October 22–23, 2026 · Suzhou
AI is moving into factories and into everyday work. For entrepreneurs, understanding both changes takes more than watching demonstrations on a screen. It helps to visit the companies building them and speak with the people involved.
Under the theme “See the Future, See Yourself,” the MindsLeap Founders AI Club brought entrepreneurs to Suzhou for a two-day study tour. The October 22 program included visits to Ruyi Dynamics and Elite Robots, an introduction to the local embodied AI ecosystem, and sessions on AI Agents and short-video marketing workflows. The following day offered a quieter setting for reflection in the Huashan scenic area.
Ruyi Dynamics: A Founder’s View of Embodied AI
At Ruyi Dynamics (如一动力), founder and CEO Zhang Hanwen introduced the development of embodied AI and the venture his team is building.
Speaking directly with a founder brought an emerging field closer to practical business questions: how does a technology become a product, and how does that product find its place in a real application? The visit gave participants an opportunity to understand the industrial setting around embodied AI entrepreneurship, rather than encountering it only as a new concept.
The opportunity in embodied AI is not only about a robot’s appearance or demonstration. It also depends on the problems it can address in a specific setting. Looking for that connection between future possibilities and work already underway became a recurring theme throughout the day.
Elite Robots: From the Showroom to Production and Testing
At Elite Robots (艾利特机器人), Jiang Xushang, who heads the Suzhou company, guided the group through the showroom and the production and testing workshops. He introduced practical robot applications in pharmaceuticals, semiconductors and automotive industries.
Moving from the showroom into the workshops shifted the focus from what robots can do to how they operate within a business. Production processes, deployment settings and application requirements provided a more concrete reference for understanding the technology.
For entrepreneurs from different sectors, the visit offered a useful perspective: evaluate AI and robotics against real tasks and delivery requirements, not terminology alone. Emerging embodied AI approaches and established industrial robot applications also need to be understood within their different levels of maturity and use cases.
Understanding the Industrial Ecosystem Around the Companies
Li Chenglin, responsible for investment attraction at the China-Singapore embodied intelligence incubation park, introduced the park’s planning, current ecosystem and supporting industrial policies.
His presentation placed the company visits within a wider setting, helping participants understand how innovation projects connect with park services, industry resources and application opportunities.
Bringing a new project from technical exploration into business often requires support beyond the founding team. The discussion offered a more concrete understanding of the park’s role in connecting companies and resources, and an introduction to Suzhou’s industrial environment.
Bringing AI Agent Opportunities Back to Everyday Business
Lincoln Wang, Founder and CEO of MindsLeap and Partner and CEO of Founders Space China, shared trends and opportunities in the emerging AI Agent business era.
As AI develops from a tool that answers questions into personal assistants and digital employees that can participate in ongoing tasks, businesses have new reasons to reconsider how they assign work, organize processes and direct human attention.
This connected with the company visits: whether robots are working in physical environments or Agents are entering office and marketing processes, the business question is how the technology fits a real situation. A useful next step is to identify a specific task to try, together with a clear way to assess its results.
Making Short-Video Marketing a Repeatable AI Workflow
Yusi’s session brought the discussion into content production, explaining how to build an AI-assisted short-video marketing workflow.
The session covered four practical ways to reduce unsuccessful generation: divide a video into short shots and remake only the parts that need improvement; review low-resolution samples before committing to final output; create storyboard images to establish subjects, settings and composition; and provide specific visual, motion and audio references.
These approaches balance quality, control and cost. Rather than expecting a perfect result from a single generation, teams can work through smaller pieces, previews and targeted revisions. For companies producing marketing content regularly, that is closer to a repeatable working process than a one-off experiment.
A Quieter Day at Huashan
On October 23, the group visited Suzhou’s Huashan scenic area and stayed at Huashan Yinju (花山隐居), with hiking, tea, meditation and sutra copying. After a day looking outward at technology and industry, the second day left space to reflect on personal priorities. Together, the two days gave the theme “See the Future, See Yourself” a practical shape.
Connecting What We See with What We Do Next
The Suzhou tour brought together several perspectives: an embodied AI startup, industrial robot applications, the surrounding ecosystem, and ways to use Agents and AI in everyday business workflows.
Our aim is to make these visits more than company tours and presentations. They should help entrepreneurs connect emerging changes with their own businesses, find a direction worth exploring and retain their own judgment.
From the Guangzhou study tour and Hangzhou retreat to visits to Zhipu AI and Feishu in Beijing, and now this Suzhou trip, the MindsLeap Founders AI Club continues to connect industry visits, focused discussions and peer learning. Visiting different companies helps entrepreneurs understand how AI is changing business and identify a next step that fits their own circumstances. Learn more about the MindsLeap Founders AI Club.
About MindsLeap
MindsLeap is an enterprise AI transformation and AI-native startup acceleration platform. Through the MindsLeap Founders AI Club, AI training and strategic advisory, FDE implementation, startup acceleration, and global growth services, MindsLeap helps traditional enterprises embed AI into real business workflows and helps AI-native ventures connect with industry use cases and global markets. MindsLeap is a global partner of Founders Space.