Keynote speaker
Annual Summit
The Paradigm Shift in Global Manufacturing: From Digital Twin to Direct Customer Value
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01Industrial AI · Manufacturing · Leadership
Building intelligence that works where manufacturing happens.
I’m Steven Gao, co-founder and CEO of IndustrialMind.ai, building and speaking about AI that works on the factory floor.
On stage & in conversation
Ideas tested in the rooms where industry gathers.
Selected keynotes, curated tracks and interviews on how industrial AI moves from possibility to operating reality. Open an engagement for the full context and related coverage.
01Featured guest
Handelsblatt Disrupt
Will AI soon solve the problems you had to solve at Tesla?
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02Track curator
QCon Shanghai 2025
The Manufacturing Revolution Driven by Large Models
View engagement ↗Curated conference track · Mandarin03Featured speaker
ThinkInAI · AI Technology Night
A Global View of Industrial AI
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STARTUP AUTOBAHN · ARENA2036
Deep Industrial Knowledge and the Next Chapter of Manufacturing
View engagement ↗Co-founder story · English05Also participating in Antler Embark US and the Gestamp digital manufacturing ecosystem.
Speaking · Industrial AI · Thoughtful collaboration
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Selected thinking
Notes from the intersection of AI and industry.
Short, direct observations shaped by building systems, working with manufacturers and operating across different industrial cultures.
Causal AI
What causal AI taught me—even when I stopped believing the hype
I went looking for a machine that could explain cause and effect. What I found was a better discipline for asking industrial questions.
Founder note
Why I am building AI that understands industry
The factory does not need a more eloquent chatbot. It needs intelligence that respects engineering reality and helps people execute.
Industrial strategy
The industrial internet’s ‘Apple dream’—and what survived
Industrial platforms were supposed to reorganise manufacturing. The vision was early; the implementation logic was incomplete.
German industry
What Formary teaches us about digital reinvention in German industry
A family manufacturer did not begin with a platform strategy. It began with a painful process it understood better than anyone else.
About Steven
Engineer by training. Operator by experience. Co-founder by conviction.
Steven Gao (Zhitao Gao) is the co-founder and CEO of IndustrialMind.ai, building AI manufacturing engineers for factories around the world.
His perspective combines his experience as a founding leader of Digital Transformation at Tesla's Gigafactory, years spent studying and working in Germany, and practical work scaling manufacturing intelligence across regions.
He focuses on a practical question: how can AI understand complex engineering work well enough to make people and factories meaningfully better?