Robot CEO Graces Time Cover... China's Presence Grows with Fields Medal and Moonshot AI

Unitree, a Chinese Robotics Firm, Featured on the Cover of Time
Deng Yu and Wang Hong, First Chinese Nationals to Win the Fields Medal
Spotlight on Moonshot AI... "Explosion of Scientific Talent"

Wang Xingxing (36), founder of Chinese robotics firm Unitree (Weisu Technology), appeared on the cover of the American weekly news magazine Time alongside the manned transformable robot ‘GD01’.

Wang Xingsing (36), founder of Chinese robotics company Unitree, featured on the cover of Time magazine along with the manned modular robot 'GD01'. Unitree

According to Yonhap News on the 26th, Unitree posted the Time magazine cover on its social media channels on the 24th. The cover features the 2.7-meter-tall ‘GD01’ filling the frame, with founder Wang standing next to it, and includes the headline “The Age of Giant Robots.” Unitree commented, “This is the first time in eight years that a Chinese entrepreneur has appeared on the cover of Time since Baidu’s founder Robin Li in 2018.”

‘GD01’ is a rideable robot unveiled by Unitree this past May and is classified as a civilian transportation vehicle. It moves with a person seated inside its inner cockpit; on urban roads it walks upright on two legs, while on rugged terrain such as stairs or ramps, it shifts to a four-legged posture. Including the rider, it weighs about 500 kg. Proposed applications include passenger transport, special operations, and cultural tourism exhibitions. The robot attracted attention when it was exhibited at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) held recently in China. The starting price is 3.9 million yuan (about 850 million won).

Time described Wang as “the person who has brought concepts long confined to the realm of science fiction closest to reality.” In an interview with the magazine, Wang cited both his experience watching Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and the film ‘Avatar’ as inspirations for the conception of ‘GD01,’ adding that he actually referred to similar robots featured in ‘Avatar.’

First Fields Medal for a Chinese National... Peking University Classmates Make History

With young researchers and entrepreneurs in STEM fields garnering attention, Chinese media are highlighting these achievements as evidence of the country’s talent development system.

On the 23rd, for the first time, two Chinese nationals were named among the winners of the Fields Medal, often called the “Nobel Prize of Mathematics.” The honorees are Deng Yu (37), professor at the University of Chicago, and Wang Hong (35), professor at New York University (NYU) and the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques (IHES) in France.

Professor Deng was recognized for his work on partial differential equations that border on physics topics such as statistical mechanics and quantum mechanics. Notably, his breakthrough addressed a core part of Hilbert’s 6th problem, one of 23 problems presented by German mathematician David Hilbert in 1900. Professor Wang made significant contributions to harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory. She gained attention for solving the “three-dimensional Kakeya conjecture,” an open problem for over a century, and is now recorded as the third woman in Fields Medal history, following Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014 and Maryna Viazovska in 2022. The two recipients were also classmates at Peking University.

Strong Presence in AI... Moonsot AI’s ‘Kimi K3’ Follows DeepSeek Into the Spotlight

Moonshot AI's 'Kimi 3' Reuters Yonhap News

In the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, the startup Moonsot AI’s ‘Kimi K3’ has drawn significant attention from the U.S. tech industry and financial markets, following DeepSeek. Unveiled on the 16th, this model is one of the world’s largest open-weight models, boasting 2.8 trillion parameters and supporting a context window of up to one million tokens. In a blind evaluation for frontend coding at Arena, it scored 1,679 points, overtaking Claude 5 with 1,631 points to rank first. Moonsot AI founder Yang Zhilin (34) graduated from Tsinghua University’s Department of Computer Science and earned his PhD at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the United States before returning to China to establish the company.

The Chinese media outlet Pengpai also noted that MIT Technology Review recently released the “35 Innovators Under 35 in China for 2025” (TR35) list, which included Luo Fuli (31), the so-called “AI prodigy” who moved from DeepSeek to Xiaomi. The outlet commented, “There is an explosive surge in young Chinese talent in science and technology,” adding, “They are making concentrated advances on the world’s scientific and technological frontiers.”

The report explained that “the growth phase of those born in the 1980s and 1990s coincided closely with the rapid advancement of emerging industries in China, such as the internet and AI, and with the broad expansion of higher education,” adding, “China’s longstanding emphasis on higher education and basic research has naturally produced these results.” The article continued, “This year’s Fields Medal wins and the achievements of figures like Wang Xingxing and Yang Zhilin are no coincidence—they represent just a part of the broader picture of China’s scientific and technological advancement.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.