Yan Zhang

Operator who scales research-led AI to enterprise: As PolyAI's COO Yan focused on turning Cambridge‑origin conversational research into production voice assistants for hotels, restaurants, retail and financial services—leading commercial deployments and working across product, research and customer teams to deliver 100+ enterprise deployments. pulse2+2

Serial founder and China‑market operator: Earlier in his career Yan co‑founded consumer startups (Meiloo.com and Yetang) and ran operations in China (former Random House / Penguin representative), demonstrating experience founding, fundraising and scaling consumer marketplaces in China. techcrunch+2

Ecosystem mentor and investor: Since exiting full‑time operations at PolyAI, Yan has moved into advising and mentoring roles—joining Point72 Ventures as an advisor, mentoring at Founders at the University of Cambridge and Deeptech Labs, and advising/angeling for early-stage AI founders—bringing operator rigor to investor and accelerator settings. p72+2

Thought leadership on conversational and generative AI in customer service: Yan publishes operator-facing commentary on how generative models should be orchestrated with intent-based systems and production speech/NLU stacks to avoid hallucination and deliver reliable customer experience. co+1