The rumor that "using AI to pick peppers leads to layoffs" has sparked public controversy, and Lao Gan Ma responded that the related information is untrue.
On October 26, according to Lan Jing News, in response to the rumor of "cutting 600 pepper pickers to 48 with AI", the official hotline staff of Guiyang Nanming Laoganma Flavor Food Co., Ltd. stated that the relevant AI layoff information is untrue, the company has never released such information, and reminded consumers to treat related remarks rationally.
The source of the rumor can be traced back to a public speech in mid-October. At the 2026 Guizhou Quality Development Conference, Li Xin, Executive Deputy General Manager and Chief Quality Officer of Laoganma, publicly disclosed that "after four years of quality consolidation and system optimization, our revenue reached 5.4 billion yuan in 2025, hitting the highest peak in history." He introduced the progress of intelligent production: the AI visual quality inspection system was introduced in the pepper sorting link of the Guiyang Changming base, and the high-speed industrial camera scans the conveyor belt every 0.3 seconds to automatically identify and remove moldy and black-spotted bad fruits.
According to his disclosure, after the implementation of the AI visual quality inspection system, the defective rate of products in key processes of Laoganma has dropped to 0.02%. In the past, relying on manual naked eye to pick peppers, omissions were prone to occur due to long hours of repetitive work. AI has greatly reduced the uncertainty of quality control.
This speech was processed into statements such as "Laoganma used AI to cut 600 workers to 48, and its annual revenue reached 5.4 billion yuan", which continued to spread on social platforms. On October 26, topics such as "Laoganma's AI layoff rumor sparks controversy" and "Laoganma's number of social insurance participants dropped by more than 2,600" once again became hot searches.
The concern about the "decline in the number of social insurance participants" stems from the company's industrial and commercial information. Tianyancha data shows that the number of social insurance participants of Guiyang Nanming Laoganma Flavor Food Co., Ltd. has decreased for four consecutive years, from 2,912 in 2022 to 1,783 in 2023, 941 in 2024, and further dropped to 740 in 2025.
The widely spread online statement of "a drop of more than 2,600 people in 3 years" is calculated by superimposing the number of insured persons of branches (the number of insured persons of branches in the same period also decreased from 1,279 to 793), and the decline is larger under the combined statistical caliber.
It is worth noting that this data covers the entire company and cannot be equated with the actual staff reduction in the pepper picking process. In addition, the number of insured persons generally only counts formal employees who pay social security directly in the company, and does not include outsourced personnel, labor dispatch workers, seasonal temporary workers, and employees of subsidiaries/cooperative production entities. The reasons for the personnel decline may include outsourcing transfer, non-renewal of expired contracts, natural attrition, production organization adjustment and other situations.
It is reported that the staff of Laoganma's human resources department also responded to the media that the AI quality inspection technology has indeed been launched and applied in the production base, but the enterprise has never had the personnel adjustment arrangement of the corresponding scale as spread on the Internet, and said that "we have never employed so many workers".
Guiyang Nanming Laoganma Flavor Food Co., Ltd. is a leading domestic chili condiment manufacturer, founded by Tao Huabi and registered in 1997.
The origin of the brand can be traced back to the 1980s. Tao Huabi ran a snack stall in Guiyang, and her homemade chili sauce was widely loved by diners, and was affectionately called "Laoganma" by students. In 1996, she built a factory in Longdongbao, Guiyang, focusing on producing flavored fermented soybean chili products, and officially started industrial production. The company subsequently set up Zunyi Branch and Guiding Branch one after another, and laid out multiple production bases in Guizhou to form a complete chili processing industrial chain. It adheres to the business principles of no listing, no financing and no loans. Its equity is held by Tao Huabi's two sons, and the family business model has been stable for a long time.
In terms of performance, Laoganma's revenue has shown a rebounding trend in recent years. According to the "Top 100 Enterprises in Guizhou 2025" list, Laoganma's revenue from 2022 to 2024 was 5.26 billion yuan, 5.381 billion yuan and 5.391 billion yuan respectively, achieving steady growth for three consecutive years.
Looking at a longer time horizon, the brand's revenue reached 5.403 billion yuan in 2020, and fell back to 4.201 billion yuan in 2021, shrinking by nearly 1.2 billion yuan in one year. After that, founder Tao Huabi came back to take charge of the business, and after restoring Guizhou raw materials and the original formula, the performance climbed year by year.
Data from Ma Shang Ying, a third-party retail monitoring institution, shows that from 2022 to 2025, Laoganma's share in China's chili sauce segment has stabilized at around 55%, ranking first in the industry. In the broader Chinese flavored sauce track, the total market share of its brand is about 16%, also ranking first. Its three core SKUs including flavored fermented soybean oil chili rank top three in the Chinese flavored sauce SKU list.
After the online rumor of "Laoganma introduced AI sorting to lay off employees" became a hot search, some netizens believed that automation upgrading is a normal means for the industry to improve quality and efficiency, which helps to stabilize product quality, and enterprises have independent space for technological iteration. Other netizens believed that the brand started with manual labor, and should take into account employment responsibilities while hitting a new high in revenue.
However, the data disclosed by Li Xin at the Quality Development Conference is that the revenue in 2025 reached 5.4 billion yuan, hitting the highest peak in the brand's history, not a net profit of "earning 5.4 billion yuan". The online rumors have problems of information distortion and caliber confusion, and the actual situation remains to be further explained by the enterprise.
In addition, Laoganma's brand has long relied on offline traditional distribution channels, with restrained marketing investment, and rarely carries out large-scale online traffic delivery. The official Douyin flagship store has not conducted live broadcasts for nearly a year. Facing the wave of live streaming e-commerce and short video content marketing, Laoganma hardly takes the initiative to carry out online marketing.
According to Lan Jing News, affected by this rumor, Laoganma's online sales have dropped significantly recently. Taking an e-commerce platform as an example, third-party data platforms show that since October 22, Laoganma's daily sales have been between 1,000 yuan and 5,000 yuan for consecutive days, while before the rumor spread, its daily sales were mostly stable between 5,000 yuan and 10,000 yuan.
This article is from "Jiemian News", reporter: Shen Xiaoge, published by 36Kr with authorization.