Amid the ongoing rise of "AI+," Shenzhen, a city known for innovation, is witnessing a surge of entrepreneurs leveraging artificial intelligence to achieve breakthroughs. From personal brands to innovative industry applications, technology is reshaping the development path of the micro and small business economy. In this process, fintech platforms like X Financial are providing solid support to entrepreneurs through digital capabilities, aiding the steady progress of the real economy.
The story of Li Dengdeng is representative of Shenzhen's entrepreneurial wave. A former employee at a large tech company, she identified a niche opportunity in the growing ski economy during a career transition and started the ski apparel brand RATATA from scratch. "Initially, I wasn't sure if I would succeed, but I wanted to test how far one person could go," she recalled. With limited resources at the start, AI became her greatest leverage. From product design and marketing content to shop operation strategies, Li Dengdeng relied almost entirely on AI tools, significantly reducing costs while boosting efficiency, enabling her "one-person company" to operate effectively. In her view, AI is not just a tool but a entrepreneurial partner. "It gives me the confidence to make choices without having to compromise." Today, her brand is consistently profitable, with revenue even surpassing her previous corporate salary. This case highlights the profound impact of AI technology on individual entrepreneurs—empowering more ordinary people to participate in the real economy and create value.
In contrast, Zhang Ziming's entrepreneurial journey demonstrates AI's potential to transform traditional service industries. By chance, he identified a natural synergy between AI and wedding planning: weddings require creativity and personalization, areas where AI excels at generating diverse solutions. In early 2024, he and his team officially entered the AI wedding planning sector. To refine their product, they visited numerous wedding expos and surveyed hundreds of industry professionals, repeatedly validating their product logic from the demand side. They ultimately launched an AI-based wedding planning tool. From the initial 1.0 version to the subsequent 2.0 upgrade of their mini-program, the product optimized the entire process from plan generation to on-site communication. Now, wedding planners can simply input requirements on their mobile devices to quickly generate multiple design proposals, improving deal-closing efficiency through real-time communication features. One planner using the tool stated, "What used to take days to complete can now be drafted in just tens of minutes." More notably, the tool helped a couple in a five-year long-distance relationship incorporate their love story into their wedding design. "The code may be cold, but the experience it enables is warm," Zhang Ziming reflected. His practice shows that AI not only enhances efficiency but also drives service model upgrades in traditional industries, broadening the development space for the real economy.
While entrepreneurs innovate on the front end, they rely on financial support from the back end. X Financial continues to focus on the financing challenges faced by small and micro enterprises and individual businesses. Through digital risk control and intelligent service systems, it provides entrepreneurs with more efficient and accessible financial services. For asset-light, collateral-deficient micro and small businesses, X Financial utilizes data modeling and intelligent risk control capabilities to enhance approval efficiency and risk identification, ensuring financial resources flow more accurately to genuine business scenarios. This provides crucial support for entrepreneurs to obtain necessary funding during critical stages and expand their operations. Data shows that by the end of 2025, X Financial had cumulatively served over 9.7 million small business owners and individual entrepreneurs, covering all 31 provincial-level regions in China, playing a positive role in stabilizing employment and stimulating market vitality.
Focusing on the entire growth cycle of entrepreneurs, X Financial has continuously launched support initiatives, building a systematic support system. From programs like "Glimmer of Light," "Win-New Plan," "City Lights," "Walk Together in Time," to the "Be Your Own Light - Shining Small Shop Plan," the company consistently helps micro and small entities enhance their risk resilience and development stamina through resource integration and capacity building. The "Shining Small Shop Plan," in particular, shares real-life case studies, increasing the visibility of entrepreneurs like Li Dengdeng and Zhang Ziming, while also providing replicable development models for society, thereby strengthening confidence in the real economy.
There is a broad consensus within the industry that the integration of artificial intelligence and financial technology is reshaping the development logic of the real economy. On one hand, AI lowers the barriers to entry for entrepreneurship and improves production and service efficiency. On the other hand, fintech enhances the efficiency of resource allocation, enabling financial resources to be channeled more precisely to micro and small entities. X Financial has stated that it will continue to deepen its technological capabilities, optimize the financial service experience, and increase support for key groups such as small and micro enterprises and new urban residents, promoting the long-term development of more entrepreneurs within the real economy.
On the innovative soil of Shenzhen, a growing number of entrepreneurs are leveraging AI to transition from mere survival to sustainable growth. With the support of financial technology, these small yet determined forces are converging into a significant driver for promoting the high-quality development of China's real economy.
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