01.AI, founded by Kai-Fu Lee, has partnered with Charoen Pokphand Group (CP Group) to develop AI-driven layer farming, with the 2 companies set to establish a joint venture, Wanfeng Zhineng. The cooperation will start in China, focusing on automation, data integration, AI agents, and a dedicated egg industry large model to improve efficiency, reduce layer mortality and culling rates, and support flexible production-sales coordination. CP Group aims to use the project as a replicable smart agriculture model before expanding it to broilers, pigs, aquaculture, and other sectors.
01.AI, the AI large-model company founded and led by Dr Lee Kai-Fu, has moved into AI-powered poultry production through a new strategic partnership with Charoen Pokphand Group (CP Group), one of the world’s major agri-food groups.
The company, founded by the former head of Microsoft Research China, former president of Google Greater China, and founder of Sinovation Ventures, announced on June 2 that the partnership with CP Group will focus first on layer farming.
The 2 companies will also establish a joint venture, Wanfeng Zhineng (万蜂智能), with the name taking one Chinese character from each company name. CP Group is also known outside China as Charoen Pokphand Group （卜蜂集团）, while in China it operates under the Zhengda （正大） name. The joint venture marks a shift away from the traditional IT outsourcing model towards a structure based on shared profits and shared risks.
CP Group is described by 01.AI as Asia’s largest egg company. “Zhengda and 01.AI will use the Chinese market as a pilot, with the potential to expand later into other Southeast Asian markets covered by CP Group,” 01.AI said in its release.
AI as ‘autonomous driving’ for farming
01.AI describes the move from manual farming to highly automated production as the “autonomous driving” of animal farming, from L1 to L5. Much like autonomous driving in cars, L1 represents simple AI assistance. 01.AI said its goal is to help CP Group move towards L4 or even L5, where AI can take over farm management in a scalable and replicable way.
At L4 level, AI agents would take over routine inspections, health identification, cage cleaning, and the development and execution of precise feeding strategies. Human experts would be freed from repetitive daily tasks and would instead focus on higher-level strategic management and target setting.
The partners aim to build what they call an “AI entrepreneur” intelligent hub. In the first phase, the focus will be on connecting data across farming, production, sales, and safety. Core applications will include digital farm workers, a production-sales coordination hub, and safety AI agents. The goal is to address pain points such as reliance on experience, mismatches between production and sales, and slow response times.
Dedicated egg industry model
Building on that, 01.AI and CP Group plan to create a dedicated large model for the egg industry. The companies said this would move the sector from single-point efficiency gains to full-chain intelligent decision-making, creating a replicable model for smart egg production.
The cooperation has already entered its first phase. According to the companies, it is expected to significantly improve business performance. Targets include raising the level of operational automation from 20% to 40%, reducing layer mortality and culling rates by 5%, and enabling more flexible coordination between production and sales.
One example given is that AI could respond to precise orders from downstream chain customers, such as 50,000 boxes of eggs with each egg controlled within 50 g, by automatically adjusting feed formulation and house environmental parameters upstream. In this way, the companies said, traditional agriculture could gain a striking level of flexible production more commonly associated with advanced manufacturing.
Yang Xiaoping
“AI is entering the agricultural production site. This is not only a technology upgrade, but also an upgrade of agricultural production methods and organisational capabilities,” said Yang Xiaoping, Senior Vice Chairman of CP Group and CEO of CP Group China.
Yang said CP Group has a deep industrial base and many real-world production scenarios in China, allowing it to test whether AI can genuinely improve efficiency, reduce risks, and stabilise quality.
“We look forward to working with 01.AI to use the Chinese market as a pilot, and to be the first to prove out a verifiable and replicable smart agriculture model,” Yang said. “Starting with layer farming AI as the pilot, we will expand to broilers, pigs, aquaculture, and other categories.”
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