100 AI Creators is a weekly series featuring conversations with China’s leading minds in artificial intelligence. As technology evolves, their perspectives shed light on the ideas driving the AI era across borders.
When 23-year-old Zhong Tai, founder of Agent Universe, declared at the Watcha launch event that “every generation deserves its own community,” it echoed Bob Dylan’s youthful murmur at age 22: “Your old road is rapidly aging. Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand,” from his iconic album The Times They Are A-Changin’.
Everything old makes way for the new, and Watcha is exactly that.
Watcha is the latest creation from a Gen Z-led team headed by Zhong: a community platform focused on reviewing AI products. Some have dubbed it “China’s Product Hunt,” but unlike its Western counterpart, which spotlights new launches, Watcha is built to cut through hype.
In the second quarter of 2025 alone, more than 1,000 new AI tools were reportedly released globally. Many were little more than repackaged gimmicks. Genuinely promising tools often fade out due to lack of exposure and resources.
Watcha wants to fix this. In an age of information overload, how do you spotlight AI products that actually matter and foster honest, high-quality feedback?
Zhong’s answer: build a community grounded in truth.
Watcha isn’t designed to track leaderboard rankings, traffic metrics, or marketing budgets. It exists solely to reflect raw, firsthand user feedback.
Zhong said he envisions Watcha as a tool for “super individuals,” a platform where indie developers, small teams, and early-stage startups can find validation and meaningful user engagement. If a new tool is genuinely good, Watcha can help connect it to users, resources, markets, and even funding.
Watcha operates on fundamentally different principles from other product review platforms today:
- The platform’s review model is fundamentally different from other product sites: it doesn’t rely on algorithmic rankings. Everything runs on subjective feedback from real users. People decide what’s valuable.
- Only invited and certified users can publish reviews. The first 1,000 reviewer spots are now open, with applicants vetted through questionnaires and manual review to ensure they are experienced, tech-savvy AI users.
- Instead of ad revenue, Watcha’s data engine runs on user insights. It produces reports for venture capital firms and AI companies, tracks emerging trends, surfaces promising tools, and develops toolkits for key opinion leaders (KOLs). In some ways, it operates like a compact version of a multichannel network, reinforcing the wider content ecosystem.
As reviewer number 538, AI Now! joined the daily Watcha chat group, which quickly stood out as an intellectually rich and high-signal forum. Hundreds of messages are exchanged daily, with users posting in-depth reviews and insights on their own initiative.
Within two weeks of launch, Watcha had catalogued 200 AI tools. HongShan is also closely involved in the project.
Zhong is quick to stress that Watcha is a “trust network,” not a leaderboard. Because in a field saturated by rapid growth and content inflation, trust may be the rarest commodity of all.
For AI product teams, Watcha offers a new kind of visibility. Exposure isn’t bought, but earned through genuine user engagement.
The name “Watcha” comes from “Cha” a creature in Lu Xun’s short story “Old Home,” who’s a sly, melon-snatching animal known for peeking around corners.
The force behind Agent Universe
Watcha isn’t Agent Universe’s first project. The team previously launched several smaller agentic products, including an emoji translator, a generative podcast tool called Boboji, and Madoulai, a service for accessing beta codes.
The name “Agent Universe” references the English word “agent,” which can also mean spy or operative, in a nod to how intelligent agents might one day outpace human abilities. There’s a touch of Marvel in the name too: everyone on the team is imagined as a kind of superhero, according to Zhong.
Outsiders may know Agent Universe primarily through its WeChat-based content channel, recognized for viral features like Qiaomimi, which tracks stealth product launches from major tech firms, and Weipinhui, a roundup of failed AI tools. But to Zhong, content is only the surface layer. The deeper mission is building novel products using agents.
The core team includes seven full-time members, some still in school. Only two focus on content, while the rest are product developers. AI, they believe, is a “spiritual drug” that allows them to prototype rapidly, test ideas, and stay endlessly curious.
Zhong, just a year out of college, has two favorite phrases: “Not quite there” and “Interesting.” These are his benchmarks for judging ideas.
He has so many “interesting” ideas spinning in his head that he sometimes wonders if he has ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). “I’ll get distracted and dive into something else, juggling multiple fun projects at once,” he said.
His latest obsession? Creating a “Toutiao for the agent era.”
“Let’s say my little brother and I both want to learn economics. An agent could tailor our learning differently. For a kid, maybe it generates a picture book narrated by their favorite cartoon character. For me, maybe it serves up a dense academic paper.”
Agent Universe has experimented with creating content across platforms using agents, but Zhong feels the current setup is too inefficient. He wants to fold news delivery into Watcha:
“One article could become 10,000 personalized versions. During the mobile internet era, Zhang Yiming’s recommendation algorithm brought information to people. In the AI era, agents plus recommendation engines can tailor information with far greater precision.”
His “not quite there” moments? Jobs that pay well but bring no joy. As a junior, he interned at a tech giant while juggling three side gigs, only to find that few people around him were genuinely curious about AI. “I’m not the type to just follow others for money. That’s why I chose to start something of my own, with people who share my vision.”
Content as the starting point
Ask Zhong how to make content, and he won’t talk about traffic, exclusivity, or influence. He’s focused on a deeper question:
Where will the AI-native generation choose to speak?
This generation isn’t drawn in by content itself, but by the mechanics behind it. They understand how recommendation algorithms work and see through the dynamics of the traffic game. What matters to them is whether a platform feels human, allows authentic expression, and whether anyone will actually care about what’s said on it.
Zhong says Watcha is built for this crowd: anyone raised in an AI-shaped world.
Just as smartphones made it easy to snap photos, which gave rise to Xiaohongshu (known internationally as RedNote) and Douyin, AI has drastically lowered the barrier to both technology and knowledge. To Zhang, it makes sense that a new platform should emerge—one that helps this generation explore tools, articulate user experiences, and engage in shaping tech trends.
That’s what Watcha aspires to be: a trustworthy, expressive, consensus-driven discussion space for the AI-native generation.
At Agent Universe, content isn’t the endgame, but the starting point.
And that starting point leads to a more ambitious system, one where thoughtful expression is valued, strong content rises, and user experiences guide product evolution.
Content is just the fuse. Behind it is the goal of building products, communities, and ecosystems.
“We want to be the ones who write the rules,” Zhong said.
Unlike older generations, who often value media authority or traditional journalistic frameworks, younger users adhere to a different standard: expression is validation. Does your content spark resonance? Inspire action? Invite remixes?
From viral WeChat articles to launching agentic tools to now rolling out Watcha, Agent Universe has followed a clear trajectory: use content to find like minds, products to test ideas, and community to build an ecosystem.
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It’s about change, and a bit of ambition, too.
Which is why Watcha’s launch was held at Note Blue, a jazz bar at Ch’ien Men 23 that’s renowned for its acoustics and live performances. Faye Wong and Cui Jian have been spotted there more than once.
That evening, partners from China’s leading VC firms gathered to hear Zhong’s pitch. Others, including a famously reclusive investor, watched from the VIP section upstairs.
At the afterparty, a rock band assembled by HongShan played Hedgehog’s hit song Requiem For A Train Of Life. Its final stanza evokes someone young who endures even as a generation grows old—a fitting anthem for a new era, cutting through the heavy summer night in Beijing.
100 AI Creators is a collaborative project between AI Now! and KrASIA, highlighting trailblazers in AI. Know an AI talent we should feature? Reach out to us.