Yang Yuanqing aims to lead Lenovo to "rebirth"

Author | Huang Yu

Editor | Zhou Zhiyu

After nearly five years, Lenovo Group's global kick-off conference for the new fiscal year has finally returned to offline on a large scale.

Starting in Beijing and concluding in Tokyo, the event lasted nearly half a month, during which Lenovo Group Chairman and CEO Yang Yuanqing completed an "AI roadshow" across five cities on three continents, planting the flag of "Entrepreneurship 5.0" globally.

Due to the industry's downturn in traditional PCs and "mediocrity" in technological innovation, Yang Yuanqing, as the soul of Lenovo, has not had Lenovo stand at the center stage of global technology for a long time.

At the starting point of Lenovo's fifth decade, Yang Yuanqing hopes to seize the once-in-a-century opportunity of AI large models to bring Lenovo back to its former glory. Yang Yuanqing stated, "The fifth entrepreneurship has begun, and Lenovo is ready."

Lenovo has pressed the "rebirth" start button, and next, Lenovo will fully enter a new decade of AI with hybrid artificial intelligence as its core strategy.

However, at this moment, the Trump administration in the United States has launched an unprecedented tariff war, leading to increased global economic uncertainty and intensified anti-globalization trends. This casts a shadow over the future development of all globalization enterprises, including Lenovo, which is currently betting on AI.

As the first truly globalized enterprise in China, Lenovo is undoubtedly a beneficiary of the era of free trade, having topped the global PC sales chart while establishing a global supply chain.

But as the golden age of globalization fades, the "veteran" Lenovo faces many tough battles to maintain its position as the global PC leader while using AI to open new horizons.

AI Journey

As the most important ceremony for Lenovo to welcome the new fiscal year, the Lenovo Group 2025/26 fiscal year (April 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026) kick-off conference is of great significance to Lenovo. This event not only marks the large-scale return of Lenovo's new fiscal year kick-off conference to offline but will also serve as an "anchor point" for Lenovo's development over the next decade.

On March 31, the global first stop of Lenovo's new fiscal year kick-off conference was held at the Diamond Court of the National Tennis Center in Beijing.

Facing nearly 8,000 employees and executives from around the world, Yang Yuanqing announced that Lenovo will embark on its fifth entrepreneurship.

This is Lenovo's fifth entrepreneurship following self-entrepreneurship, branding, internationalization, and diversification, and it represents Lenovo's more determined embrace of AI after nearly two years of exploration in AI strategy.

As early as 2023, Lenovo proclaimed the slogan "AI for All." It is worth noting that the traditional PC industry has not had exciting news for a long time. At the end of 2022, ChatGPT sparked a new wave of AI, reminiscent of the excitement of the steam engine revolution, and it made technology giants like Lenovo see significant opportunities.

According to Yang Yuanqing, Lenovo has now completed the critical leap from "vision" to "reality" in its AI strategy: AI PCs are mass-produced and launched, enterprise AI solutions are widely deployed, and AI services are deeply integrated into industries, covering three major business segments: devices, infrastructure, and services "The next ten years for Lenovo will focus on hybrid artificial intelligence. Only by combining personal intelligence, enterprise intelligence, and public intelligence, coexisting and complementing each other, and using them in a hybrid manner, can we achieve the widespread and inclusive application of artificial intelligence," said Yang Yuanqing.

In other words, Lenovo Group will take "hybrid AI" as the strategic axis for the next decade, based on the integration of "personal intelligence + enterprise intelligence + public intelligence," to build differentiated technological paths and product solutions.

This also means that Lenovo aims to fully transform from a hardware manufacturer to an AI-driven solution provider.

Faced with the current uncertain global economic environment and the growth bottleneck of traditional PC business, this is Yang Yuanqing's way to break the deadlock for Lenovo.

Beyond the long-term vision, Lenovo has also proposed four core goals for the new fiscal year: to lead the transformation of hybrid AI technology, achieve double-digit growth across all businesses, drive the Mobile Business Group (MBG) and Infrastructure Solutions Group (ISG) to achieve over 20% revenue growth, and strive for "historical highest revenue."

Lenovo's confidence comes from the impressive results it has achieved in implementing its AI strategy, with Yang Yuanqing stating that this fiscal year will be one of the best years in Lenovo's history.

Data shows that in the first three fiscal quarters of 2024/25, Lenovo Group's cumulative revenue increased by 21% year-on-year, and net profit rose by 70% year-on-year.

Specifically, Lenovo continues to hold the top position in the global PC market, while widening the gap with the second competitor to 5 percentage points; driven by over 60% hyper-speed growth in ISG in the first three quarters, the third quarter successfully achieved profitability, moving towards sustainable profitable growth, which is undoubtedly a milestone for Lenovo.

Towards new goals, Lenovo has sounded the charge.

Global Challenges

However, Lenovo's new round of battles has not encountered "favorable timing and conditions."

The tariff plan of the Trump administration has become the biggest change in the global trade market this century. The severe turbulence in the global trade landscape will undoubtedly bring uncertainty to Lenovo's future development.

A brokerage analyst told Wall Street Journal that Lenovo has procured a large number of components and raw materials globally, and its products are also sold worldwide. The increase in trade barriers will raise Lenovo's procurement costs, hinder product exports, and put pressure on Lenovo's operating performance.

Even so, Yang Yuanqing is not overly worried.

Facing numerous challenges in the macro and micro environments, Yang Yuanqing stated during the Paris rally: "There is no turning back on globalization."

"As a truly global company, Lenovo has the strongest adaptability. Even if we cannot completely avoid the impact, I assure everyone that we will be the fastest to respond, the most timely to adjust, and the most competitive company. Navigating uncertainty is Lenovo's strength. After every challenge, we become stronger," said Yang Yuanqing.

Yang Yuanqing is undoubtedly the helmsman of Lenovo Group's globalization journey. 21 years ago, he led the acquisition of IBM's PC business, starting Lenovo Group's globalization journey, making Lenovo the first Chinese company to truly achieve globalization and firmly hold the title of global PC sales champion In 2004, Lenovo was merely a company primarily selling PCs in the Chinese market, with an annual revenue of $2.9 billion. By the 2023/2024 fiscal year, Lenovo's revenue had reached $56.9 billion, ranking 217th in the 2023 Fortune Global 500, and operating in over 180 countries and regions worldwide.

Today, nearly 80% of Lenovo's revenue comes from overseas, and beyond PCs, it is expanding more stable revenue sources, with over 40% already coming from non-PC businesses.

Yang Yuanqing has summarized Lenovo's achievements over the past twenty years as "the success of the PC business and the success of internationalization."

Clearly, Lenovo's global business layout and practical experience over the past 20 years will help it navigate this tariff storm.

Currently, Lenovo has about 30 manufacturing bases that combine its own and outsourced production in 11 countries worldwide, including China, Mexico, and the United States, and has created a unique operational model of "global resources + local delivery."

For example, 90% of the servers used for the European and Middle Eastern markets are produced in its factory in Hungary, and such supply chain deployment will undoubtedly become an important weapon for Lenovo to withstand global trade turbulence.

According to Wall Street Insights from Lenovo, on one hand, Lenovo utilizes global advantageous resources for unified allocation, covering various aspects such as capital, talent, research and development, supply, and manufacturing. On the other hand, Lenovo is committed to creating marketing, delivery, and services that are close to local markets, achieving localized "last mile" solutions for customers.

The Road Ahead is Uncertain

Currently, global market competition is fierce, and the business environment is drastically different from when Lenovo began its globalization twenty years ago. For Lenovo to succeed in its fifth entrepreneurial venture, it faces not only the challenges of the "tariff war" but also the intense competition in global AI technology.

Today, the AI technology race is a competition among global tech companies. Two years ago, ChatGPT sparked a wave of AI large models, and the emergence of DeepSeek earlier this year has further propelled AI applications into an explosive phase, making betting on AI a common choice for global tech companies.

Against this backdrop, Lenovo's hybrid AI strategy faces even fiercer market competition, with competitors not only being traditional PC manufacturers but also numerous hardware, cloud computing, and large model companies.

As for the core AI PC products, whether Lenovo can gain market recognition remains to be seen.

In Yang Yuanqing's vision, the first generation of AI PCs should possess five core features: first, the ability to run compressed and performance-optimized personal large models; second, stronger computing power; third, larger storage; fourth, smoother natural language interaction; and fifth, more reliable security and privacy protection.

However, the AI PC products currently released by Lenovo can only be said to possess some AI characteristics and are still far from being considered disruptive innovations.

NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang has also admitted that the market sales of AI PCs over the past year have indeed been disappointing, mainly due to the underdeveloped AI ecosystem on PC terminals.

Even so, Luca Rossi, Executive Vice President of Lenovo Group and President of the Intelligent Devices Group (IDG), is confident about the market for AI PCs At the beginning of the year at CES, he stated that the question is not whether AI PCs will develop, but rather when they will become fully popular. "I am confident about the performance of the AI PC market in 2025 and 2026, when we will see significant growth in the AI PC market."

Of course, to stimulate more consumer demand for upgrading devices, Lenovo must make more breakthroughs in underlying AI technology.

It is well known that breakthroughs in AI technology require a large number of professionals and financial support. For Lenovo to maintain its leading position in the AI era, it must attract and retain top AI talent globally, while continuously exploring and innovating in technology research and development and application promotion.

According to Wall Street Insights, Lenovo is building an innovative system globally, ranging from "super intelligent agents" to "model factories," and from "end-cloud-edge collaborative deployment" to "BLP ecological collaboration." Through the continuous evolution of core capabilities such as venture capital, research and development, supply chain, and manufacturing, Lenovo hopes to accelerate the implementation of its AI strategy.

In 2025, the moment of AI PC transformation will begin, and the global market landscape will change rapidly. As the "big brother" of the traditional PC industry, Lenovo is also embarking on a new journey of re-entrepreneurship.

Whether Lenovo can replicate its success and even create a new legend through its flexible globalization, technology-centric, and customer-focused operational system will depend on whether Yang Yuanqing can lead Lenovo to achieve new breakthroughs in the AI era.

Time will provide the final answer