he brought up with the young girl is obviously very interesting, but I would assume that’s not the mass demographic, right? Is it for consumer convenience, prosumer productivity? Is it for small medium sized businesses automation? I wanted to understand that. And then I want to expand beyond that, which is, are they not concerned at all about safety or privacy when they’re using these products?

Shuyu Zhang (28:22)

⁓ actually I think, yeah. Okay. So, ⁓ the, the first question I’ll explain here is what is a real target use case here? Either it’s consumer convenience, prosumer productivity or small business office of my automation there, right?

Grace Shao (28:23)

So two parts.

Shuyu Zhang (28:36)

Okay, so for me, it’s still consumer convenience, or we don’t categorize in this way, because we look at people as the subject, what the people need to do and how we can make it smooth and convenient. People can have different requirements in different conditions, either it’s on life or it’s on productivity, or some more serious or related to the business. We make integrations and push the ecosystem to provide the rest.

We will, like for example, if you see QClaw international version, you will see already put like some, I mentioned before the QClaw and QClaw Daily about for example, either you’re seeking jobs or you are operating your ex account or you are, for example, your career pop fan and you want to search for the concert tickets or chasing all of the information behind the hero. This is the conditions we provide. And we will also push the ecosystem.

For example, we already have a lot of ecosystem supporters here who provide the doc intelligence, like providing, for example, scanning contracts, the receipts, scanning something like that. And also there are ecosystem friends who already provide video generation, something relevant to, for example, creative parts or the designer shop. Yeah, we have a lot of ecosystem friends.

providing here. So we are still starting from what the people needs in aggregate, what people needs aggregately. so this will, the second question about the safety problem here is that we actually provide an incarnate safety features called the AI gateway or in Chinese Longxia Guanjia. That is something relevant to our team because my team is a Tencent PC manager.

which is a very, very, very old product. I think many people who knows this product might be like 30 or 40 or even older. Yeah, this product was built in 2004. remember, might not be correct. So it’s still in the computer-sized format, but in the past, it actually used a lot of safety capabilities.

Either it’s like preventing prompt injection or skill security or a lot of file security. It already has a lot of capabilities in it. And it’s also vetting the possible cyber attack over the internet. So we will know what’s the risks here. So we already provide a gateway in the product that everyone can be protected under this gateway.

they will not be exposed to the risks on the internet already. And also there’s point that, yeah, and actually.

Grace Shao (31:18)

I see. that actually protects

them more than someone directly installing an open claw themselves, right? Like going through cue claw is a lot safer in that sense.

Shuyu Zhang (31:28)

pardon?

Grace Shao (31:29)

So it’s basically a lot safer for the average person to use Qclaw than installing their own open claw on a Mac Mini or whatever. Because there’s not that kind of safety guard rail built around it, is what I’m trying to say, yeah.

Shuyu Zhang (31:37)

Yes, yes.

Yes, yes, because common people actually initially if they’re as long as they’re on the internet, they’re exposed to these risks. That is worse when they’re using open cloth without any protection. But

Grace Shao (31:49)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Shuyu Zhang (31:55)

There’s also interesting part is your computer actually don’t have a lot of information and you don’t have a lot of money. So you’re not actually a target. Yeah. But we provide enough to safeguard for these people. And for the more important issues or more severe issues, part of this will provide higher levels of security. Yeah.

Grace Shao (32:04)

Yeah.

I see, Yeah, I think, you know, that’s a really good big picture on just QClaw’s build out and why China really took on like QClaw at a mass scale. I want to understand your business model and long-term implications. Obviously, I understand, you know, you guys fall under Tencent. It’s extremely lucrative business in the cloud side, the gaming side, obviously, we chat advertisement, etc.

You guys might not face the pressure to make money from this product, but I still want to understand how does it work? Will QClaw be free basically forever? Will you guys introduce a subscription model? know, I know recently you’ve even talked about you’ve been traveling around the world a lot. You’re in the States. You’ve been in Europe for some time. Are you trying to go global with this product? Are you trying to sell globally? Is it to enterprise? What is the kind of business behind thinking behind this?

Shuyu Zhang (33:08)

Okay, so the firstly, it will not be free forever, but we will always provide some free tokens for the first time users because they deserve to know what it can bring you, what increment value it can bring you. So we will provide some free tokens here, but we also provide different subscription plan here to support different layers of requirements. But I don’t think the token fee will be the only monetization methods here if we bring people’s whole life here, just like the...

WeChat strategy as well. Yeah, because selling tokens, tokens currently is really expensive. Even it’s a huge company, will still face the pressure here. Yeah, but a lot other modernization methods here, but we will also be very cautious here to trading between the experience and the modernization here. And this is the

Grace Shao (33:46)

Mm-hmm.

Shuyu Zhang (33:57)

the answer about the subscription plan and the charging plan. And also we are traveling abroad. We are trying to go in global. And this month, exactly April, we’ll be launching internationally and we will be starting from some main regions, North America, of course, and Asia Pacific. And then we were spending into more areas. Why? Because I traveled a lot in the last years. Everywhere I went, I would stay there for like a month.

And I would thoroughly experience the real life there and talk to the people there. I found out that even though there are differences between people’s life, of course, but people everywhere share similarities in needs, and they also have curiosity towards others. So people are bringing a better way to live with themselves with QQLO, like QQLO A, QQLO WAP, and QQLO Daily. So they can share it with others.

on Qthaw and benefit from other people’s sharing. That is why we are bringing it globally. And every states we go, we will co-create with people there and pass on merit to more areas.

Grace Shao (35:00)

Yeah, so I think it’s really interesting because obviously QQLA has a huge advantage in China because it leans into the WeChat ecosystem we talked about a lot today. But what is your advantage when you are going global? How do you compete with international competitors?

Shuyu Zhang (35:16)

Okay. I think the first important part is still the use experience because I use a lot of global applications because I, my job is AI product manager. I would find a lot of product even complicated for me. I think the product experience is not, hasn’t been done very good yet. There are still a lot of bugs. There are still a lot of, you know, complex, complex items, complex terms or complex workflows here.

I want to make it all simple. And integration would also be a great part here. And the third part is the community advantage. would, you know, because we are not so intimidating in the image, we will not be like, we are the tech guys. We are the advanced ones. If you don’t know it, you’re the stupid one. You’re going to learn from us. No, we will not do it like that. Yeah. Yeah. We would co-work with the creators. For example,

Grace Shao (36:05)

You

Shuyu Zhang (36:11)

⁓ For example, when we’re spending to Japan, will co-create with some local, like fan, big fans there, or the ones who knows well about the food there, or the one who knows about the job marketing there. And we will make it more localized and make the people who really use it create that. We will co-create with them and bring it.

to their community because that would be the way that the community gets the concept or gets the usage of AI in fastest way. Yeah, I think so. basically.

Grace Shao (36:44)

Yeah, I see what you mean. Like you marketed a much more accessible product than other peers maybe on the market right now, which are targeted for again, relatively niche demographic. So that brings me to the next question, which is like, do you think then the messaging apps with a chatbot like kind of interface will become, will remain the default or will we see a new kind of interface layer for agentic AI and how we call on them.

Shuyu Zhang (37:16)

think, actually, I don’t know about this answer because messaging apps can be, they can evolve as well because they have a lot of engineers as well and they have a lot of ⁓ intelligent people there and they care about the user experience here and Asian products can also evolve. The true interface layer, I think is dynamic and there is no fall or lamb in the current arena. So I actually don’t know the real answer of the, you know, who are the final interface layer, who is the true one? I don’t have the answer yet because I see a lot of interesting apps evolving from AI agents, but they’re trying to, you know, cutting into the messaging apps interface. And also there are a lot of messaging apps there. for someone like the X or I don’t know what’s his future plan, but I also know there are a lot of messaging apps who are cutting to an agent domain. the answer is dynamic, I think.

Grace Shao (38:13)

I appreciate the honesty and the humility actually. I think no one really knows the future right now. The speed of evolution of industry is insane right now. And I always hear people who really like, you know, like even the Ben Evans and the world, they’re like saying, if you think you really know the industry, you don’t really know the industry because you can’t possibly, you know, have a strong grip on what’s happening because things are changing so fast and so much happening constantly.

Grace Shao (39:05)

I have the last question, which is a question I ask every single guest that come on the pod. What is one differentiative view you hold? This can be anything about the product we talked about today. It could be about the industry. It could be about anything in life.

Shuyu Zhang (39:08)

Yeah.

Okay, one differentiated view I hold is that I think the most profound function of a superior AI, like the clock, is not to solve problems, but to reveal them, to reflect back to us the questions we’ve been unwilling to ask ourselves. Think of it as an archeologist of behavior. We narrate our lives, edit our memories, even lie to ourselves without knowing. But something like the clock observes

what we actually do, what we choose or what we linger on. It doesn’t judge. It mirrors. In the end, what it shows us isn’t its own intelligence. It’s us, our contradictions, our desires, the fractures in our collective consciousness. So the most meaningful conversation isn’t whether AI is becoming human, but whether we are brave enough to look clearly into this vast, mirror it holds up. And finally, see...ourselves.

Grace Shao (40:18)

I think that’s super interesting think it helps us. You touch on something, it’s like really helping us recognize blind spots. I just want to share a personal anecdote as well, which is like, think, you know, when I started AI Pro nearly two years ago, it was really hard for me to sometimes seek help from other people’s opinion because it takes people’s time, right? And then for reviewing of my work and I didn’t simply want a grammar.

like, you know, copy editor kind of grammar fix. So now what I did was I built an editor council and what I did is train the council basically to have certain perspectives, follow certain guidelines or, you know, ⁓ angles of the world and then critique my work and really help me recognize ⁓ blind spots I’ve been missing or my logic or my thinking that are not, you know, synthesized clearly or not.

flowing smoothly, things like that, that I just found it so helpful. In fact, in some ways more helpful than a human editor at certain tasks, because exactly to your point, humans have biases, humans have judgment, and not like intentionally, but just by nature, we all hold biases based on our own knowledge, whatever. But the machines basically are just can be very critical if you tell it to be critical and can kind of show you a 360 view of your thinking. that’s super interesting and I appreciate your sharing on that.

Okay, thank you so much for your time today, Shuyu. If anyone wants to reach out to you, how should they find you? If they want to learn more about QClaw, where should they go?

Shuyu Zhang (41:50)

my LinkedIn. The name is Shu Yuzhang. And they can also follow me on my X account, which I can share with you later. It’s also called Shu Yuzhang. Okay.

Grace Shao (41:59)

Perfect. Thank you so much. We wonderful conversation with you. Thanks again.

Shuyu Zhang (42:03)

Thank you, thank you Grace. Bye.

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