Zhang Junbin, Founder and CEO of Narwal: Ten Years | 36Kr WAVES 2026 New Wave Trend Summit
In 2026, the waves in the venture capital circle are surging once again: AI has moved from a technological concept into the deep waters of the industry, and hard - tech entrepreneurship has changed from a "niche track" to a "mainstream consensus". Young entrepreneurs are using code and their hands to redefine the future coordinates of Chinese innovation.
Every year, the WAVES Conference hosted by 36Kr · Undercurrent is the annual vane of the Chinese venture capital circle. This year's WAVES 2026 is themed "This Summer", and it is held at Liangcang Xinzao Creative Park in Panyu, Guangzhou. In two days, we have gathered top - tier investors, industry leaders, and up - and - coming entrepreneurs. Through 14 in - depth round - tables and dozens of independent speeches, we dissected the underlying logic of core tracks such as AI, hard tech, going global, and healthcare, and witnessed how the perseverance of those "minority" individuals converged into a wave that changes the industry.
The following is the content of the speech, compiled and edited by 36Kr:
Zhang Junbin | Founder and CEO of Narwal
Hello, everyone. I'm Zhang Junbin, the founder of Narwal. I'm very glad to come to the 36Kr WAVES New Wave Conference. There is a sentence at this conference that impressed me deeply, which is "The waves favor the young". I think I'm still young, but Narwal is almost ten years old. I'm like a 'young veteran'.
The theme of this event is "This Summer". Summer is a season when sparks emerge. Narwal was born in the wave of innovation. The initial spark was the desire to solve the problem of mopping and washing the mop for users. Next, I'll share a video with you.
In the video is my mother. It took me a long time to persuade her to appear on camera. In 2015, I graduated from graduate school and chose to start a business right after graduation. At the beginning, I explored many entrepreneurial directions, such as a navigation device for the blind and a pet - entertaining robot. I also encountered many technical challenges at that time, and the progress was not smooth. Once when chatting with my parents, my mother's words woke me up: "You should make a robot to mop the floor for me." At that time, domestic sweeping robots originated from overseas, mainly targeting the overseas sweeping market where "sweeping is emphasized while mopping is neglected". They paid little attention to mopping, and the mops needed to be washed manually. However, the floors of Chinese families are mainly made of tiles and wooden floors, so mopping is a real necessity. That's when I determined the entrepreneurial direction: to make a sweeping and mopping robot that meets Chinese cleaning habits and doesn't require manual mopping and washing of the mop.
There were three major problems in front of me at that time: How to judge that the mop is really dirty? How to return to the accurate position after cleaning? How to thoroughly clean the mop in the base station?
My entrepreneurial mentor, Professor Li Zexiang, also gave me a lot of support. I became one of the first batch of entrepreneurs at the XbotPark Robotics Base in Songshan Lake, Dongguan. To date, XbotPark has incubated more than 80 hardware technology companies and 6 unicorns. Narwal is honored to be one of the unicorn enterprises. At the beginning, our team had only about 10 people, and we started a four - year - long R & D in a 25 - square - meter small office. For about two years, I basically slept in the company every day. I would take my dirty clothes home on weekends and bring the washed clothes back to the company in a suitcase on Mondays. Looking back, those days were quite happy because I was always focused on one product and trying to polish it to perfection.
The pictures you see are more than a dozen prototype machines of the double - bucket form that we initially envisioned. At that time, there were no such products in the market, nor were there robots for mopping and washing the mop. I designed an ID appearance at that time, which was ridiculed by my colleagues as looking like a "toilet". Of course, my version was not adopted in the end. There is also a small story when we designed this product: When it was about to be launched, we found that the round mop had cleaning blind spots. At that time, the company's capital chain was very tight. If we started over, we would face great risks. But we resolutely decided to change the round mop to a triangular one, and finally solved the pain point of "mop cleaning blind spots".
It took us 26 months to achieve mass production from the prototype. The first - generation product was born with 163 patents.
This is in April 2019, when Narwal's first - generation product, the Xiaobaijing J1, was globally launched. We launched the product on Kickstarter at that time. Narwal achieved a breakthrough launch with the world's first self - cleaning robot that can wash its own mop.
After the crowdfunding, we got more than 1,900 supporters and raised more than $1 million, exceeding the set crowdfunding target by 380%.
After the self - cleaning technology that can wash the mop was launched, users really felt that "the sweeping machine can completely free their hands". Narwal also received unanimous recognition and extensive praise from many global leading media and was named one of the "Best Inventions of 2020" by Time magazine in the United States.
During the Double 11 in 2019, our Xiaobaijing J1 was officially launched in the domestic market. It was sold out in just 30 minutes, and the sales on the first day exceeded 10 million yuan. In just three months of the initial sales period, we sold more than 100,000 units, becoming a phenomenon - level product in the industry that year.
In 2020, the J1 had a huge order volume, but the sudden special period caused great problems to the factory's production capacity. At that time, we were still a small startup company, and many factories couldn't give us priority in production capacity. In order to meet the delivery, all our senior executives returned to the company on the second day of the Spring Festival. We went around to raise masks and used the masks to exchange for production capacity. Finally, we ensured the stable delivery of 200,000 products in 2020. This experience also made us realize the importance of the supply chain - just making a good product is far from enough. Only when the product can be delivered to the users' hands can it form a complete closed - loop.
In 2021, we also upgraded our team. The number of people expanded from 200 to 1,000 in one year, and the supply chain also completed a comprehensive transformation. In the subsequent product development, our R & D efficiency doubled. From the prototype to mass production, under the iteration cycle of a large platform, we could complete the product launch within 12 months.
In 2021, we launched the world's first sweeping robot with automatic water supply and drainage, the J2. The origin of the R & D of this product was that we found that users often had to manually change clean water and sewage. We were thinking whether it could be like a washing machine and automatically add and drain water. When we launched the J2 sweeping robot with automatic water supply and drainage, the sales exceeded 100 million yuan in just one minute after it went on sale, and it also topped the list of consumer electronics brands and single products.
At the same time, in order to provide users with a better water supply and drainage installation service, we made a rather bold decision - to be the first in the industry to launch the on - site installation service NarwalCare. At that time, the on - site installation service for sweeping robots was still in its infancy. Many installation companies actually didn't know how to install sweeping robots. We also took the lead in formulating industry standards, establishing a professional service system, and promoting the popularization of the "automatic water supply and drainage" function. Today, NarwalCare has covered nearly 300 cities and more than 2,500 districts and counties across the country.
People say that Narwal is a company with extreme product innovation, but we never innovate for the sake of innovation. Instead, it is based on the insight into the real needs of users. My email has always been open to users, and of course, I've received a lot of letters. For example, some users asked: "How to deal with the milk spilled on the floor by kids?" "Can it handle sticky floors?" I also have a dog at home, so I can better understand these users' voices. They are the origin of Narwal's innovation.
After understanding the users' voices, we released the third - generation product, the J3, and launched the DirtSense™ sewage recognition technology. The robot can independently identify and judge the cleaning degree of the mop, including whether the mop is clean and the dirt conditions in each area. If it detects a high degree of dirt, it will automatically mop the area again until it is clean. At the same time, it is also equipped with Narwal's iconic triangular mop and the "EdgeSwing" corner cleaning solution, which helps the industry solve the problem of corner cleaning.
For the fourth - generation product, the J4, we targeted the most difficult pain point in the industry - hair entanglement. Narwal pioneered the single - cantilever cyclone diversion anti - entanglement roller brush. This technology completely solved the problem of roller brush entanglement that the industry had not solved for nearly 20 years. Especially for women with long hair, their hair often gets entangled, and users may need to maintain it every week. We really achieved 100% zero hair entanglement. At the same time, it passed the two international authoritative certifications of SGS and TÜV. This product is also one of our best - selling products globally, with more than 1 million units sold worldwide.
With the development of AI and chips, we realized that the sweeping machine has truly become a robot and entered thousands of households. Since 2022, we have built a binocular AI technology R & D team. In 2024, we also launched the world's first fully intelligent household robot with a binocular and dual - core system. It is equipped with two RGB cameras and dual AI chips. This breakthrough enables the robot to truly have the spatial perception and real - time decision - making ability similar to humans. It can identify more than 200 kinds of household objects, understand the surrounding environment in real - time, and adjust the cleaning strategy according to each household environment. With this breakthrough innovation, we have brought real artificial intelligence into the household cleaning industry.
In 2025, we launched the Xiaoyao 002, the world's first sweeping and mopping robot equipped with a hot water track. It is a real - sense sweeping and mopping robot that can clean while washing and mopping. It is especially effective for heavy oil stains and dried - up stains in the kitchen. It comes with 60 - degree high - temperature hot water, which improves the cleaning effect and achieves a leap - forward innovation in mopping technology.
This year, we launched the high - end series of the fully intelligent Xiaoyao 003, with a new binocular technology and a new chip, achieving all - thing recognition and full - scenario perception. A truly intelligent sweeping robot should not only accurately identify objects but also recognize pet scenarios, mother - and - baby scenarios, and different room classifications, enabling the robot to truly recognize the environment like a nanny and independently generate the most accurate cleaning strategy. This is a panoramic intelligent perception, a panoramic smooth operation, and an ultimate cleaning experience with long - lasting battery life throughout the house.
Since Narwal launched the world's first self - cleaning robot that can wash its own mop in 2019 to today's full - scenario and fully intelligent perception cleaning system, from a single product to a full - family cleaning product matrix, each generation of product iteration and innovation focuses on solving the real pain points of users. Behind our innovation is a large R & D team composed of people from top - tier global technology companies and universities. To date, Narwal has obtained more than 1,300 global patents and promoted the innovation and development of the industry through breakthrough technologies.
Narwal is also gradually going global and has entered more than 30 countries and regions and more than 5 million households. Last year, we ranked among the top three in China and the top five globally. In 2025, we were rated as the brand with the highest positive review rate in the cleaning appliance industry, which is based on 420,000 real user reviews.
In the process of globalization, we also held Global Tour events in many cities around the world, including France, Germany, the United States, Australia, etc., and communicated with users from different countries. At first, we thought that product design mainly focused on domestic users. But as globalization progressed, we found that the voices of overseas users were actually very different from those of domestic users. So we conducted a lot of research on overseas users and held Global Tour events to let the voices of more agents and users be truly transmitted to the company. Of course, we also received a lot of praise from users.
Narwal not only solves current problems but also thinks from the end - goal perspective about what home cleaning should be like in the next ten years. In the future, users should not worry about cleaning and tidying up the floors, walls, and sofas. The ultimate solution for home service robots is embodied intelligence. However, the implementation of embodied intelligence requires long - term and high - cost R & D investment and data accumulation. The application of a series of abilities such as interaction, movement, perception, and operation all depends on perception and decision - making training in the real environment. To date, Narwal's binocular technology has been implemented in more than 1 million devices, and every second, it is observing, learning, and practicing in real - life home environments, providing the most real fuel for training embodied intelligence.
We also divide cleaning intelligence into three steps internally. The first step is 8 - centimeter floor cleaning, which is the current sweeping robot. We are also building a 1.2 - meter space cleaning robot, such as one that can clean the toilet and pick up kids' toys. Further down, there will be higher - level robots with a larger operating space and the ability to complete more tasks. Actually, we have completed the 1.0 planar intelligence stage. Now, we are continuously making efforts in the field of 1.2 - meter space cleaning and storage. In the future, we will bring embodied products with real "cleaner" capabilities into households to complete cleaning work within a 2 - meter range, truly freeing users from household chores.
After ten years of Narwal, we have given the right to speak to users. Starting from a spark of invention, we have entered more than 5 million households around the world. In the future, we will always guard this spark of innovation and bring clean and free lives to more families.
The seasons change, but the passion for creation will never fade. I saw a lot of entrepreneurs at the venue today. There is a startup exhibition area beside, and I visited each exhibition hall one by one. In this summer full of surging waves, we hope that the spark of Narwal can be passed on to more users, more friends, and our entrepreneurs. Give a spark to life and a spark to entrepreneurship, and let innovation always stay young.
Thank you all!