For Chinese companies, the bet is that lower prices and more AI features will persuade people to wear smart glasses all day, recording their lives via constant video and audio. If you drop the price to around $200, “people will start using them every day,” says Brian Chen, general manager of Appotronics’ innovation center. This change would raise obvious privacy and security concerns, which Rokid and Appotronics have acknowledged, but consider the potential gain to be worth the risk.
From vacuum cleaners to cars
Several major Chinese electric vehicle makers, including Geely and Great Wall Motor, showed off their cars at CES, but what stole the show were two brands that almost no one had heard of before. Both Nebula Next and Kosmera have presented sleek and luxurious electric sports car prototypes, neither of which are yet available on the market. Both brands have ties to Dreame, one of China’s leading robot vacuum manufacturers, but they claim to operate independently of it. At CES, however, the Nebula Next and Kosmera booths were linked to Dreame in the conference directory.
Aside from this complex corporate relationship, the idea of a robot vacuum company investing in electric vehicles isn’t as absurd as it seems. If anything, it’s just the latest example of how Chinese electronics companies are leveraging their existing manufacturing expertise to make cars. The founder of Roborock, another Chinese vacuum company, launched an electric vehicle business in 2023. Xiaomi, the Chinese smartphone and home appliance giant, launched its first electric vehicle in 2024.
Dreame is not the first and will not be the last Chinese company to move from electronics to electric vehicles, says Lei Xing, an independent auto market analyst and former editor-in-chief of China Auto Review, who reviewed Kosmera prototypes with me at CES. China’s sophisticated supply chain, engineering talent and manufacturing ecosystem make it relatively easy for newcomers to break into car building, Xing says, but only a few will succeed. Others may end up being more like Apple, whose long-running car project ultimately failed. “Life and death will be a natural outcome,” Xing said.
The Robovans are coming
When I returned to China last year, I made sure to try Baidu’s robotaxi service, which is roughly comparable to Alphabet’s Waymo in the United States. What surprised me in China, however, was the number of self-driving package delivery cars that roamed the same open streets alongside my robotaxi.
Neolix is the leading company in China manufacturing hardware and software for robot vans. It says the number deployed in China is growing tenfold each year and will reach about 10,000 in 2025. (For comparison, there are about 2,500 Waymo cars in operation in the United States.) Neolix claims to account for more than 60 percent of the market and has no major competitors globally, said Zhao You, the company’s executive chairman. Neolix showed off three of its cars at CES, ranging from mini-fridges to golf carts: tiny windowless boxes perched on oversized wheels, with no driver inside.
Neolix wants to expand internationally and already has pilot projects underway in the Middle East, East Asia and Latin America. It is also eyeing the American market. Zhao told me he’s aware that any standalone company in the U.S. will face increased scrutiny over issues like data safety and security, but he hopes to work with local partners who can help him meet compliance requirements here. “As a technology company, working with a single cloud service provider for any market is the most affordable option, but it won’t work. You need to talk to local regulators and find out which cloud providers they approve,” says Zhao.
Generate viral videos
When OpenAI launched Sora 2 last year, it made an ambitious bet that generative AI could be not just a tool but a genre of content big enough to support an entire social media platform. This vision hasn’t fully come to fruition yet, but at CES I met two AI video companies that compete with OpenAI’s Sora.
Kling is the AI division of Kuaishou, a hugely popular Chinese short video platform. The Kling app and website together have more than 60 million registered users, the majority of whom the company says are based outside of China. Around 100 people attended Kling’s panel at CES with the platform’s power users. Jason Zada, an award-winning director who directed Coca-Cola’s controversial AI-generated 2024 holiday ad, said he recently used Kling to generate a YouTube video featuring a calmly burning fireplace as Santa, turkeys, astronauts and snowmen make inexplicable appearances. Zada said he created more than 600 clips with Kling and stitched them together to create the final 105-minute video. This costs around $2,500 in token credits.
