He Built an AI Grill That Could Replace Your BBQ

Thomas: It's amazing. So good. And also what I love the most is the feeling that it's like a charcoal edge. Yeah, charcoal edge. This product will change the world. And I already have it, part of it in my stomach, so I really love it.

The most interesting thing is it's not just that we are very, very happy with this. You got some investors, how did you pitch this to them? Did you also cook the meat? Yeah, yeah, we all did. And then the Chinese investor - here, take my money.

Welcome to the Asiabits Podcast. In today's episode, we have a really cool product, and we loved it because both of us are big eaters, as you obviously can see. What is the product, Michael?

Michael: The product is a grill, basically, for everyone's home. But not any grill like the one grill, the grills that you know already. Yeah, it's an amazing product. And we have Sean here. He is the founder. And one thing I want to say, he was very nervous because he says his English is not that good, but we both are Germans. And as you can hear from our accent, our English is also not so good. But our goal is to close the gap, to show everyone what's happening here in Asia so people all over the world can learn from it. And we want to spark innovation all over the world. So please be nice to Sean. I think he did a really great job. And the product he has is amazing. We are the first customers. And if you want to know what's going on regarding technology and innovation in Asia, subscribe to Asiabits. We will deliver the newest developments into your inbox every Monday to Friday in under five minutes. It's for free. And it's the best newsletter on this planet. Right, Michael? Of course, because we write it. So subscribe to Asiabits and let's go and meet Sean.

Thomas: So, Sean, you are from China's most famous barbecue city, is that right?

Sean: Yeah, it's in Chaozhou in Guangdong province in China.

Thomas: We have to say eating and food is not just about getting stuff in your stomach. It's also about culture, social gathering. People want to be together. I always complain when we were thinking about what can we eat today? And then, oh, yeah, maybe we should go for a burger. And I was like, burger? But then you eat a burger for like two minutes, then you're done. And what's next?

Sean: Yeah, so it's a very good way to interact with people, to sit together on the table and to be together for a longer time. Eating is not the most important thing, but communicating with others is. It can give you a good environment.

Thomas: And actually when we go to dinner with some friends from abroad, when they come to visit us, and then they said, so I want to order this dish. And we think like, what the heck, we're in China. We have to share food. Everything on the table. And someone most of the time you are responsible for ordering for everyone. And then you just trust.

Sean: Yeah, I'm very good at ordering. Because of our product, it has a special function to make you able to do fondue. In one machine. Not like traditional fondue where you need a grill to heat the food and another pot to heat the cheese. But in our machine, two things can be in one machine.

Thomas: It's something like a raclette grill, right? So this is something we Germans also like to do a lot. So in maybe half an hour or something, we will also put the grill here so we can show not just tell you what we are doing and how you manage to get the people together with good food. And it already smells very nice in this studio. It's in your genes. So you're from Chaozhou. So barbecue is in your genes. You go there and barbecue at least once a week. And as you said, the biggest difference is that in the west, in the US or in Europe, most of the barbecue happens outdoors. But nowadays people live in cities, everything happens in flats. So when did you have the idea that you want to build something like a business to make a smart barbecue grill for indoors?

Sean: Yeah, many people live in apartments. Especially in China. But also in New York, Canada, Singapore, many people live in apartments. One thing is that although they live in apartments, they remember the outdoor barbecue experiences when they were a child or with friends. These memories were beautiful. And they want to have the same feeling. But actually in the apartment it's a little difficult to do these things. If some smoke goes off in your apartment, the alarm goes off. It's an expensive fine to pay for it. So how to do a barbecue indoors - many people want to do it but they don't have a truly useful tool to do this. So we want to do our Lumo. Why are our products called Lumo? Because we want to think Lumo can mean "light up more." Light up more people's life. More people remember barbecue. More people can taste it.

Thomas: It's a very good vision. So no smoke is the first thing you need to do barbecue indoors.

Sean: The second thing is you want to do these things more conveniently, more easily. Lumo is the one to have good memories and a good environment. So we need to add some other functions to solve the trouble. Like you don't know how to control your fire. And don't know how long the time should be. So we added an AI function that can know the meat temperature, the size, the weight, and it can control the meat at the right time and the right temperature. Because our power is from electricity. Electricity is very easy to be controlled. It's like an electric car, different from oil.

Thomas: So you have a lot of sensors in the device that is measuring the temperature and the size of the meat. Because it's also getting smaller during the process. The camera can know the size and the process. So how does the AI actually work? Because everyone is talking about AI to raise more money from investors. But how do you actually use AI in the grill?

Sean: Why use AI? Because everyone's taste is different and there are so many kinds of meat. So we also say that to do good food is like doing a self-driving car. We use many data to know how the people cook and we also know the meat and the differences in the process. We did about at least 100 kilograms of meat to collect the data. So our office always eats meat.

Thomas: So you collect the data yourself. And the best is you're in InnoX - your teams, teachers, friends, you can share with them to test out.

Sean: Yeah, we also built a group to remind everyone who thinks the meat is good.

Thomas: So does the meat get heated by the hot air or by the infrared from the charcoal?

Sean: Actually about 30% comes from hot air, but actually 70% from the infrared. If you use your hand near the charcoal on the top, you feel it's hot. On the side you also feel the heat. But the infrared can shoot all around. So the most important thing is the infrared ray. We think the air fryer is not the best way to cook meat because what really cooks meat is infrared. An air fryer uses a fan to make the hot air circulate around the meat. And most ovens need to preheat for 5-10 minutes. But with infrared, why not just use that directly?

Thomas: So you had the idea from charcoal: 70% of the heat comes from infrared. How do you start building an infrared grill?

Sean: We know that most people put the charcoal under the meat. The meat has some oil. Oil will drop on the charcoal. The charcoal temperature is very, very high. So the smoke from oil can burn and make some smoke. But we found that infrared is the most efficient. Infrared is light. Light can be controlled and directed. So we can put some infrared heater on the side, not underneath. So the oil can be dropped into a cold area. So there's no smoke. Infrared heaters can also be controlled easily. We can make some aluminum reflect the infrared in your cooking area very evenly. And you can put the infrared heater on the top and on the bottom so the meat in the middle can be heated all around.

Thomas: The heat transfer has three modes: conduction by touch, convection by air, and radiation by light like infrared.

Sean: Infrared is the best way to cook meat. We call it a grill but actually it has three modes. The first mode is like mini oven. The second mode is fast grill. The third mode is wide - it can open 180 degrees for more people to eat the meat.

Thomas: So you founded the company with three people?

Sean: Yeah, the founder from Ningxia province. Ningxia eats the sheep, does the barbecue. Both engineers.

Michael: And the other one is the data collector that is just eating. I want to be a data collector. So this product will be huge.

Sean: IPO is far, far away. But I think the best products for people to make everyone have the best table time is most important.

Thomas: So back to my first question. When did you first have the idea to found your own company?

Sean: From my heart, when I was in my senior high school, I would do some trade with my classmates, and I think maybe I can do some big and different things. When I went camping with my friends, I found the barbecue is the most interesting thing around the camp. So I think this interesting thing should be brought back.

Thomas: You were talking about InnoX already. This is kind of an accelerator, an academy that helps young entrepreneurs here in Shenzhen to develop their products, find investors, find co-founders. Thousands of people apply but just a few get selected. So how did you know them?

Sean: Because - do you know DJI? The founder of DJI is also the founder of InnoX. When I finished senior high school, when I went to Wuhan to go to college, my father said, which gift do you want? I said maybe a DJI drone. The first time was about 2019. When I was 19, I first touched a DJI product. I thought, wow, amazing! The world is so different and so delicate. And my colleague had a classmate at DJI because the founder of DJI, Li Zexiang, became this classmate's teacher at Wuhan University. I went to this campus and I learned about DJI, I learned about hardware in Shenzhen, and around 2024, Li Zexiang built InnoX.

Thomas: How do they support you?

Sean: The most important is they find similar people. Similar people who can communicate, can do something different. Every place can give you money, office space, funding. But the most important is the people. If you work hard and always think and do the right things, you can change yourself and be realistic.

Thomas: When you have the right mindset, when you want to change the world, you actually can. There's just one way to success - just do it.

Sean: The most important is to keep thinking. Keep thinking can make you do the right things. Our pot needs to be easy to clean. First, we found many factories in Shenzhen and Dongguan. But everyone said this is not easy and costs a lot of money - 100,000 RMB for the mold. But we found a Steel Town in Chaozhou. The mold only needed 20,000 - about 20% of the price. Because they always do these things and the whole town has many skills and many ways to cut costs.

Thomas: So now we have a very nice oven here in the middle of us. It looks a little bit like an oven you have at home, but you can open it and use both sides. Both sides have four infrared units. You can use all four units together - from above and below cooking the meat - or you can use two units separately.

Sean: When you can adjust the temperature for both sides or you can do it separately. You can do meat here and bread or vegetables, because vegetable and meat need a different temperature. And from the side, at higher temperature, you can put a pot on here for fondue.

Thomas: How long did you cook this meat?

Sean: This meat is about two hours. We use American traditional slow grill. This was 2.5 kilograms. It needs about six hours normally, but the traditional American slow grill needs more than 10 hours. Our infrared heater can make the temperature more even. And the AI function can set the temperature and time to make sure the meat is good.

Thomas: It's amazing. So good. The surface is crispy and the meat is juicy.

Sean: We put some wood chips on the bottom of the pot. It heats the pot and the pot heats the wood chips. So it can make wood chip smell on the meat. And this smoke doesn't need too much because it is closed and no smoke goes around. So it just needs a little wood chips.

Thomas: And the AI function - how does the device know what type of beef I'm going to grill?

Sean: The AI function has two cameras. The first camera to know the size and thickness of the meat. And the second is an infrared sensor that can scan the food temperature. And the machine at the bottom can know the weight. These four pieces of information can make the meat be good.

Thomas: You already ate 20 kilograms testing this. And the most interesting thing is not just that we're happy with it - you got investors who said this is a good thing.

Sean: Yeah, we prepared meat and let them test. The investor said, yeah, I will do this project. Many investors don't believe in an indoor grill that the technology can cook good meat. But after they test it - yeah, it's really good.

Thomas: You don't even need a pitch deck with this product.

Sean: The meat is our PPT, the machine and the meat is our presentation. Taste is the best thing. If you don't taste, you maybe don't know what I say.

Thomas: How do you set the prices?

Sean: We depend on our BOM cost. If we lost money, our company can't live a long time. We think about $299 or $329 on Kickstarter. The retail price is about $499. We can't sell it too expensive because less people means less data. In the future we want the AI system to do many things. So we need a lot of data. Our users can help us - like Tesla getting data from drivers. More people use it, more data we get, the function becomes more easy and convenient, and more people buy it. It's a circle.

Thomas: The plan is to start a Kickstarter. And it's a cool product. I personally love it. Send us the Kickstarter link as soon as it's done and we'll both buy one. So what is the goal on Kickstarter?

Sean: Our goal is $1 million.

Thomas: We will try to help you push it because the world needs this product. This product will change the world. And I already have part of it in my stomach. So I really love it. We will put the link in the description so people can actually support you.

Sean: Anyone who wants our product, you can click this link to support us, and also give us some feedback. The feedback determines what we do next.

Thomas: So Sean, looking forward. Thank you so much for sharing it and thank you so much for the meat. It was amazing. Wish you all the best.