36氪_让一部分人先看到未来

If an AI device doesn't accompany a child for two or three years, how can it be called AI-native hardware? You just don't know me well enough.

Text by | Deng Yongyi

Edited by | Su Jianxun

One-sentence Introduction

Teeni.AI's "Portable Intelligent Agent", an AI intelligent hardware focusing on the 4 - 14 age group.

Team Introduction

Yuan Lin (CEO): Founder and CEO, former vice president of marketing at ROOBO. She participated in the establishment of "Pudding Robot", the first - brand of children's robots, completed multiple strategic cooperation projects worth over 100 million yuan, and has been engaged in Internet product operation for more than a decade. She is an expert in multiple fields such as product, operation, and brand marketing, leading the team to achieve multiple business breakthroughs and innovation direction changes.

Xia Chongyan (President/Hardware Director): He has successively served as the hardware R & D director at ROOBO. From 2016 - 2017, the annual sales volume of Pudding Robot exceeded 100,000 units. He managed the cumulative shipment of intelligent hardware to reach 50 million units, with over 5 million activated devices. He once worked on core network software R & D and project management at Ericsson.

Zhang Chi (Chief Scientist & CTO): Director of the AGI Laboratory at Westlake University, Ph.D. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He focuses on multi - modal large models and generative AI, and has published nearly 30 top - conference papers. He was once a large - model scientist at Tencent and was selected as one of the "Top 2% World's Top Scientists" by Stanford University for two consecutive years.

Financing Progress

Recently, the company officially completed an angel - round financing of tens of millions of yuan, led by SenseTime Guoxiang Capital, followed by ZMC capital. Historical investors include BlueRun Ventures.

Products and Business

Based on the concept of "AI agent", TeeniAI has built a series of "Exclusive Portable Intelligent Agent" hardware products for users aged 4 - 14. Currently, the products are divided into the entry - level T series, the advanced X series (integrated intelligent agent), and the split - type portable intelligent agent with stronger multi - modal capabilities.

In 2022, the team first entered the listening device market with the T series priced at around 100 yuan. At that time, the listening device market was still dominated by offline devices with outdated designs. TeeniAI retained the traditional mechanical buttons and minimalist design of the listening device, lowered the usage threshold, and added functions related to large AI models, achieving product updates. As a result, it achieved rapid initial growth, accumulating hundreds of thousands of users, and the annual revenue reached the level of tens of millions of yuan that year.

△Source: Teeni.AI

In the TeeniAI listening device, the team designed a complete AI system centered around children's growth. In addition to scenarios such as listening to books and learning, the device can record users' growth events, forming a unique memory system for each user. Parents can regularly view weekly reports to improve the efficiency of parent - child interaction.

After the wave of large models arrived, the TeeniAI team found that teenagers' demand for AI companionship had greatly increased. They quickly iterated and launched the X series, positioning it as a more advanced "AI partner".

△Source: Teeni.AI

The X series of TeeniAI has added more multi - modal functions. Based on the built - in TeeniGPT, children can take a photo and ask questions immediately, and engage in creative work.

At the same time, the TeeniAI team also trained its own large model based on Tongyi, DeepSeek and other models, and conducted special training on the classic IP characters in the products, which will make children's experience more realistic.

For example, during the Spring Festival in 2025, the TeeniAI team quickly trained an Agents image based on the Nezha IP using DeepSeek, with the peak daily Token call volume reaching 3 billion times.

In 2025, TeeniAI will also launch a new product, Pocket Robot, targeting the global market. In addition to the basic functions of current products, this product will additionally enhance multi - modal capabilities, supporting multi - perspective photography recording and real - time translation.

Since its launch, the TeeniAI product series has shown significant growth. In 2024, the cumulative activation volume of TeeniAI products exceeded 500,000 units, with a monthly retention rate of over 55%. It has become the teenage terminal with the largest call volume for large models such as Tongyi.

Moreover, TeeniAI has established content cooperation with enterprises such as Microsoft, iFlytek, Doushen Education, and Himalaya. Currently, in addition to regular English learning content, there is also a large amount of historical stories, news, and other content on TeeniAI.

Core Barriers

At the beginning of its establishment, TeeniAI renewed the "listening device" category - from an offline traditional tape recorder to a hardware product equipped with an AI intelligent agent based on large models. Since the first - generation product, TeeniAI has always had multi - modal capabilities such as voice and photography modules, providing children with a better experience of interacting with the real world.

Among similar products, TeeniAI has achieved high activity and user stickiness. Based on the classic IP characters trained by TeeniGPT, TeeniAI can provide a great AI character dialogue experience. Currently, the average daily usage time of TeeniAI users exceeds 3 hours, and the AI interaction frequency is as high as 89 times per day.

Looking at the team background, all members are veterans in the robot industry with over 10 years of experience. The team once incubated the robot brand "Pudding Robot", with the highest annual revenue reaching hundreds of millions of yuan.

Founder's Thoughts

Children born after 2010 belong to the Alpha generation. By 2025, there will be about 2 billion such people globally. Some characteristics of this generation of children are, first, they are precocious in thinking; second, they are very individualized, believing that they are unique and cool, rejecting being manipulated, and not very obedient to their parents.
They are the main creators on social platforms such as Douyin, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili, focusing on primary - school students' clothing styles, anime culture, and collectible merchandise culture. The group is clearly divided into different circles. Some children even develop psychological and emotional problems due to loneliness and lack of parental company, becoming overly dependent on the Internet and social media and being influenced by negative social content.
The emergence of large models can not only meet children's individualized needs but also solve the problem of psychological companionship. Through AI intelligent agents, each child can have a different digital avatar and partner, and can also broaden the breadth and depth of the knowledge system in the learning process.
In terms of product definition, it is better to make upgrades first rather than make a complete revolution right from the start. For example, we will still include a lot of learning content.
One fact that needs to be faced is that even today, in the entire Chinese market, the number of users who use AI regularly and daily is very small. Most parents still have a path - dependence. The primary consideration when buying AI educational hardware is still learning, which is difficult to change in the short term.
If you go too far ahead, you will need to spend a large amount of marketing expenses on user education. The current logic for successful commercialization is to use current technology to meet the current users' cognitive level, which will truly create value.
After the emergence of DeepSeek, the market has changed. Ordinary people across China now know about AI. All parents are extremely anxious, believing that their children must have access to AI.
When this factor appears, AI Agents are in a good situation. At this time, we must ensure that children can constantly interact with AI, rather than simply forcing a learning product on them. Many learning machine products are left idle by children after parents buy them, and children will not use them actively.
The biggest change that Deepseek has brought to the market is also a change in the business model: consumers are willing to actively seek AI products rather than being influenced by aggressive advertising.
Nowadays, business does not rely on aggressive promotion. In the past, in the era of domestic consumer electronics, companies used catchy slogans and celebrity endorsements. However, the current generation of consumers has changed. The post - 2010 generation doesn't need those things at all. They hate advertising the most. They don't admire international brands or luxury goods. What they want is empathy and products that represent their individuality.
Many manufacturers are doing role - playing, but many only copy the form and not the essence. Everyone's strategies for writing Prompts, training characters, and language styles are different. When creating a character, you need to endow it with emotions. You can't just rely on the capabilities of the large model to create a universal assistant, otherwise, it will be OOC (Out - of - Character).
The characters in children's minds must be suitable for the character itself. You can't ask Li Bai or Nezha about the weather or what they ate. A universal character is no different from Siri. Otherwise, children will have no desire to be friends with it and will only think it is stupid.
Edge - side AI is definitely the biggest trend, also due to the changes in the Alpha generation. In the past, children liked the Xiaotiancai watch, but when they get a little older, say after the age of 7, they start to dislike the watch. They need a product that better represents their individuality and an intelligent agent that can accompany them.
Today's large language models are like the robot bots we developed ten years ago, not that remarkable. Many people talk about AI - native hardware, but I think the concept of "native" is still too early. If an AI doesn't accompany a person for two or three years, how can it be called "native"? It won't understand me well enough.
The prerequisite for achieving AGI is to make the intelligent agent and the child become a community. Only when the child can't do without it will they feel that they need TeeniAI all the time, just like a real friend and partner.

Interview Notes from "Intelligent Emergence"

In 2024, AI hardware was undoubtedly a hot topic in the venture capital field. Different from many products on the market that completely revolutionize the original hardware form, TeeniAI chose an old product category with many innovation points - the listening device. It captured the replacement demand of existing users and made a brand - new product definition based on large models, quickly winning the first batch of hundreds of thousands of new users.

Targeting the Alpha generation born after 2010, TeeniAI also well grasped their independent and self - reliant characteristics. When the large - model technology advanced by leaps and bounds in 2024, it quickly caught the wave of AI Agent technology and introduced it into the product, rapidly improving the user experience.

In terms of operation, TeeniAI also had many outstanding strategies - for example, during holidays such as the Spring Festival, it introduced classic character IPs such as Nezha, enabling the product to achieve small - scale popularity multiple times, enhancing user stickiness, and also increasing the content - level barriers of the product.

In terms of product definition, TeeniAI provides a reference path for current AI hardware entrepreneurs. In China, the acceptance level of large - model and other AI technologies among the general public is still in the early stage, and it is difficult to educate the market. In the stage of a sluggish financing market and a recovering consumer willingness, looking for new opportunities in existing product categories may be a more realistic and feasible path.

Cover Image Source | Enterprise Authorization

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This article is from the WeChat official account "Intelligent Emergence", author: Deng Yongyi. Republished by 36Kr with authorization.

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