From Automated Litter Scooping to Health Management: CATLINK's Zhang Xiaolin to Speak at the 2026 Global New Brand AI Competitiveness Conference

On July 23, the 10th Global Cross-Border E-commerce Summit and the 2026 Global New Brand AI Competitiveness Conference, themed 'Lead the Way in Tech and Aesthetics', will be held in Hangzhou. Zhang Xiaolin (Jason), Founder and CEO of CATLINK, has confirmed his attendance and will participate in the roundtable discussion on 'How to Create a New Category, How to Create a New Product, and How to Build AI Competitiveness'.

01

From Industry Accumulation to AI Product Innovation

CATLINK's origin resembles less of a business venture and more of a transformation of long-term industry experience and product thinking into innovative practice.

Founder Zhang Xiaolin (Jason) has been deeply involved in the international pet smart products industry for over a decade, with extensive experience in supply chain management, product R&D, and industry operations. As early as 2014, when China's pet industry was still in its infancy, he foresightedly proposed the concept of an 'Internet of Cats'. In other words, while others first made a litter box and then thought about adding features, CATLINK started thinking earlier about how to endow smart hardware with continuous evolution capabilities through independent R&D, an AIoT architecture, and ongoing data accumulation.

This approach led CATLINK to insist on independent R&D from day one, rather than simply relying on OEM/ODM, gradually building an AIoT product system covering hardware, software, and data services. Zhang Xiaolin's repeatedly emphasized '2P Principle' ('to pet first, then to person') stems from this: everything prioritizes pet health and safety. The product logic does not stop at 'freeing the pet owner's hands' but aims to help users detect pet health abnormalities earlier through continuous data accumulation and intelligent analysis.

02

Product Power: From 'Automation' to 'Health Management'

To understand CATLINK's products, one must first understand a key shift occurring in this category.

Early pet appliances competed on 'automation'—using mechanical structures to perform repetitive tasks like scooping litter and feeding for humans. By 2026, the competitive focus has fully shifted to 'digitalization' and 'health monitoring'. There's a biological logic behind this: cats are extremely adept at hiding and masking illness; by the time an owner visually notices an abnormality, it's often in the mid-to-late stages.

Consequently, frequently used items like litter boxes, feeders, and water fountains have also begun to play a crucial role in continuously recording pet health data. The flagship model 'Scoop Robot Pro' unveiled by CATLINK at CES 2026 further advances this trend. Leveraging capabilities like AI vision and multimodal sensing, it explores using cameras for individual identification and combines data such as toilet time and weight changes to establish long-term health profiles. Future products will integrate AI image analysis to assist in identifying health indicators like stool form, providing users with more comprehensive health references.

If the competition in smart litter boxes was about automation in the past, the core of future competition may be who can understand a cat sooner.

Safety is an inviolable red line for this category. CATLINK's response is a redundant protection matrix—layered with gravity sensors, microwave radar, automotive-grade anti-pinch switches, and an 'incomplete gear' anti-suffocation structure. It also features a dedicated 'Kitten Mode' for very lightweight kittens prone to falling into gravity sensor blind spots.

However, what truly constitutes the product's moat is not just a single device, but the long-term data capabilities. CATLINK is continuously building a pet health data system around products like litter boxes, feeders, and water fountains, aiming to help users more comprehensively understand their pets' health status by long-term recording of behavioral changes in weight, toilet habits, diet, etc. For example, a cat using the litter box one extra time today might not be abnormal; being a few dozen grams lighter today might just be normal fluctuation. But if these subtle changes persist and form a complete data curve, it has the potential to become a crucial reference for users to detect health abnormalities, triggering timely red alerts.

Notably, there's the modular design. Many brands in the industry follow a 'disposable appliance' route, where aging sensors or motor failure mean the entire unit is scrapped. CATLINK allows users to independently replace components like filters, liners, sensors, and even bases. By the third year of device use, the difference in long-term ownership costs due to this design becomes very apparent. This is a detail easily overlooked in spec sheets but one that truly impacts repurchase and word-of-mouth.

03

The Real Brand Moat

CATLINK's entry into the European and American markets is easily misconstrued as 'low-price dumping'.

Half of that is indeed true: facing established local brands like Whisker and Petsafe with prices often ranging from $500 to $700 and slow iteration cycles, CATLINK set the starting price for models like Open-X at $169 to $199, forcibly dismantling the brand psychological defenses of high-end consumers. According to industry data, Chinese brands once captured about 25% market share in the smart litter box category on Amazon US.

However, low price has never been CATLINK's moat; it's merely the lever to pry open the door. The real barriers are two-fold.

The first is the data flywheel. By early 2026, CATLINK announced it had surpassed 1 million global active users. Behind this number are millions of real-world terminals spread across the globe (its overseas footprint expanded from an initial 42 countries to an official count of 119 countries and regions), covering various breeds, body types, and lighting environments. For facial recognition and stool recognition algorithms relying on deep learning, this is a training dataset that new entrants can hardly replicate in the short term. Data feeds the algorithm, the algorithm enhances the user experience, and the experience attracts more users. Once this flywheel spins, the generational gap in alert accuracy will continue to widen.

The second is the 'detection-treatment closed loop'. In October 2021, CATLINK secured an exclusive first-round investment from New Ruipeng Pet Healthcare Group, which operates thousands of offline pet hospitals. The strategic significance of this funding far outweighs its financial meaning: smart hardware on the home front provides 24/7 alerts, while professional medical services on the hospital front handle consultations. The front-end data becomes the most valuable clinical reference for veterinarians conducting early screenings. Once the 'Home Alert + Medical Intervention' model is validated, the hardware sells not just a device, but an entire health service package from 'detection' to 'treatment'. Coupled with the 'razor + blade' model for consumables like original filter pads and deodorizing gels, CATLINK's long-term revenue resilience is further strengthened.

04

How to Find a Blue Ocean in a Red Sea

The smart litter box market is already a red ocean, with severe parameter homogenization. Cold specifications struggle to build brand loyalty. CATLINK's solution essentially redefines a 'litter-scooping appliance' as a 'pet health management device'. It transforms real rescue short films like 'The Original Heart' and hundreds of cat rescue cases into emotional value that spec sheets cannot provide.

For Chinese brands going global, sustaining premium pricing and carving out a blue ocean in a mature red sea doesn't rely on being another ten dollars cheaper. It depends on finding a differentiated angle that can redefine the category's value and securing it with underlying technology and ecosystem. Zhang Xiaolin's statement, 'Using technology to help little cats live ten years longer,' is less of an emotional appeal and more of a precise product definition—while competitors are still comparing who scoops cleaner, CATLINK is already competing on who can detect that red alert sooner.

The 10th Global Cross-Border E-commerce Summit and the 2026 Global New Brand AI Competitiveness Conference is organized by Ebrun and co-organized by Mati Club, Ebrun Think Tank, and the Global Cross-Border E-commerce Knowledge Service Center. It is an annual bellwether event in the fields of cross-border e-commerce and brand globalization. The conference will encompass case studies and experiences from brands across various categories, including consumer goods and industrial products. It has invited decision-makers from major B2C and B2B platforms, representatives from technology service areas like independent websites, marketing, logistics, and after-sales, as well as notable investors such as the National Service Trade Fund, Sequoia Capital China, FreeS Fund, and China Renaissance Capital. The event aims to present the new landscape of global, omnichannel, and all-category overseas expansion for all attendees.

Conference agenda