Felix Zhang | Source | Founder and CEO at Pudu Robotics

Felix Zhang is founder and CEO of Pudu Robotics, the world’s leading commercial service robot manufacturer. Born in Sichuan province, China, Felix studied mechanical engineering as an undergrad and attended Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s master’s program for computer science. At the early age of 20, Felix placed first for China at ABU Robocon, a prestigious Asian-Oceanian college robot competition, and second overall in the APAC region. This was the catalyst for Felix to found his first startup with the very futuristic vision of building flying cars. Realizing the market for flying cars faced too many obstacles, Felix pivoted and had a breakout success with his second endeavor, a tech news outlet based in China loosely modeled on TechCrunch called leiphone.com, which is still published today. He sold leiphone.com in 2012 and immediately started his third startup, Elrobotics, a producer of robotic developer kits and telepresence devices. When Felix realized this company didn’t allow for the full expression of his passion for robotics, he launched his fourth startup, Pudu Robotics, in 2016. Felix’s unique experiences as a mechanical engineer, inventor and serial entrepreneur have all taught him the lessons and learnings required to turn Pudu Robotics into a thriving success. Today, Pudu is the leading maker of commercial service robots with more than 70,000 units deployed globally in 60+ countries, 2000 employees and $199.2M in funding from Tencent, and Sequoia Capital China, among others top investors.