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Author | Chai Xuchen
Editor | Zhou Zhiyu
After leaving Honor for more than a year, Zhao Ming finally has a new identity. It is neither the rumored ByteDance nor joining Zhijie, but preparing to replicate the path of his old comrade Richard Yu.
On February 12, Wall Street Insight learned that former Honor CEO Zhao Ming will join Afari. He was also nominated as a candidate for the sixth board of directors as a non-independent director. According to informed sources, Zhao Ming may serve as the co-chairman of Afari.
The news quickly became official, as Afari announced after the market closed that it had agreed to nominate Zhao Ming as a candidate for the sixth board of directors as a non-independent director, with a term consistent with the current board's term.
However, everyone is still curious why Afari's chairman Yin Qi would extend an olive branch to Zhao Ming, and why Zhao Ming is willing to cross into the automotive industry? Behind this lies Geely's grand strategy—to make Afari the &#34;second Huawei.&#34;
<h2>Huawei's &#34;Three Heroes&#34; Gather</h2>
Choosing Afari was not a spur-of-the-moment decision for Zhao Ming. Informed sources revealed to Wall Street Insight that Zhao Ming and Yin Qi had been in frequent contact since the second half of last year.
In September of last year, Zhao Ming publicly stated that he wanted to find a direction that truly excites him, a career worth investing another ten years in. The outside world interpreted this as a declaration of Zhao Ming's new beginning.
With Zhao Ming's involvement, along with former Huawei autonomous driving team founder and former head of autonomous driving R&amp;D Chen Qi, and former president of Huawei's automotive business unit Wang Jun, Afari has gathered Huawei's &#34;three heroes.&#34;
Afari has also initially assembled the chips to disrupt the market. This personnel change hides Afari's core strategic shift, from &#34;car + AI&#34; to &#34;AI + car.&#34;
The reversal of these two phrases signifies a fundamental shift in discourse power. In the past, car companies were the protagonists, and AI was merely an auxiliary enhancement; however, in Zhao Ming and Yin Qi's new blueprint, AI becomes the core that defines the product, while the car is merely the physical carrier of AI capabilities. To prove this concept, Afari made a bold decision to enter the car manufacturing space and create a new brand.
Informed sources revealed to Wall Street Insight that Afari is brewing a &#34;two-step&#34; car manufacturing plan, preparing to launch a new passenger car brand for the consumer market; meanwhile, it is also preparing a &#34;show of strength&#34; Robotaxi project.
Individuals close to Afari indicated that the Robotaxi project will be equipped with its own advanced intelligent driving solution, &#34;similar to Didi and GAC's Robotaxi or Baidu's Luobo Kuaipao.&#34;
&#34;The internal plan is to equip the Robotaxi with intelligent driving and AI model capabilities,&#34; the aforementioned sources told Wall Street Insight, stating that this is a project to &#34;show muscle&#34; to the outside world, proving that the capabilities of intelligence, AI, manufacturing, and supply chain within the Geely system can be interconnected, forming a smart driving business closed loop comparable to Tesla
Clearly, this is the showcase for Qianli Technology to sell its self-driving technology to the industry. However, this is not all; they also plan to personally enter the market and create a complete vehicle brand.
According to informed sources, the new brand is positioned similarly to Lynk &amp; Co, targeting a price range of around 200,000 yuan. This price range is the most competitive but also the most capable of generating volume in the &#34;mid-market.&#34; On the timeline, small-scale production (SOP) is expected to be achieved in 2026, with an official launch in 2027.
Qianli Technology's &#34;overt strategy&#34; is gradually becoming clear — they aim to &#34;recreate Huawei.&#34;
Last March, Geely Holding's CEO, Gui Shengyue, publicly stated at a performance meeting that Geely wants to work with Qianli Technology to create &#34;the second Huawei,&#34; as this is the only way Geely can achieve a leading position in the future of intelligence and autonomous driving.
Therefore, a route similar to Huawei's &#34;Smart Selection Car + Car BU&#34; has emerged, with Zhao Ming as the upcoming protagonist in this new script.
<h2>Making Money is the Hard Truth</h2>
Seven years ago, Huawei entered the automotive field to make money, to &#34;supplement&#34; the decline of its mobile phone segment. Now, with Zhao Ming on board and entering the complete vehicle market, Qianli Technology also has an urgent desire for self-sufficiency.
This point has already been hinted at by Zhao Ming on Weibo. On February 12, he interacted with Yin Qi, stating that they would &#34;work together to create an AI business closed loop.&#34;
In the first three quarters of last year, Qianli Technology recorded revenue of 2.762 billion yuan, but the net profit attributable to the parent company was less than 1%. Although both figures are growing, the company also admitted that the revenue increase mainly relies on terminal businesses like motorcycles and passenger cars, while profit growth mainly comes from government subsidies.
In the most critical AI business, Qianli Technology is still in the investment phase and is quite a distance away from profitability.
However, the market can no longer wait. The industry generally believes that 2026 will be a key year for the basic determination of the smart driving landscape. Yin Qi also predicts that there will only be 3-4 smart driving companies surviving in the Chinese market afterward. Capital is increasingly focused on profits, and the final clearing of the industry has already begun.
In fact, Qianli Technology's hand is not bad. As the commander of both the smart driving company and the large model company, Yin Qi's technical accumulation in the field of artificial intelligence is beyond doubt. Half a year ago, the company integrated the ZEEKR smart driving team, Geely Research Institute, and the smart driving brand &#34;Mochi Zhixing&#34; under Megvii; on the other hand, holding the car manufacturing qualifications of Lifan, there are also the demand resources of the entire Geely automotive empire behind it.
However, in the last mile of transforming &#34;technology&#34; into &#34;hit products,&#34; Qianli Technology has always lacked a top-notch operator. Zhao Ming has come with a solution.
During the mobile phone era, Zhao Ming proposed a &#34;high-end first, mid-range volume&#34; strategy. Looking back at Honor's campaign in the European market, when everyone was selling cheap phones to grab market share, Zhao Ming insisted on establishing a high-end reputation with the Magic series and quickly expanding volume with the X series, raising the market share from 0 to 5% in just one year.
This approach will now be replicated in Qianli Technology's smart driving landscape.
According to the plan, Qianli Technology's L4-level Robotaxi is the &#34;Magic series&#34; of that year, taking the high-end, showcasing muscle route, and establishing a brand image of technological leadership. But this is just the first step; Zhao Ming's core task is to use the new brand's vehicle scale to dilute the costs of hardware such as lidar and high-performance chips
This ability to create a business closed loop is something that Yin Qi, who comes from a pure technical background, lacks, but it is Zhao Ming's strong suit.
This is a two-way journey. Zhao Ming's understanding of AI is no longer limited to algorithms themselves, but he sees it as &#34;the business of the next decade.&#34; Qianli Technology needs Zhao Ming's experience to prove that the AI concept can achieve a complete closed loop from technology, supply chain to the entire vehicle, allowing AI technology to be implemented and monetized, reaching thousands of households.
<h2>The Future Requires Overcoming Obstacles</h2>
Having clarified the path to profitability, another significant challenge Zhao Ming faces is organizational integration.
As a project acquired by Geely, known as the &#34;integration king,&#34; Qianli Technology has an extremely complex internal structure. It is not a native startup but a &#34;hybrid&#34; that integrates Geely's Central Research Institute, the ZEEKR intelligent driving team, and the Megvii AI team.
Individuals close to Geely have told Wall Street News that the Geely team excels in mechanical engineering and vehicle manufacturing, while the Megvii team specializes in visual algorithms and deep learning. Coupled with the newly introduced background of BAIC Capital, how to unify these teams with vastly different backgrounds and cultures requires high political wisdom and crisis management skills.
During his time at Honor's &#34;independence,&#34; Zhao Ming successfully led the team to break away from Huawei's system and reshape the supply chain and channels. This experience in large-scale organizational change is what Qianli Technology urgently needs right now.
In this dual-core structure, the division of labor is already clear. Yin Qi focuses on the technical strategic direction, responsible for ensuring the upper limits of AI technology; Zhao Ming focuses on the closed loop of the AI business model, responsible for solving user experience, global operations, and most critically, selling the technology.
This configuration of &#34;technical genius + business commander&#34; easily evokes comparisons to Huawei's early rotating chairman system or the relationship between Apple's Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.
Finally, the considerations of the capital market must be mentioned.
In the current capital environment, if one merely positions itself as an &#34;automotive parts supplier&#34; or &#34;intelligent driving software company,&#34; the valuation ceiling is easily visible. Automotive supply chain companies typically have lower price-to-earnings ratios, while consumer electronics brands and technology companies with ecological closed loops often enjoy higher valuation premiums.
Bringing in Zhao Ming effectively injects &#34;consumer electronics-level&#34; brand genes into Qianli Technology. Through the dual drive of &#34;car manufacturing + AI,&#34; Qianli Technology is no longer telling a hard-luck story of OEM but rather a &#34;technology ecosystem&#34; story similar to Tesla or Huawei.
They showcase to the market top-notch AI algorithms, tangible vehicle products, global operational capabilities, and replicable business closed loops. If this story is convincing, the valuation logic of Qianli Technology will undergo a qualitative leap.
Zhao Ming's entry into Qianli Technology signifies that a &#34;mobile phone industry giant&#34; is officially heavily investing in the &#34;AI + automotive&#34; track, also indicating that the competition for talent and resources in the automotive industry has escalated to the highest dimension.
Qianli Technology does not want to become the next Bosch or Continental; it aims to be the &#34;Huawei&#34; of the automotive industry, possessing core technologies like HarmonyOS and ADS, as well as terminal products like Aito and IM Motors. Of course, the challenges are also immense.
Releasing a new car in 2027 means Zhao Ming must complete team integration, brand reshaping, supply chain integration, and mass production of new cars within just over a year. In the fiercely competitive Chinese automotive market, time is the greatest enemy
But as Zhao Ming said, AI is &#34;the business of the next decade.&#34; For Afari, Zhao Ming's joining may be the last piece of the puzzle for them to complete their &#34;daring leap.&#34; If this set of &#34;high-end technology + mid-range volume + business closed loop&#34; experience can be successfully replicated in the automotive circle, then Afari may really become the long-awaited &#34;game changer.&#34;

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Searching for the "second Huawei."

Leading Afari, the former number one position at Honor has started a car manufacturing venture