When the topic of "AI hardware" remains hot in 2025, according to the technology maturity curve, the industry has shifted from the bubble burst period to the early stage of steady climbing, and is welcoming a key development opportunity.
The first criterion is that technological breakthroughs have reduced the training and reasoning costs of large models. As OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said this year, the cost of using a certain level of AI has dropped by about 10 times every 12 months, and lower prices will bring more usage. The reduction in the cost of large models has especially made small and medium-sized industry developers consider accessing AI, expanding the creativity and imagination of industrial applications.
The second criterion is that the end-side AI chips, modules and solutions continue to iterate and upgrade. With better product performance, downstream application developers are guaranteed to focus on the in-depth development and scene implementation of AI functions. The upstream and downstream work together to transform AI ideas into real and usable products, saying goodbye to the concept of pseudo-intelligence.
Last week, Tuya Smart, a global AI cloud platform service provider, held the annual blockbuster "TUYA Global Developer Conference" in Shenzhen, which was very popular.
At the conference, technical engines such as Tuya.AI, TuyaOpen and HEDV were officially released to provide developers with new AI development tools.
The conference also grandly launched the Tuya AI Token free plan, which means that developers using Tuya solutions can now call Tuya's powerful AI resources at 0 cost, reduce technical and cost barriers, boldly try, quickly trial and error, and efficiently explore AI product forms and functions that meet market needs.
Recently, reporters from IoT Media and Smart Communication Positioning Circle interviewed Mr. Chen Jing, the technical director of TuyaOS, Tuya Smart, and conducted in-depth discussions on focus topics such as Tuya's cutting-edge technological innovation, core capability upgrades, and AI hardware ecosystem support strategies.
01 AI Hardware Value Multiplier Model: Technological Breakthrough × Scenario Exploration × Emotional Insight
Traditional non-networked hardware (such as dolls) and smart devices that can be connected but have limited AI functions (such as webcams) are ushering in product experience innovation driven by AI technology.
However, the development of any AI hardware faces several key technical challenges, including:
1) How to select and couple large models; 2) How to solve the illusion of large models; 3) How to solve industry know-how and response time; 4) How to ensure more fragmented business scenarios with technical architecture; 5) How to achieve scalable end-side AI architecture; 6) Need to meet more stringent and complex security compliance requirements; 7) Need to consider dealing with complex continuous OTA, etc.
In addition to the test at the technical level, at the commercial level, since most new AI hardware categories have not yet been shipped on a large scale and lack sufficient user feedback, the fit between product iteration direction and market demand remains to be verified, that is, the entire industry is still in a state of crossing the river by feeling the stones.
In this context, the AI hardware value evaluation system built by Tuya Smart focuses on three core dimensions - technological innovation breakthroughs, deep scene adaptation, and user emotional insights.
The effects brought by these three elements are not simply added together, but achieve exponential growth in value through multiplication effects:
That is, technological innovation gives products core competitiveness, deep scene cultivation determines the depth of application implementation, and emotional insights make products more differentiated.
Taking Tuya Smart's latest AI doll solution as an example, this solution not only integrates top AI large models, supports multimodal interaction and personalized customization, but also adds breakthrough emotional perception capabilities. It can perceive real emotions by analyzing tone, speaking speed, choking, etc., and respond with an appropriate tone and eye expressions, bringing a more emotionally warm interactive experience.
It is worth mentioning that AI dolls have attracted large, medium and small enterprises to join the market. The key is that they have a clear and large group of children consumers. This type of market currently allows high, medium and low-end products of different prices, functions and qualities to find their own living space, and achieve staggered competition and common development.
For example, in March this year, Tuya Smart reached a cooperation with Kids King. The two parties will jointly develop various types of AI companion smart hardware products, including AI toys that will be on the market soon.
02 The advantages of Tuya Smart in the era of AI equality
At this conference, Tuya released an AI Agent development platform that integrates all the mainstream large models on the market. Developers only need one line of code to customize the choice of access to any large model such as DeepSeek, Doubao, Tongyi Qianwen, Tencent Hunyuan, OpenAI, Gemini, Nova, etc., to achieve a one-stop integration of functions such as image and text generation, image understanding, data analysis, device management, and object model understanding.
In addition, Tuya launched the out-of-the-box Tuya.AI hardware development full-stack solution, providing a closed-loop delivery from high-performance edge AI modules, low-code embedded frameworks, to cloud large model orchestration, intelligent cloud brain and AI application integration. With the support of Tuya.AI's diverse tool chain, developers can smoothly connect AI functions to smart devices in just 10 minutes.
After the continuous release of new products, reporters from IoT Media and Smart Communication Positioning Circle also asked questions. What are the similarities and differences between the AI hardware development platform released by Tuya at this moment and the smart hardware development platform built in the past?
With this question, in-depth analysis shows that:
Previous smart hardware platforms focused on basic command execution, such as controlling device switches by voice, but the interaction mode was single and lacked deep content feedback.
The AI platform with cost reduction of large models has achieved highly flexible "customization": 1) Developers do not need to pay attention to the source of large models, whether it is domestic Doubao, Tongyi Qianwen, or foreign OpenAI and Gemini, they can all be freely called; 2) Whether it is simple device control or complex image and text generation, dialogue interaction, rich AI function modules are presented on the platform in the form of "technical modules", supporting developers to freely combine functions like building blocks.
It is worth mentioning that by the end of 2024, Tuya Smart has driven the mass production of more than 3,000 categories of smart devices. The "technical modules" accumulated by Tuya from the era of smart hardware can still be reused when AI hardware needs come. For example, the audio capabilities accumulated from smart speaker products and the audio and video capabilities accumulated from network camera products can be reused in other AI hardware forms that require audio and video capabilities.
In other words, Tuya Smart did not enter the AI hardware market from the starting line. On the contrary, Tuya has sufficient leading advantages in this field.
03 Activate the innovative vitality of AI hardware with an open ecosystem
A single tree cannot make a forest.
Tuya firmly believes that the deep integration of AI and the physical world will create more business opportunities. To truly seize these opportunities, it is necessary to attract more developers to enter the AI field and promote the popularization of AI technology through innovative products.
To this end, Tuya Smart aims to become a solid soil for the implementation of AI hardware creativity.
On the one hand, it is announced that developers who use Tuya solutions can use Tuya AI Token for free.
On the other hand, TuyaOpen, an open source and open development framework for the AloT industry, was launched. TuyaOpen not only inherits the core features of TuyaOS such as cross-platform, cross-system, componentization and security compliance, but also integrates the end-side AI reasoning engine to support Tuya Cloud Intelligent Body Hub and multi-modal AI capabilities of end-cloud integration.
In addition, based on Tuya's open ecosystem and global supply chain, TuyaOpen also provides developers with a one-stop channel from product development to commercial realization, which can greatly shorten the product development cycle and help developers obtain more business opportunities.
In the future, Tuya looks forward to working with more developers to jointly promote comprehensive breakthroughs in AI hardware in application scenarios and product categories, drive industry changes with innovation, and open a new chapter of AI empowering everything!
This paper is from Ulink Media, Shenzhen, China, the organizer of IOTE EXPO (IoT Expo in China)
