Hard Kr Exclusive | Former core backbones of Huawei's Intelligent Driving business enter the AI ship industry, have obtained orders worth 100 million yuan, and focus on leisure yachts

36Kr Global has learned that intelligent vessel firm Tongzhou Intelligent Navigation has recently closed a multi-million-yuan seed round financing, co-led by InnoAngel Fund and Wuzhong Financial Control, with participation from Jiangsu Jinqiao Fund. The proceeds will be used to recruit core R&D and mass production talents, while simultaneously launching overseas brand building and channel expansion.

Tongzhou Intelligent Navigation was founded in June 2025, with its core vision to empower vessels with artificial intelligence. Founder Zhang Chenglun has over 10 years of experience in the automotive autonomous driving industry, previously served as the head of Huawei's Commercial Vehicle Solutions Department, and founded a mining autonomous driving company with a team of over 100 employees.

The team boasts strong autonomous driving expertise: the chief scientist holds a PhD and postdoctoral degree in AI from the University of Connecticut, USA, and previously led the perception and prediction team at a leading autonomous driving unicorn; the VP of Intelligent Navigation Technology holds a master's degree in AI from Paris-Saclay University in France, with previous roles as an algorithm scientist at Intel, senior researcher at UISEE, and head of the Planning & Control Department at Zhitu Technology; the business partner brings 12 years of experience in Huawei's key account management and 10 years of European market expansion experience, having served as the head of Huawei's Global Key Account Systems Department and Sales Director of Digital Energy, and secured hundreds of millions of US dollars in order breakthroughs in European government and enterprise markets.

As the industry evolves, more and more companies are entering the maritime intelligence sector, yet Tongzhou Intelligent Navigation has a very clear positioning: it does not focus on environmental and ecological products, but specializes in leisure boats. Zhang Chenglun explained that he and his team conducted research and found that the intelligence level of vessels lags far behind other sectors. "The leisure boat market is large enough, easy to standardize, and has consumer-facing attributes. Once our products deliver tangible value, customers are willing to pay for them."

The global stock of power leisure boats such as yachts, cruise boats, and fishing boats stands at approximately 35 million units, forming a hundred-billion-dollar stock upgrade market, with an annual new shipment forecast of 1 million units. The new transaction market in 2025 is estimated to reach about 50 billion US dollars. In addition, there are 450,000 commercial vessels globally, including cargo ships and inland transport vessels, which place extreme emphasis on navigation safety and operating costs.

However, traditional leisure boats are complex to operate and prone to human-caused accidents. Statistics show that 87% of boat owners in the United States lack formal training, and 75% of accidents are related to this, with "berthing" being the biggest source of stress for crew members. At the same time, traditional marine electronic devices are scattered and costly to maintain, while the younger generation of consumers is strongly pursuing more sophisticated, comfortable, and novice-friendly intelligent driving experiences.

"Our team comes from the intelligent vehicle industry, where we have worked on smart cars for nearly a decade, covering everything from in-vehicle infotainment systems to autonomous driving. We saw that intelligent technologies in the automotive sector have become extremely mature, so when we looked at vessels, we realized there is enormous room for their intelligent upgrading, which is our original motivation."

In its initial stage, Zhang Chenglun stated that the company mainly provides solutions to leisure boat manufacturers, engine makers, or end users. Its product line fully covers both pre-installed and aftermarket markets: one category focuses on boat-specific infotainment systems and intelligent navigation, with solutions and business models similar to those used in the automotive industry. "Additionally, we found that leisure boat users (such as offshore and freshwater fishing boat operators) face obvious pain points with traditional fish finders, radars, and other perception hardware during use," Zhang Chenglun introduced. "This field has been monopolized by traditional solution providers like Garmin and Navico for decades, even centuries. They still rely on stacking hardware (such as adding more sonar probes) to improve detection clarity, and have never considered using AI technology to iterate their functions."

Therefore, Tongzhou Intelligent Navigation aims to use AI algorithm models to output more accurate fish species recognition, or enhance long-distance object detection capabilities, without adding extra hardware or even reducing hardware configurations.

Below is an excerpt from 36Kr Global's interview with founder Zhang Chenglun:

36Kr Global: The maritime environment is very different from the driving environment on land. Are the underlying technologies similar? What challenges do you face?

Zhang Chenglun: The technology stack is similar, but the water surface environment is vastly different from the ground environment. We mainly focus on marine scenarios, where wave heights can reach 1 meter under sea state 3 conditions. Water surface fluctuations greatly impact vessel power control, which can easily render traditional control theories ineffective. Although these fluctuations may be invisible to the naked eye, we can identify patterns in their frequency through water wave analysis. Reinforcement learning training is required to build an ideal vessel power control model.

In addition, there are many irregular moving objects on the water, such as swimmers who are half-submerged and half-exposed, as well as buoys and other irregular obstacles, which impose higher requirements on detection and recognition than on road surfaces.

36Kr Global: Haven't traditional suppliers integrated AI into their products yet? What are Tongzhou Intelligent Navigation's competitive advantages?

Zhang Chenglun: In overseas markets, established companies are also attempting to adopt AI. But their product iteration speed is not fast enough, at least not as fast as AI-focused startups entering this field, which is somewhat similar to Nokia's transition to making smartphones back then.

Our core advantage lies in our deep understanding of AI technology. When developing any maritime or marine electronic product, we fully commit to AI, and do not increase value by stacking hardware. We always maximize value through software optimization. Traditional suppliers have long relied on hardware as their core strength, and they will continue to build moats around their hardware advantages, making it difficult for them to abandon their hardware moats and fully transition to AI.

36Kr Global: You mentioned that customers have strong demand for AI-powered cabins and intelligent navigation. Can you explain what a vessel's "intelligent cabin" means?

Zhang Chenglun: The intelligent cabin on a vessel is very similar to the intelligent cabin in a car. In cars, users mainly perceive the cabin as a voice interaction carrier, while on a vessel, the cabin acts as the central hub or brain for the entire vessel's electrical system management. This role as a vessel control hub and brain is even more prominent on board, because the voice interaction and entertainment attributes are reduced, and the cabin is primarily used to control key vessel components, monitor status, and trigger safety alerts for incidents like fires or man overboard situations.

Another core point is making nautical charts sufficiently intelligent. Traditional nautical charts are similar to paper maps, but in the future we will make them as intelligent as AutoNavi maps on land, which is also a very important core function of the cabin. At the same time, we have deployed intelligent agents in the cabin to recommend operational requirements during navigation, inform users of navigation regulations in different areas, assist in issuing alerts when vessel status risks arise, and provide handling suggestions. Currently, its intelligence level is relatively basic, only meeting fundamental management and interaction needs, but its proactive recommendation capabilities and problem-solving abilities for users will become increasingly powerful in the future.

36Kr Global: What is the current status of your commercialization and implementation?

Zhang Chenglun: We have been developing an intelligent cabin for luxury yachts since last September, and it is now being installed on vessels, with deliveries to customers scheduled for the end of July or August. At the same time, we are collaborating with an early domestic new force in the industry to jointly develop a standardized 58-foot intelligent yacht targeted at the water operation and leasing market. We have already secured orders for over 500 units, with a total value exceeding 100 million yuan. In addition, we have established initial cooperation links with top-tier customers in Europe.