标签： Angel Investment

Golf in China was once perceived as a tool for high-end social networking rather than a sport, with a small core playing population of 720,000 in 2024. In contrast, golf in the United States is a national sport with 47.2 million participants and an annual per capita expenditure of $2,250. With the widespread adoption of AI technology, the global AI in sports market is projected to exceed $10 billion by 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of over 21%. Against this backdrop, a group of young Chinese entrepreneurs have set their sights on the AI golf market in the United States.
Steve, born in 1999, is a rare entrepreneur with both a ‘tech geek’ and ‘athlete’ profile. While pursuing his master’s in robotics at the University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab, he is also a tennis player with over 15 years of experience and an 89-stroke best in golf. In August 2024, he, along with two fellow robotics students from Penn, launched the AI GolfCaddie Robot project (Xunling Technology), both of whom also embody the ‘tech geek’ and ‘athlete’ dual identity, with over 20 years of golf experience each. The team, with over 95% of its members being golfers, seems tailor-made for the AI golf segment.
From developing the Golf Embodied Intelligence System at the end of 2024 to the BirdieSense (formerly BirdieCoach) in 2025, which uses visual perception, motion understanding, and environmental context modeling for scene comprehension, data analysis, and training companionship, Steve and his team have combined embodied intelligence with systematic sports cognition to create an AI Agent terminal covering the entire golf scenario.
Currently, Xunling Technology has received angel investment at the ten-million yuan level from Jin Qiu Fund. Steve envisions a future where human and AI Agent collaboration reshapes the sports market, defining the next generation of Agent intelligent terminals in sports scenarios. The company’s product roadmap includes the development and optimization of AI swing analysis, ball trajectory tracking, and edge computing capabilities, aiming for market launch in 2026.