Ying Zheng

Cofounder, Executive Chairwoman & President bitHuman Inc.

Last Reviewed: September 19, 2026

Executive Summary

Ying Zheng is a computer-vision researcher turned founder. She studied computer science at Fudan University in Shanghai, completed a PhD in computer vision at Duke, and worked in research and software engineering at Microsoft, Apple and Google before co-founding AiFi in 2016 with Steve Gu. AiFi built checkout-free autonomous stores for retailers, and Zheng served as its President through the period in which it scaled past eighty locations worldwide. She has since left AiFi, whose leadership page no longer lists her, and business directories record her current position as cofounder, executive chairwoman and president of bitHuman Inc., a San Francisco company whose on-device avatar models run in real time on ordinary CPUs and whose chief executive is her former AiFi co-founder Steve Gu.

Career Highlights

• Co-founded AiFi Inc. in 2016 with Steve Gu and served as Co-Founder and President, leading the team building computer-vision systems for checkout-free retail.
• By December 2022 described AiFi as the world’s largest autonomous store platform, with more than eighty stores operating globally.
• Earned a PhD in computer vision from Duke University, after undergraduate computer science study at Fudan University.
• Worked in research and software engineering at Microsoft, Apple and Google before founding AiFi.
• Placed 15th in ACM’s global International Collegiate Programming Contest and won several regional programming championships in Asia.

Professional Journey

Zheng’s route into technology was through competitive programming. She entered contests from a young age, won several regional championships in Asia and finished 15th in ACM’s global International Collegiate Programming Contest — an experience she has described as teaching her that there is always a faster, more efficient and more elegant solution available if one is willing to work for it.

She read computer science at Fudan University in Shanghai and then went to Duke University, where she completed a PhD in computer vision. From there she moved into industrial research and software engineering at Microsoft, Apple and Google, working as a senior research scientist before leaving to start a company.

AiFi was founded in 2016 with Steve Gu. The premise was the elimination of the checkout queue: computer vision and sensor fusion tracking what shoppers pick up, so that stores could operate without cashiers or scanning. Zheng has framed the motivation in personal terms, as a working mother wanting the hours people spend waiting in line returned to them. As Co-Founder and President she led the engineering push behind that platform, and by late 2022 was describing AiFi as operating more than eighty autonomous stores globally. She is no longer part of AiFi; the company’s current leadership team is headed by a different chief executive and does not include her.

Her present role is at bitHuman Inc., a San Francisco company building real-time avatar models that run on ordinary CPUs — from a Raspberry Pi to a phone — rather than requiring cloud GPUs, with the stated benefit that audio, video and prompts never leave the user’s hardware. Its chief executive is Steve Gu, her AiFi co-founder. bitHuman does not publish a leadership page, and her title there is recorded from business-directory listings rather than from the company itself; see the verification notes.

Education

Duke University

PhD, Computer Vision

Fudan University

Computer Science (undergraduate study, Shanghai); no specific qualification is named in available sources.