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204. Bull, Bear & Beyond – YXT.com: executive interview
2 Plays9 days ago
In this video, we speak with Alan Wang, chief growth officer of YXT.com. Alan introduces YXT.com, providing a history of the company and its evolution to the current suite of four products: AI BOX, TalentNova, NeoLearning and SaleSmart. He discusses the company’s adoption of AI, starting with internal use to improve efficiency, and then outlines how AI has been integrated into its product suite. Alan describes the customer base and outlines the company’s sales strategy. He discusses the competitive environment for corporate learning and development software in China, highlighting YXT.com’s leading position in the large enterprise market. Finally, he talks through the growth strategy for each product line.
YXT.com (Nasdaq: YXT) develops and markets SaaS-based intelligent productivity software, predominantly for the Chinese enterprise market, under the brand Radnova.
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About ‘Bull, Bear & Beyond’
Bull, Bear & Beyond': features candid conversations with senior executives and from our own team of experts from across industries, exploring strategy, innovation, and the opportunities shaping their markets and 60-second pieces are a compressed summary of content designed to convey our message in a single, easily shareable hit.
About Edison:
Edison is a content-led IR business. We believe quality investment content should inform all investors, not just brokers. Our mission: engage and build bigger, better-informed investor audiences for our clients.
Edison covers 50+ investment trusts, read about them here: https://www.edisongroup.com/equities/investment-companies/
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Transcript
Introduction to Alan Wang and YXT.com
00:00:08
Speaker
Welcome to Edison TV. I'm Catherine Thompson, technology analyst at Edison, and I'm here today with Alan Wang, chief growth officer of YXT.com. YXT.com is a NASDAQ listed developer of intelligent productivity software, mainly serving the Chinese enterprise market under the brand name Ragnoba.
00:00:30
Speaker
Welcome, Alan. Thank you, Catherine. Thank you for your time.
YXT.com's Evolution and AI Integration
00:00:33
Speaker
yeah um ah To kick off, do you think you could give us a brief overview of the business? ah The company was founded in 2011.
00:00:41
Speaker
We started off with a software business helping large to mega enterprises with their learning and training management. Throughout the operation, we added on to that piece of business with our ah learning and and training services.
00:00:59
Speaker
When AI came, we started making more expansion into more business lines.
AI Box and Talent Management Solutions
00:01:06
Speaker
During the process of our 15 years of operation, we accumulated an asset that became very valuable in the AI era.
00:01:15
Speaker
ah the data on how companies shape their workforces from ah essentially green hands to proficient. This is also critical for agents as well.
00:01:25
Speaker
In essence, that's what Anthropik calls skills. We've served about 2,000 large to mega enterprises in China. 95% of them have a long-term subscription contract with us.
00:01:39
Speaker
Our latest ah business include AI Box, a technological infrastructure that supports enterprise-level deployment of large language models and agents and so on.
00:01:54
Speaker
ah Supporting companies manage their talent workforces better, ah private domain knowledge management and course generation and individualized learning narration, as well as a work copilot that combines talent management, task enablement, ah task assistant, proficiency enhancement, and other capabilities. So we form four areas of businesses all around one single theme for companies, and that is to unleash the productivity with the help of AI.
AI's Impact on Efficiency and Cost Reduction
00:02:31
Speaker
That's our business. And I know that over the last few years, you've invested very heavily in AI, both to improve internal processes and also enhance your solutions. Do you think you could first explain to us um how this has helped improve the efficiency of the business?
00:02:46
Speaker
Sure, that's that's an interesting topic. and By now, we've seen significant returns on four different fronts. Back in 2023, when GPT 3.5 was still the mainstream model, we built service bots to handle our service desk.
00:03:04
Speaker
That led to a reduction of our manpower in that function from around... 80 to just six. In 2024, we switched from SEO to GEO, and that helped us increase our client inquiries and sales leads by about 40%, while our spending on um marketing was only about 30% of what we used to spend on ah SEO.
00:03:31
Speaker
In 2025, we started using our own product, SalesSmart, to enhance our sales efforts and our win rate ah was increased by almost 150%. And in 2026, we began using AI coding to respond to clients' customer needs, which we also started cutting our headcount in that area.
Personalized Learning and Revenue Growth
00:03:54
Speaker
ah So in in all, we've used AI technology to penetrate core business functions of our operation and we've ah started harvesting on that and improved our efficiency as well as our bottom line performance.
00:04:10
Speaker
Right. And secondly, and probably more importantly, um could you talk about how you've evolved your solutions using AI? ah Sure. me As I said, over 15 years of operating our learning management and training services, we accumulated a massive amount of data on how people perform essential and critical tasks.
00:04:32
Speaker
ah So when the AI came, naturally, this puts us in a stronger position than most traditional IT service providers because we can incorporate such understanding into AI agents.
00:04:45
Speaker
And that's the core of our AI box business, helping companies build the technology infrastructure for AI-driven productivities. We are now supporting about 15 industry leaders in areas such as model management, agent management, private domain knowledge management, management and so on.
00:05:05
Speaker
ah For Neo Learning, our second business line, we are now using AI E3 ways to transform our training business. We use AI to generate personalized learning paths, learning programs, learning experiences for our clients and our users.
00:05:23
Speaker
ah We also use AI to generate learning contents, especially those courses, programs, case studies, action learnings related to current topics and real-world development.
00:05:36
Speaker
And number three, we use AI to support professional trainers and institutions in creating their own learning contents using our technology.
00:05:47
Speaker
ah For Telenova, at the cornerstone of our business, we've developed a series of agents for talent development, learning and development functions, ah such as AI job profiler, AI assessor, AI interviewer, and so on.
00:06:03
Speaker
These agents contributed to about 10% of our revenue in 2025. And Salesmart, that's the brand new business line. We use AI to monitor and analyze sales meetings.
00:06:17
Speaker
And based on that, the AI will evaluate and predict sales forecasts, as well as provide personalized coaching advice to salespeople.
Industry Focus and Growth Strategies
00:06:27
Speaker
That's how we use AI to evolve and transform our business.
00:06:32
Speaker
Great. You already have a well-established customer base. Could you tell me a bit more about the types of businesses that use your software and also your sales approach to both upselling and new business?
00:06:44
Speaker
Right now we serve about 2,400 subscribers, ah subscribing companies, mostly in China. Our client base covers most industries, are ranging from traditional sectors like manufacturing, automobile industry, to emerging fields such as high technology, renewable energy, ah electronic vehicles, and so on.
00:07:10
Speaker
Our strategic focus is on helping these companies manage their diversified workforces better. The rationale behind why these companies choose us is they have a widespread of operation. They are they have global footprints or at least national footprints. It gets difficult for them to manage a distributed network of workforces.
00:07:41
Speaker
That's where our companies, our product will come in and help them train their employees better. um We have the largest ah client base in this field in China. now That creates dominating power for us.
00:08:00
Speaker
In terms of upselling and acquiring new businesses, ah we continue to ah serve these clients with our account managers and our customer us customer success managers.
00:08:13
Speaker
ah We have tremendous amount of upselling opportunities by selling learning contents, ah productivity boosting ah solutions, and so on.
00:08:25
Speaker
ah These companies usually are conglomerate corporates. So we ah continue to penetrate these accounts with their other subsidiaries and also expand our business along their supply chain.
00:08:41
Speaker
So their vendors, their downstream customers would also be converted to our clients as well. In terms of new customers, one key aspect is from SEOs and GEOs, as I mentioned.
00:08:59
Speaker
We also host a dozen of ah marketing events to attract ah potential clients. Existing clients will also refer us to ah companies of their ah there're ah sector, of their industry, and that's where we acquire new ah customers being the number one service provider in intelligent productivity.
00:09:25
Speaker
We have a
Competition and Market Position
00:09:26
Speaker
dominating power. We are most trusted by our clients and we have the we have been enjoying the highest win rates in acquiring new customers in this area. And actually, you've touched on it, but but could you give us a bit more background on the competitive environment for your technology in China? So some viewers may have a you know good understanding of the digital corporate learning landscape in in Europe and North America.
00:09:52
Speaker
But I assume the situation is different in China. Traditionally, we address the needs of large to mega enterprises. ah In China, there are approximately 15,000 25,000 enterprises with over employees. 10,000 employees.
00:10:09
Speaker
among them nearly two thousand companies have a workforce over ten thousand employees ah To date, we have around 2,300 subscriptive ah corporate clients, and we have the largest portfolio of large enterprises among all service providers in China.
00:10:31
Speaker
ah This gives us gives us a clear lead on acquiring businesses and as well as maintaining currently existing businesses.
00:10:42
Speaker
Our operating model and our product innovation have consistently set the standard that many Chinese competitors and our peers strive to follow.
00:10:53
Speaker
More importantly, ah because our products and services are ah better fit for companies operating in China, ah we have repeatedly won against international players such as Oracle, SAP, Cornerstone, Workday, and so on.
00:11:11
Speaker
It is a highly competitive market. We have to maintain innovative, maintain agile, and maintain ah streamlining our our bottom line to be competitive.
00:11:24
Speaker
ah In the past, we've also seen challenges from different ah industries. ah We've received challenges and and and contestants from, for example, ah instant message service providers, even cloud service providers.
00:11:45
Speaker
We are in a domain that's vertical enough for other companies to for we we are in um we're in an industry that's vertical enough that it's difficult for ah new joiners to come into this uh this field and behind this field like i said there are approximately 20 000 enterprises so it's a vertical field with
00:12:15
Speaker
a tremendous amount of growth.
Future Growth Strategy and AI Box Expansion
00:12:19
Speaker
That's the the competitive landscape we're facing in this field in China. And again, you've touched on this in some of the previous answers, but but could you summarize the company's growth strategy and the kind of milestones that investors should look out for?
00:12:35
Speaker
We operate around four distinct business lines. Each one has its own growth strategy and growth driver based on the market needs. Telenova, this is our cornerstone business.
00:12:49
Speaker
AI will create even more needs in this area. As I said, over the past years, ah we focus mainly on large enterprises with very complicated needs for talent development, as well as a large ah so workforce body that requires management and training and development.
00:13:11
Speaker
ah With the help of AI, we plan too long to launch simpler AI-driven sort of light version products to cover the long tail but larger market segments.
00:13:24
Speaker
ah Traditionally, these segments have delivered low returns because of the high implementation and service costs, while customer churns and customer losses were also high.
00:13:37
Speaker
Over the past two years, we've successfully reduced our implementation and our service costs with AI. and we'll continue to do that. And as a result, we believe the small and medium enterprise segments will become profitable. And that's where we plan to grow our Telenova business.
00:13:58
Speaker
Neo Learning, this business line is strategically positioned positioned to deliver AI-driven training solutions for enterprise clients in the future.
00:14:12
Speaker
By leveraging AI for both content generation and service deliver delivery, ah we can improve the user experience while also keeping the cost under control.
00:14:23
Speaker
ah This efficiency gives us a competitive advantage in building a channel distribution model. As a result, we will actively expand our partner ecosystem, including companies within our ecosystem,
00:14:40
Speaker
to drive direct sales and as well as indirect sales with a particular focus on acquiring, again, more small to medium-sized enterprises in the training service market.
00:14:54
Speaker
ah For our sales smart business, as of the end of 2025, China had over 61 million registered enterprises, and at least 8 million of them had dedicated sizable sales teams.
00:15:12
Speaker
That market also includes our existing base of 23 subscription customers. We believe that most of these companies would have a needs and tendency to enhance sales efficiency and sales productivity.
00:15:30
Speaker
Using AI, ah we address the market need for that total market. ah We are pursuing a two-front sales strategy.
00:15:41
Speaker
First is directly crowd selling between Telenova and Salesmart, essentially converting our 2,300 existing clients existing clients from purely Telenova or Learning clients to also SalesSmart clients.
00:16:03
Speaker
And the second front is we have built a dedicated sales team to ah open and acquire new market segments around sales management and sales effectiveness management.
00:16:20
Speaker
For our fourth business line, our box business, it's it's it's a bit different. Unlike our other three business lines, we will not assign dedicated product R&D team to this line at this stage.
00:16:36
Speaker
ah Instead, we are building up the business as the underlying infrastructure for our product suites as well as for our existing customers. This strategic approach allows us to concentrate our resources on business lines and also still generate AI-driven revenue from our clients.
00:17:00
Speaker
As a result, we may not aggressively pursue top-line revenue growth from AI Box, but we actively and proactively seek out wallet share from our existing customers.
00:17:19
Speaker
We have adopted a forward deployed engineer FDE model in which we send our AI engineers to our clients and assist them with any agentic transformation agenda with the help of our AI infrastructure.
00:17:40
Speaker
we ah in In the foreseeable future, we believe the revenue from ai box business will we'll will get boosted up once the market is mature.
00:17:52
Speaker
Great. and It sounds like you have a real opportunity to to leverage AI to grow the business. um So thanks, Alan, for coming in to speak to me today. Thank you, Catherine.