Yin Qi is chairman of StepFun and Qianli Technology. He previously co-founded and led Megvii, the computer-vision company behind Face++. His public work now emphasizes bringing AI agents into devices and physical-world applications.[1][2]
Start with When Agents Enter the Physical World →
Education
Links
StepFun leadership announcement Tsinghua alumnus profileChairman · StepFun
Chairman · Qianli Technology
Career
Yin co-founded Megvii in October 2011 and served as its chairman and chief executive through October 2024, according to Qianli’s listing document. The same filing records becoming Qianli’s chairman in November 2024 and confirms his StepFun chairmanship. StepFun announced that appointment on January 26, 2026, placing strategic direction among his responsibilities.[2][1]
Contributions
Megvii’s Face++ platform made face-recognition technology available to application developers. Tsinghua’s account of Yin’s earlier work describes research on face recognition during internships and work at Microsoft Research Asia, followed by founding Megvii with fellow Tsinghua graduates. The company’s commercial platform was a team product; this history does not establish that Yin wrote each component.[3]
Ideas
In his 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference speech, Yin connects the next stage of AI products with agents and new devices. He argues that models must do more than answer text questions when they interact with cars, phones or robots. The speech presents a strategy for combining model capabilities, products and AI-native organizations; it is a statement of direction rather than proof that those systems operate reliably in every setting.[4]
Tools, writing & talks
Writing, research & talks
Start here
When Agents Enter the Physical Worldstepfun.comYin’s published WAIC speech about agents, devices and the organization needed to build them.
Begin with the examples of agents working through devices. No coding background is needed; read it as a company leader’s strategy, then distinguish that direction from demonstrated product behavior.
Speaker[4]