Turning “AI is Profitable” into Growth: Key Insights from TGC 2026

“How many of you have started using AI? How many are using AI at work? And how many believe AI is already helping you make money?”

These questions from Shuhao Li, Founder and CEO of Tec-Do, brought the discussion directly to what businesses expect from AI. They also connected the conference’s conversations about technology, products and commercial value.

[Shuhao Li, Founder and CEO of Tec-Do]

That focus on growth is also embedded in the story behind Tec-Do’s name. In her opening remarks, conference host Maeve Zhang, Vice President of Branding and Public Relations at Tec-Do, shared that the name was inspired by Korn, the American metal band Li admires. The band’s song “Twisted Transistor” conveys the understanding and perseverance that music can offer. Li extended that sentiment from “Music Do” to “Tec-Do,” expressing his hope that technology could understand people striving for excellence and businesses expanding globally—and help them turn their ambitions into achievements.

Today, AI is opening up more possibilities for technology. The growth Tec-Do pursues remains grounded in a straightforward purpose: helping businesses earn returns on their investments and giving their efforts to expand internationally a greater chance of success.

[Maeve Zhang, Vice President of Branding and Public Relations at Tec-Do]

How, then, can AI move closer to useful outcomes through action? Dr. Kevin Knight, a pioneering researcher in natural language processing and former President of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), explored this question through the history of AI.

In his opening keynote, “From Language to Action: The Next Leap in AI,” Knight moved from machine translation and mathematics to robotics and business, returning repeatedly to one essential concept: feedback. How does AI know whether it has done something correctly, and what enables it to improve? A mathematical proof can be verified; business decisions must be tested against market responses and financial returns.

He also offered a reminder: as AI becomes more capable, people must continue to think for themselves. Delegating work and delegating judgment require separate consideration.

[Dr. Kevin Knight delivers the opening keynote]

Li’s presentation brought that distinction into the context of enterprise AI, or AI for Work. Marketing and sales, product research and development, and administration are three areas in which businesses invest continuously. They correspond to AI for Growth, AI for Innovation and AI for Administration.

Within AI for Growth, agents must be results-driven. Marketing connects directly to revenue, and businesses can quickly assess whether their spending has generated customers and orders.

“Our ultimate ambition is to help businesses worldwide make money with AI,” Li said.

Over nearly a decade, Tec-Do has accumulated global marketing experience through its work with hundreds of thousands of brands. This provides a foundation for AI to understand business contexts, execute strategies and learn from results. Li emphasized that growth requires both professional expertise and AI technology. His vision is for agents that understand business objectives, continually identify opportunities and respond to actual performance.

Launched at the conference and introduced by Tec-Do as the industry’s first Pro Agent, Navos Pro translates that vision into three dimensions of “Pro”: Professional, understanding brands and specialized business needs; Proactive, monitoring changes and recommending action; and Profitable, evaluating strategies through actual returns.

Dr. Tracy Chen, Vice President of Technology at Tec-Do, explained that Navos Pro’s technical development focuses on enabling both models and agents to learn continuously. Marketing provides timely, measurable performance feedback that can guide strategy optimization. By incorporating real business outcomes into the learning process, the system applies experience from each round of testing to subsequent decisions, continuously improving its ability to support growth.

[ Dr. Tracy Chen, Vice President of Technology at Tec-Do]

Sherry Wang, Vice President of Product at Tec-Do, and David, Head of AI Product, demonstrated Navos Pro’s core capabilities on stage. The demonstration covered understanding brands and developing professional strategies, proactively diagnosing campaign performance and recommending adjustments, and testing creative assets in batches to scale investment in effective approaches.

Together, these capabilities demonstrated Navos Pro’s three core strengths: understanding business through professional expertise, proactively identifying opportunities and validating value through commercial returns. They position Navos Pro as a platform for sustained international growth.

[Sherry Wang, Vice President of Product at Tec-Do, right, and David, Head of AI Product, left]

As the discussion turned to global markets, another question emerged: how is the way consumers discover products changing?

Joining by video, Lorry Destainville, Monetization Partnerships at OpenAI, discussed how consumers use ChatGPT to research travel and products, and how advertising can respond to the context and needs expressed in a conversation.

He specifically acknowledged Tec-Do’s technical investment and collaboration in integrating ChatGPT advertising. The teams have worked together to connect the technology with client applications, helping businesses capture growth opportunities through this emerging advertising channel.

[Lorry Destainville, Monetization Partnerships at OpenAI]

Emerging AI technologies, particularly the rapid development of agents and specialized models, are creating new commercial possibilities. The first panel, “How Emerging AI Technologies Are Reshaping the Future of Business,” examined how these possibilities can become growth opportunities for companies.

[Panel discussion on how emerging AI technologies are reshaping the future of business]

Jie Zhou, Managing Director and Head of China at General Atlantic, observed that technological progress and commercialization follow different timelines. Whether a technology can be developed and whether it can generate sufficient commercial value are separate questions. For entrepreneurial teams, proprietary data, integration into business operations, service delivery and cost-effectiveness all deserve sustained attention.

[Jie Zhou, Managing Director and Head of China at General Atlantic]

Di Li, Founder and CEO of Nextie and widely known as the “father of Xiaoice,” focused on whether AI can become a source of value that customers will continue to pay for. He emphasized the importance of data feedback, which allows systems to move closer to the standards used to evaluate real business decisions.

[Di Li, Founder and CEO of Nextie]

Jun Ye, Founder of Syntaxis AI and former Vice President of Alibaba Group, discussed the practical challenges of applying AI across advertising, customer inquiries, orders, logistics and customer service.

Each stage can benefit from AI, yet decisions and context established earlier in a workflow may be lost as the task progresses. Reliable execution of long-running tasks remains a challenge that entrepreneurs must address by working deeply within their customers’ operations.

[Jun Ye, Founder of Syntaxis AI and former Vice President of Alibaba Group]

Dong Xu, Vice President of the Qwen Foundation Model Business within Alibaba’s ATH Business Group, turned the discussion toward manufacturing. In his view, combining AI with manufacturing will create profound, long-term opportunities for Chinese businesses. As technology evolves more rapidly, hands-on experimentation becomes increasingly valuable in identifying where it can make a practical difference.

[ Dong Xu, Vice President, Qwen Foundation Model Business, Alibaba ATH Business Group]

The commercial changes enabled by AI are also accelerating across global markets. From product discovery to content creation and new experiences, businesses expanding internationally are encountering new opportunities for growth. These developments shaped the second panel, “Global Expansion Trends in the AI Era.”

[Panel discussion on global expansion trends in the AI era]

Eli Liu, Director of China Agency at Google Customer Solutions, discussed how consumers are changing the ways they express intent, and how brands can build trust in this evolving information environment.

For businesses entering international markets, he argued, understanding customers, being discoverable and earning trust should be considered together.

[Eli Liu, Director of China Agency, Google Customer Solutions]

Liping Zhao, Executive Director of Global Technology Research at CICC Research, proposed three dimensions for evaluating AI opportunities: whether outcomes can be verified, whether high-quality industry data is available and whether AI can solve a problem comprehensively.

She encouraged teams considering international expansion to test their offerings in the market. Real customer feedback can help them build the data and industry expertise needed to develop a competitive advantage over time.

[Liping Zhao, Executive Director of Global Technology Research, CICC Research]

New opportunities are also emerging in content and experiences. Chengbo Weng, Director of the AI Business Operations Division at Maiya Media, explained how AI is lowering barriers to video production, enabling studios of just two or three people to create compelling drama series.

With creative tools and platform distribution, more people with strong ideas can enter the industry, turn stories into finished productions and develop new commercial opportunities.

[Chengbo Weng, Director, AI Business Operations Division, Maiya Media]

Josh Ye, Head of Global Brand Communications at Hero Esports, illustrated AI’s role in creative production through an 88-meter-wide screen at an electronic music festival. He described how AI helped deliver highly detailed, immersive experiences that would previously have been difficult to achieve.

He also emphasized the continuing importance of human experience, aesthetic judgment and the ability to recognize when a creative work has achieved the right effect.

[Josh Ye, Head of Global Brand Communications at Hero Esports]

Turning global opportunities into business requires an understanding of specific market needs and collaboration that connects technology with practical applications. The third panel, “Ecosystem Collaboration in AI Commercialization,” explored this process.

[Panel discussion on ecosystem collaboration in AI commercialization]

Panel moderator Sheng Zhou, Product Strategy Advisor at Tec-Do, previously led monetization products at ByteDance and e-commerce products at TikTok. He observed that the deeper integration of agents into daily work, together with improvements in vertical models, is creating more application opportunities.

Delivering those applications requires attention to differences between markets. Teams with a strong understanding of business must work closely with customers to turn technical capabilities into actual returns.

[Sheng Zhou, Product Strategy Advisor at Tec-Do and panel moderator]

Terry Wang, Director of Global Partnerships at BytePlus, illustrated these differences through AI visual applications. Restaurant customers in Japan may prioritize service quality, film and television teams in Europe may focus on visual precision, while customers in Southeast Asia may place greater emphasis on producing video at scale.

Bringing technology closer to customers and working with them to understand their problems are essential parts of developing useful applications.

[Terry Wang, Director of Global Partnerships at BytePlus]

Zhaojun Deng, General Manager of the Strategic Investments and Partnerships Department in Alibaba’s Qwen Business Unit, focused on connecting individual tools into complete services, reducing the burden on users to assemble solutions themselves.

AI products can take different forms. Their lasting value depends on whether users receive the help they actually need.

[Zhaojun Deng, General Manager, Strategic Investments and Partnerships Department, Qwen Business Unit, Alibaba]

Addressing which tasks people should delegate to AI, Tong Yang, International Ecosystem Operations Lead for Tencent WorkBuddy, suggested a practical benchmark: describing a task to AI should take less time than completing it personally.

Through continued interaction, users can guide AI toward results that meet their expectations. Final review and judgment should remain with people.

[Tong Yang, International Ecosystem Operations Lead, Tencent WorkBuddy]

Before the conference concluded, Eileen Nie, Founding Partner and Head of Ecosystem Incubation and Strategic Investment at Tec-Do, announced the launch of the Pro Agent Global Challenge.

She noted that strong technology does not automatically become a successful product, and successful products also need suitable business models. Tec-Do aims to connect AI startups with global commercial demand through investment and incubation, the joint development of real business applications, and access to international channels and customer resources.

By helping teams validate product value and find their markets, Tec-Do seeks to grow alongside more entrepreneurs and bring useful AI to businesses worldwide.

[Eileen Nie announces the Pro Agent Global Challenge]

“AI is Profitable” expresses both the theme of TGC 2026 and Tec-Do’s position on the commercial application of AI.

From marketing growth to opportunities in research, development and administration, and from Chinese businesses expanding overseas to entrepreneurs building for global markets, TGC seeks to connect technology, capital and industry. Its ambition is to help useful AI meet real demand, enable businesses to achieve sustained growth and make innovation from China a driving force for greater efficiency across industries.