Foreigners Cannot Understand the Frenzy of Chinese Home Appliance Manufacturers for AI

AI is the new battleground at AWE

At the Asia World-Expo in Shanghai (AWE), the show floor felt less like a trade fair and more like a tech debut: Chinese appliance makers have plastered “AI” on every booth. Haier (海尔) and its high-end Casarte (卡萨帝) were among the domestic brands flaunting kitchen and laundry systems that claim to recognise ingredients, suggest recipes, and take over routine decisions for users. By contrast, many Western and Japanese incumbents — Bosch, Westinghouse, Miele, Whirlpool, Hitachi and others — stuck to the old script of bigger capacity and finer engineering. Why the scramble? Because hardware improvements have largely plateaued, and data + software promise a new margin of differentiation.

From compressors to contextual assistants

For decades the appliance story was engineering: more efficient compressors, finer motors, lower energy ratios. That era produced incremental gains that are now hitting physical limits, and price competition followed. The pivot now is toward systems that can sense, predict and act: fridges that identify contents and suggest meals; hoods that auto-adjust suction by sensing oil and smoke; washers that detect fabric and pick the right cycle; air conditioners that steer airflow according to where people are in the room. Voice control is table stakes; contextual automation is the differentiator. The metric, delegates argued on the floor, shouldn’t be features stacked on a spec sheet but whether a product actually “takes one more worry off your hands.”

Strategy, valuation and geopolitics

This shift is not just product positioning — it is strategic. It has been reported that market valuations already treat some fast-moving appliance firms like tech companies rather than pure manufacturers, with price-to-earnings multiples differing by several times and, in some accounts, up to tenfold. That matters: investors are buying future ecosystems, not today's margins. Geopolitically, the move into AI-driven services lets Chinese firms play a different game from semiconductors, where export controls and sanctions bite; software, data and rapid iteration can be marshalled at scale inside China’s huge domestic market. Some foreign players are adapting — LG’s partnership with Microsoft to build a smart control terminal was one of the more conspicuous examples — but many legacy brands still appear to be selling by the engineer’s rulebook. Who wins the next round of household dominance will likely be the company that first turns the home from a set of appliances into a platform for daily life.