The 2025 Forbes China 30 Under 30 list is released.

Understanding the future of humanity largely depends on whether we first understand the young. This view is clearly reflected in this year's list.

Forbes China has always looked ahead to find outstanding young people under 30 who have stood out in their industries and are expected to become the new generation of forces driving the transformation of the business society. They are either new entrepreneurial elites, important managers of prominent large - scale technology companies, or outstanding figures from the fields of scientific research and culture.

In 2025, the Forbes China 30 Under 30 list attracted self - recommendations from thousands of outstanding young people, as well as recommendations from institutions such as venture capital firms, universities, and startup accelerators.

They are usually founders of highly successful startups, decision - makers leading key projects in large companies, or important promoters driving the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements. Those on the list must be born on or after January 1, 1995, and their age is calculated based on the selection year. (Note: The headquarters, main operating teams, or core businesses of the candidates' affiliated enterprises need to be located in mainland China.)

In the 14th Forbes China 30 Under 30 list, entrepreneurs account for as high as 93%, and at least 12 of them are serial entrepreneurs.

The youngest serial entrepreneur this year is 24 - year - old Xue Kehan. He was admitted to Northwestern Polytechnical University at the age of 15, founded his first company at 18, and later participated in founding the hospital - scenario robot company Lailu Technology as the CTO. Now, he is setting his sights on the highly competitive home cleaning robot market.

In March 2022, Qingyun Intelligence, founded by Xue Kehan, won two awards, Best of IFA Next Winner and Best of Design Honoree, officially presented at the International Consumer Electronics Fair (IFA) in Berlin, Germany, with its first home intelligent cleaning product, xLean TR1. The company is the only startup and new brand on the "Best of Design" award - winning list.

Another notable phenomenon is that in the past two years, the number of young middle - and high - level managers leaving large technology companies to start their own businesses has increased rapidly. In this year's list alone, there are more than 19 people with experience at leading platforms.

In 2013, Zhang Yiming was included in the Forbes China 30 Under 30 list. Twelve years later, the company he founded, ByteDance, has become an incubator for new - generation CEOs and CTOs in China's tech circle. There are at least four former ByteDance employees on this year's list, including Ming Chaoping of YouWare, Yu Beichuan of Lessie AI, Zhang Yonghao of Yuzhi Tongxing, and Wei Dehao of Xingji Guangnian.

Ming Chaoping, a former core member of Jianying under ByteDance, founded YouWare in March this year and recently launched the world's first interactive platform for AI coding creators. The platform's traffic exceeded one million within 48 hours of its launch and quickly covered more than 180 countries around the world. He hopes to help everyone turn their creativity into interactive works through the concept of "Vibe Coding". He firmly believes that the systematic reduction of technological barriers will surely give rise to unprecedented application scenarios and ultimately lead to exponential growth.

"Before 2019, few people really believed that mobile phones could be used as a video - editing tool. It wasn't until we transplanted professional editing functions to mobile apps that the situation changed," Ming Chaoping told Forbes China. "Although there are still doubts about Vibe Coding for non - developers today, we think this is exactly the best opportunity and an exciting future." He further revealed that many users without programming experience on the YouWare platform have already earned their "first pot of gold" with the help of tools and creativity.

This year's listees still have remarkable "money - attracting" abilities. Public information shows that all the listees have received more than 4 billion yuan in venture capital support (some companies did not disclose their latest financing for strategic reasons and are not included in the statistics).

Guo Renjie is one of the most influential young entrepreneurs this year. In the first three quarters, the company he founded, Lexiang Technology, completed several rounds of large - scale financing from well - known institutions such as IDG Capital and Sequoia China Seed Fund, with a total amount close to 500 million yuan. Guo Renjie was admitted to the Youth Class of Xi'an Jiaotong University at the age of 15. Before starting his business, he served as the executive president of Dreame Technology in China and promoted the launch of several industry - defining products.

Now, Guo Renjie has greater ambitions. He leads Lexiang Technology to focus on the consumer - level embodied intelligence market. Relying on self - developed robot joint modules, "big and small brains", and consciousness - bionic models, the company is building a matrix of humanoid and tracked robots of various sizes to achieve the transition of embodied intelligence from the laboratory to large - scale home - scene applications.

In the 2025 Forbes China 30 Under 30 list, entrepreneurs in the AI and intelligent hardware fields account for the largest proportion. Among them, there are 22 entrepreneurs whose main business focuses on AI software and applications, accounting for 37%. And there are 20 entrepreneurs in the intelligent hardware field, accounting for 33%, significantly higher than the corresponding lists in North America and Europe. Behind this phenomenon is not only the booming development of China's AI industry but also its complete manufacturing system and in - depth supply chain. Based on this, even in niche markets with highly segmented demands, many companies can emerge and compete side by side.

Every year, a group of young people who focus on industry pain points and core technologies emerge in the U30 list.

A notable phenomenon is that young entrepreneurs in China's robot industry chain have achieved full - dimensional penetration, from "head to toe". In the field of "foot" perception, Luomai Technology, founded by Dr. Liu Siyu from Wuhan University, pioneered the "multi - dimensional information field of force - position - posture for humanoid robot feet" technology, aiming to reconstruct the paradigm of robot motion perception and control. In terms of body perception, Kuang Zheng, a former DJI engineer, achieved a key breakthrough in flexible sensing technology based on the percolation - type technical route, providing a competitive electronic skin solution for the new generation of robots.

The youngest listee is Tang Zhenyi, born in 2005. In March this year, at the age of 20, he noticed a significant gap in the connection between the physical world and digital intelligence, and that users lacked effective tools to record and integrate their inspiration in real - time. In response to this pain point, he developed a smart bookmark centered on "text + voice" dual - mode input. Relying on high - precision scanning and synchronous voice collection, the product can digitize paper content in real - time and complete intelligent analysis. The product concept video has received more than 10 million views on global social media platforms, winning support of millions of yuan from ZhenFund.

In the past few years of global economic fluctuations, we once worried that it would be difficult to find ambitious young people again. Some even doubted that the era when "everyone had a tiger in their heart" was over. However, now we have a new answer.

Forbes China's Complete 30 Under 30 List for 2025

Benefiting from the concentrated emergence of a new wave of technologies, the number of young entrepreneurs in China has increased significantly this year. The Forbes China 30 Under 30 list has also rebounded for the first time after three years of decline.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Forbes" (ID: forbes_china), author: Forbes China. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.