Shanghai-based Black Lake Technologies is employing an unconventional sales strategy by recruiting food delivery workers to promote its artificial intelligence (AI) automation solutions to small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises across China. Founded in 2016 by CEO Zhou Yuxiang, the company has grown rapidly, boasting a client base of 35,000 factories primarily comprised of family-run businesses.

Zhou explained that the sales team, which numbers over 420 and comes from various industrial cities, underwent an intensive five-day training to articulate how AI can address specific manufacturing challenges. Their street smarts and familiarity with industrial environments enable them to gain entry into factories more effectively than traditional salespeople. “For food delivery guys, they just give a cigarette to the security guard and get in,” Zhou said, highlighting their ability to navigate factory access obstacles.

Black Lake’s cloud-based production management software has been recognised by the International Data Corporation as a leading solution in mainland China. In October 2025, Zhou met with Premier Li Qiang to discuss how agentic AI technology could support China’s economic digitisation and technological self-reliance, a priority outlined in the country’s latest five-year plan.

The company’s focus is on making China’s nearly 5 million manufacturing SMEs more agile and responsive to market demands. Since launching tailored products for these businesses in 2021, Black Lake has achieved annual growth exceeding 100 percent. The firm is now valued at over 7 billion yuan (approximately HK$8.1 billion).

At the Nusa Dua Forum in Bali in July 2026, Zhou announced plans to expand into Southeast Asian markets, including Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. While not confirming any imminent public listing, he indicated that Hong Kong’s financial market remains an attractive option for future capital raising, citing its international investor base and long-term vision.

Black Lake is broadening its reach within China as well, moving beyond coastal industrial hubs in the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas to inland provinces such as Sichuan, Hebei, and Hubei. Zhou identified changing consumer expectations driven by e-commerce as a key factor pushing manufacturers toward real-time, demand-driven production. He noted that, historically, Western firms have dominated industrial automation in China, but the paradigm is shifting toward AI-enabled responsiveness.

Among Black Lake’s offerings are mini-programs integrated with WeChat that simplify factory operations, and wearable devices that digitise shop floor activities. The company’s AI solutions help manufacturers manage smaller, more frequent production runs and rapidly adjust to market trends—capabilities increasingly critical as China’s veteran factory managers retire.

Zhou cited examples ranging from large beverage chain Mixue Bingcheng to a family-owned plastic packaging factory in Suzhou. The latter pivoted from predictable bulk orders for multinational clients to serving smaller e-commerce brands that demand flexible, fast production turnaround times. By implementing AI-guided workflows and wearables, the factory reduced idle times during production line changeovers dramatically and increased agile orders to 60 percent of its business within two years.

Zhou described AI’s role in helping manufacturers compete globally by enhancing supply chain agility and bridging cultural differences in overseas operations. He believes the industry is still in its early stages, comparable to the early days of the internet. Black Lake currently has three agentic AI products deployed and seven others in development, ranging from automated workflow generation to AI-driven quality control.

“In the next two to three years, the spotlight will shift from foundational AI models to practical applications,” Zhou said, anticipating a transformative period for the sector. He noted that in some scenarios, their AI solutions have achieved 97 percent accuracy in reasoning tasks, effectively replacing human roles, but stressed that many roles remain to be addressed by AI technologies.