Qu Daokui

Who he is

Qu Daokui was Jiang Xinsong's senior protégé — a PhD who returned from Germany to help turn Chinese robotics research into an industry. In April 2000, Qu led more than 30 researchers out of the Shenyang Institute of Automation to found SIASUN, deliberately crossing the line from state lab to commercial company.

The move was a turning point. Decades of robotics research in China had mostly lived inside institutes; SIASUN was the first serious attempt to make it a market business. It grew into China's largest robotics company and its first robotics company to list publicly.

Why he matters

Qu took the foundational science of Jiang Xinsong and gave it a business model. As he put it, his goal was to turn China's robots from lab exhibits into market products. That single decision — that Chinese robotics needed companies, not just papers — shaped everything that followed.