After navigating the bankruptcy of Smartisan Technology, accumulating $89 million in debt, founding the e-commerce livestreaming company Be Friends Holding Ltd, and eventually leaving it to launch Thin Red Line, serial entrepreneur and social media influencer Luo Yonghao has shifted his focus from AR to AI. According to Chinese media outlet ifeng.com, Chinese AR startup Thin Red Line is set to release its first product around the Lunar New Year in late January. The product will feature AI-native hardware paired with a software solution.
Why it matters: After the collapse of Smartisan and his exploration of e-commerce livestreams, Luo has quickly shifted his focus from AR to AI. His entrepreneurial journey can be seen as a microcosm of the rapidly changing landscape of the Chinese tech industry over the past two decades.
Details: Thin Red Line was founded by Luo two years ago with an initial focus on AR technology; he has previously described the firm as his “last venture”.
- The key highlight of the company’s new product is an AI service paired with hardware that is expected to come in two versions. Although the specific pricing has not been released, it is expected to be high.
- According to ifeng.com, Thin Red Line has entered the final sprint phase of development for its new product, with reports suggesting that the closed team has been working intensively for several days, with some employees getting only five to six hours of sleep per day.
- When Luo’s vision was first shared with the team, Luo Xiao, an employee at Thin Red Line, felt the situation was not optimistic and “difficult to implement.” He suggested that there were almost no comparable products, either in China or overseas. Additionally, several employees told ifeng.com that, similar to his approach in the Smartisan era, Luo’s high expectations and perfectionism have made product development particularly challenging.
- Luo and his partners see AR as the next-generation computing platform. They envision leading a team of over a thousand people within the next three to five years. However, it is reported that at its peak, Thin Red Line’s team has only reached around 150 people so far. This has made the development of AR glasses challenging. Moreover, efficient development of AR technology faces numerous hurdles, particularly in terms of breakthroughs in batteries, chips, and optics. As a result, the team has decided to prioritize the development of AI products.
Context: Luo has a long, but somewhat patchy history of entrepreneurial ventures.
- In 2001, Luo started working for education mogul Yu Minhong, joining his New Oriental Education & Technology firm, China’s biggest English-language tutoring network. He immediately became well-known on the internet because of his unusual teaching methods, which gained him a cult following.
- He launched his first digital company in 2006, when he established Bullog.cn, a blog aggregator with a reputation for contentious posts. In 2013, Luo announced the closure of the Bullog.cn.
- He established Smartisan Technology in 2012 and released the Smartisan smartphone and operating system. The Jianguo smartphone, a scaled-down version of Smartisan’s main product, was introduced five years later. In 2018, Smartisan released Bullet Message, a messaging app intended to compete with WeChat,which initially went viral;however, it was unable to maintain its early success.
- Following a string of unsuccessful business endeavors, Luo and his smartphone manufacturing company fell into severe financial difficulties and stopped making supplier payments. In 2019, ByteDance, the company behind TikTok and Douyin, purchased patents from Smartisan.
- In April 2020, Luo began livestreaming sales on Douyin to pay off his debts, and he continued this until 2022, when he announced his exit from all social media to focus on Thin Red Line.
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