The Tech Strategy Podcast

Hosted by Jeffrey Towson

Technology Management NewsInterviews guestsExplicit

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Episodes

281

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

A podcast by TechMoat Consulting on the strategies and best practices of leading digital companies. Especially in China / Asia. Tech Strategy offers: -Deep dives into the strategies and business models of leading tech companies. -Best practices and lessons in important digital concepts. Lots more information available at Jefftowson.com and techmoatconsulting.com To marketers, I do not have podcast guests. This podcast is not investment advice. Me and any guests may get the numbers or information wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant. Investing is risky. Do your own research.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

September 9, 2026Episode 29647 min

Digital Avatars Are Ending Human Livestreamers. And What to Do About It. (296)

This week’s podcast is about my recent tour to Hangzhou and Alibaba headquarters. And my 3 take-aways from the epicenter of ecommerce meets AI and agents. You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . My big take-aways are: Agentic Commerce Is Now an Arms Race Everyone needs to upgrade their capabilities with AI and agents to stay competitive. And then repeat. And repeat again. Human KOLs and Content Creators Have Already Peaked. Livestreaming is already shifting to digital avatars. Other content creator types will follow. The future of content creation and KOLs is mostly not-human. Digital Livestreamers Have Arrived in Ecommerce. Entertainment and Thought Leaders Are Next. My playbook for human content creators / KOLs is: Focus on topics where being human matters: Taste and curation . What wine is better vs. what laptop is better. Irreversible and/or critical decisions . Situations where you can't do it over and judgement matters. There is an advancing frontier of knowledge . There is no existing online database of expertise. Think new AI tools, not history. Use a multi-format approach: Focus on building personal relationships . Such as in communities and events. Both online and offline. Make your content super authentic. Ideally videos instead of text or voice. Make it clear this is a human. Deploy an avatar army . Your solo content is not enough. You need an army creating content 24/7. This can be clones of yourself or similar personas. The mentioned photos are here . Disclosure. I have had a education partnership with Alibaba within the past twelve months. ------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

September 6, 2026Episode 29542 min

WorkBuddy Goes Global. Other Tencent Buddies Will Follow. (295)

This week’s podcast is about WorkBuddy, Tencent's flagship Agent product. It is currently going international. And will likely be followed by Tencent's other "buddy" products: CodeBuddy Toast Marvis Ardot Miora ima Copilot You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . Disclosure. I have had a paid consulting relationship with Tencent in the past twelve months. ------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

August 25, 2026Episode 29444 min

Huawei and China Unicom Pioneered "Robot-Native Networks" at the World Humanoid Robot Competition (294)

This week’s podcast is about the robot-native network Huawei and China Unicom built for the World Humanoid Robot Games (WHRG) in Beijing. You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . Disclosure. I have had a paid consulting relationship with Huawei in the past twelve months. ----------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

August 17, 2026Episode 29345 min

5 Take-Aways from the Unitree Filing (293)

This week’s podcast is about Unitree, which is about to go public. Plus, there is a quick intro to Tencent's Robot Brain (Tairos). You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . Here are my 5 take-aways: A good growth story in robodogs and humanoids. Rapid growth. Highly diversified. In both product categories. Unitree has frontier-level expertise in robot bodies and agility. Unitree was late to embodied AI capabilities. The hands don’t appear advanced. Only 10 DoF? Operationally, Unitree is still a relatively small company 516 FTEs, versus 1,500 at Agibot Disclosure. I have had a paid consulting relationship with Tencent in the past twelve months. ----------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

August 9, 2026Episode 29253 min

Shein vs. the Ecommerce Giants: Why Cross-Border Fashion Is Not Enough (292)

This week’s podcast is about Shein, which is about to go public. It has had a lot of success as a specialist in cross-border fashion ecommerce. But it needs to move beyond this going forward. You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . Here are my 5 questions (thus far) for assessing the viability of a specialty ecommerce company. Is the company sufficiently differentiated in the user experience? Can the company compete and/or differentiate in logistics or infrastructure without ongoing spending? Does the company have a strong competitive advantage in a circumscribed market? No Is there a clear path to significant operational cash flow? Has the company avoided markets and situations that are attractive or strategic for the major ecommerce companies? I spoke about this in a past podcast. Early Etsy Was a Great Example of Specialty Ecommerce. But Things Are Changing. (1 of 3) (Tech Strategy) The future of Shein depends on what business you think Shein is in: Connecting China manufacturers with foreign consumers. China manufacturing gets you low cost and big variety. Ultra fast fashion. This is about speed and flexible production. Test, learn, restock. Digital-first fashion . This is a compelling future position. --------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

August 2, 2026Episode 29149 min

DEEP Robotics, Galbot, and Booster Robotics Have Compelling Use Cases (291)

This week’s podcast is about rising robot companies that I have found compelling. That have clear use cases that scale. And that have indications of competitive advantages. They are: AgiBot (discussed in last podcast) Galbot Booster Robotics DEEP Robotics You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . ---------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

July 26, 2026Episode 2901 hr 4 min

Why I Like AgiBot Robotics (290)

This week’s podcast is about AgiBot, a fast rising full stack robot business in Shanghai. You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . Why I like AgiBot: Has rapidly expanded into a full suite of robots Going after all the humanoid industries and use cases Building an almost full AI tech stack. Everything except chips. Founded and run by Huawei executives. Moving very fast. A good strategy. It appears similar to Huawei. AgiBot’s strategy is to flood the market with affordable humanoids while growing the entire ecosystem with open datasets and open models. They are scaling fast in manufacturing, usage and training. They mass-produce the hardware at scale so thousands of identical robots can collect real-world data in homes and factories. At the same time they open-source the entire stack: the million-trajectory AgiBot World dataset, the GO-1 foundation model, the training tools, and the GenieSim simulation twin—so researchers and developers can build skills and applications on top without paying anything. AgiBot’s affordable humanoid platform as infrastructure. Hardware sales and ecosystem services become the revenue, not software licensing. Now in the top 1-2 in humanoid sales. AgiBot shipped approximately 5168 humanoid units in 2025. --------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

July 21, 2026Episode 28941 min

My 4 Take-Aways from WAIC 2026 (289)

This week’s podcast is about my visit to WAIC 2026 in Shanghai. You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . Take-Aways: Robots and AI are converging rapidly There is a convergence of world models / building, video generation and 3D model generation Tencent has a very rapid product cadence. "Choose Your Buddy" is a user-friendly approach. We are seeing lots creativity and combinatorial innovation. A Cambrian explosion, -------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

July 12, 2026Episode 28847 min

Meituan's LongCat Has Just Made China AI Independent (288)

This week’s podcast is about the development and launch of Meituan's LongCat 2.0 LLM. This 1.6T parameter, frontier model was trained entirely on domestic hardware. That's a big milestone. You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . --------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show

July 5, 2026Episode 28748 min

5 Steps to Get Started in Agentic Commerce (287)

This week’s podcast is about the emergence of agentic commerce. This is a big change to traditional omnichannel. Plus, there is a bit more of a rant about the recent Anthropic and OpenAI ban. My prediction is the future of AI outside of the USA is now: Open source, downloadable and non-embargoable models plus Low cost, tech agnostic AI architecture Which probably means China. And probably Nvidia. You can listen to this podcast here , which has the slides and graphics mentioned. Also available at iTunes and Google Podcasts . Here is the link to the TechMoat Consulting . Here is the link to our Tech Tours . The 5 steps to get into agentic commerce are: Start building a council of LLMs. This means a couple of frontier models and lots of open source (a symphony of models). The net is a composable model with a router than directs all queries. The key AI and agents need to be able to code . That is their superpower. Get to the tipping point where an end-to-end workflow has agents and AI, with no humans in the loop. Then you can scale up to 100-200 agents. This means fixing the quality problems before you scale. Get to the tipping point where agents create agents (an agent factory). This gest you to thousands of agents. This includes onboarding, training and oversight of agents. Centralize enterprise data and context for AI and agents. You need updated centralized data that your enterprise AI can access. A lot of data is born somewhere else. Salesforce. System of record. ERP systems. -------- I am a consultant & keynote speaker on how to increase digital growth and strengthen digital AI moats. I am the founder of TechMoat Consulting , a consulting firm specialized in increasing digital growth and strengthening digital AI moats. Get in contact here . I write (a lot) about digital growth and digital AI strategy (3 best selling books, +2.9M followers on LinkedIn). There is a free book and email newsletter below. My Moats and Marathons book series is a framework for building and measuring competitive advantages in digital businesses. This content (articles, podcasts, website info) is not investment, legal or tax advice. The information and opinions from me and any guests may be incorrect. The numbers and information may be wrong. The views expressed may no longer be relevant or accurate. This is not investment advice. Investing is risky. Do your own research. Support the show