Industry trends
2026.06.09
When I saw this year’s college entrance examination composition prompt, the phrase “from zero to one” immediately came to mind.
Literally, the term means creation out of nothing.
As a 27-year-old “youthful enterprise”, it signifies progressive growth and transformation for me.
“From zero to one” stands for perseverance in blazing new trails and breaking through barriers, as well as self-reliance in shattering technological shackles.
In the early days of our founding, China’s industrial informatization sector was held back by foreign technologies. To break free from such constraints, I led the R&D team to immerse ourselves in closed-door research and development for 14 months at JinKen College in Jiangning District.
We rose with rooster crow at dawn and worked late to the croak of frogs. A simple teaching building served as both our office and dormitory. Driven by relentless grit, a group of vibrant young professionals drew on real production workflows, management logics and safety standards of domestic factories. We polished every line of code from underlying technical architecture to top-tier product design, and built the first generation of LiEMS industrial software completely from scratch.
Prominent R&D countdown boards hung along every corridor of the teaching building, silently witnessing our round-the-clock breakthrough efforts. We started the closed R&D phase with merely 17 team members, and grew to over 70 by its completion. During those years of dedicated toil, no one craved instant success. We all shared one firm conviction: core technologies must be held in our own hands.
It takes ten years to sharpen a single sword. Today, this product has been iterated and upgraded to Version 8.1, maturing steadily amid continuous refinement.
Innovation never materializes overnight; it bears fruit only through long-term commitment. Core technologies are forged and delivered through relentless hard work.
“From zero to one” also embodies the bold pivot to race on new tracks, marking our transformative leap from technological breakthrough to value empowerment.
Having laid a solid technological foundation, I expanded our business boundaries and took the lead in deploying the new industrial internet track. We fully developed the national-level cross-industry, cross-domain Sunshine Industrial Internet Platform (Grade A, the highest tier), blazing a pragmatic path of digital intelligence featuring “platform foundation, scenario empowerment and tangible value delivery”. Many innovative achievements have taken root and yielded results at major central SOEs, and our business has expanded from China to overseas markets.
We partnered with GD Power Development to build a thermal power safety production management and control platform, linking three-tier management systems covering the group, regional branches and power stations. The platform serves 12 power plants and 37 generating units, boasting a risk early warning accuracy rate exceeding 90% with overall technology reaching an internationally leading level. Teaming up with State Power Investment Corporation, we constructed an “Industrial Internet + Work Safety” platform that connects nearly 600 grassroots entities and 220,000 on-the-job personnel, forming a full-domain safety governance system and winning the First Prize of National Work Safety Science and Technology Award. Supported by our penetrating intelligent management and control system, we have interconnected the full-chain and all-level businesses of 12 subsidiary and holding entities under China Huadian Coal Industry Group, covering coal mining, transportation, power generation, port and shipping operations with comprehensive horizontal and vertical coverage.
I am well aware that as an operator of a national cross-industry and cross-domain industrial internet platform, my responsibility extends far beyond business expansion. We must proactively tackle common industrial challenges to underpin independent and controllable industrial and supply chains. I led a project under the MIIT Industrial Internet Innovation & Development Program, forming a joint research team with multiple industrial, academic, research and end-user partners to make key breakthroughs in core technologies including mechanism models for intelligent equipment operation and maintenance and predictive maintenance algorithms, helping manufacturing industries boost quality, raise efficiency, cut costs and reduce energy consumption.
“From zero to one” means staying committed to tackling difficult yet valuable tasks, and upholding our original aspiration to root industrial AI implementation in national strategies for new industrialization and dual carbon goals.
Guided by the grand strategy of new industrialization and carbon peaking and carbon neutrality, I ventured deeper into uncharted waters of industrial AI to bridge the final mile for industry-wide AI deployment.
Compared with general artificial intelligence, industrial AI faces complex operating conditions, stringent safety standards and ultra-low fault tolerance thresholds, bringing higher R&D barriers and greater technical challenges. Yet I firmly believe that the most promising industrial value lies in the most challenging fields.
To this end, our R&D staff delved deep into production sites, focused on high-demand application scenarios and captured genuine frontline requirements. We refined algorithms and overcame bottlenecks through countless rounds of testing, iteration and optimization. We refused quick shortcuts and short-lived market hype, striving to deepen, refine and perfect every technology so that AI can truly take root in industrial settings.
Drawing on practices from major projects such as China Datang Corporation, we successfully built a Cloud-Edge Collaborative industrial AI operating system. The cloud orchestrates overall operations and accumulates industrial experience, while edge nodes stay close to production sites for rapid response. The two layers complement and integrate seamlessly, supporting unified group-wide deployment, full-domain management, flexible scheduling and knowledge reuse to enable efficient, cost-effective digital transformation.
Our self-developed Sunshine Yaoguang Industrial Large Model ranks among the world’s top 15 industrial large models. It incorporates tens of millions of equipment datasets, fault cases, process parameters and expert experience, acting as a seasoned industry veteran for industrial AI. Over a hundred intelligent agent applications have moved out of laboratories and into production lines, serving as health stewards for equipment, safety sentinels for factory zones and smart consultants for energy efficiency optimization. They safeguard daily production around the clock, predict potential equipment hazards and optimize energy consumption allocation, advancing green and low-carbon development from multiple dimensions.
I also took the lead in establishing the Consortium for Full-Element Data Cooperation of Coal Mine Machinery & Equipment, which was selected into China’s first batch of pilot programs for high-quality industrial dataset development. We built a closed-loop intelligent data application system covering data collection, aggregation and utilization, fully driving the coal machinery industrial chain toward high-end, intelligent and green transformation and upgrading.
Over the years, my understanding of “from zero to one” has grown richer with time. It represents steady, long-term accumulation, the confidence and strength for enterprises to define industry rules and lead industrial development, and a brand-new starting point for China’s technological self-reliance.
The courage to break out of cocoons, the perseverance to keep deep cultivation, and the enterprising spirit to explore new territories remain my unchanging core essence.
The road ahead stretches long yet glimmers bright! I will persist in pioneering exploration “from zero to one”, drive full-scale expansion “from one to N”, and take AI as our wing to fuel the vigorous takeoff of industrial sectors.
