Building Blocks

During his PhD at MIT, Ethan Hu built Taichi, a programming language for physics simulation. It was popular on GitHub, but made no money. His next product, a renderer for industrial designers, failed too. The third was Meshy, which turns photos and text into 3D models and recently passed $100 million in annual recurring revenue.

This is the third episode of Building Blocks Season 2.

In this episode of Building Blocks, a podcast from Granite Asia, Ethan talks to Rita about:

• Why his first 2 products didn't make money
• How a $5 offer and the launch of ChatGPT led to Meshy, shipped in 8 hours
• Why 3D printing became Meshy's biggest market
• Why he turned down offers to buy the company
• His rule: if you don't think you were stupid 30 days ago, you haven't grown
• What comes after AI for work, and Mora, Meshy's game generator
• 3 things he wishes he'd known when he left academia

Host: Rita Yang, VP, Public Affairs, Granite Asia
Guest: Ethan Hu, Founder and CEO, Meshy

About the Guest

Ethan Hu is the founder and CEO of Meshy, an AI platform that turns text prompts or images into 3D models ready for games, VR, and 3D printing. He spent 3.5 years at MIT earning a PhD, where he built Taichi, a programming language for physics simulation and graphics. He founded Meshy in 2023.

About Building Blocks

Building Blocks is a podcast by Granite Asia that deconstructs how innovation transforms industries, society, and the systems we live in. Each season dives into a timely theme, bringing together industry leaders, innovators, and policymakers to discuss how technology can drive progress.

Season 2 continues the conversation with the people building the technology, products, and businesses shaping the region.

About Granite Asia

Granite Asia, formerly GGV Capital Asia, is a leading private capital platform in Asia, partnering with visionary founders and leaders to build industry champions.

With US$11 billion in assets under management and co-managed capital, the firm has invested in 121 companies valued at over $1 billion and supported 70 IPOs worldwide. 

Investing across private equity, private credit, and public capital, Granite Asia combines deep technology expertise with flexible capital solutions to help ambitious companies scale, navigate inflection points, and unlock long-term value across global markets.

Links

Granite Asia: https://www.graniteasia.com
Kuku: https://kuku.app/
Subscribe to Building Blocks: https://graniteasia.buzzsprout.com
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0jOWZWFX62JXDMcv1g5uJl?si=3d5fe743a9ca44ef
Follow Granite Asia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/granite-asia/
Follow Granite Asia on X: https://twitter.com/graniteasia
Follow Granite Asia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notgraniteasia/

Follow us for more industry stories, unique perspectives, and career opportunities.

Why would the future of Netflix-style entertainment be made in India? Kuku's Co-founder and COO, Vinod Kumar Meena, explains how AI is shrinking production cycles, why he thinks millions of Indian creators will make professional content for audiences around the world, and how three co-founders from small villages in Rajasthan built one of India’s largest entertainment platforms.

A Hindi-first writer who had never been near figure skating wrote a micro drama about it that did well in the US, with AI helping him weave in cultural details he had never experienced. In this episode, we get into what that story says about the future of content. Plus, why Vinod says AI is here to assist, not to replace.

This is the second episode of Building Blocks Season 2.

In This Episode

• How AI cuts a film’s production cycle from 8 to 15 months down to 3 to 5 weeks
• Why AI-assisted writers can go through in a year the number of creative cycles that used to take a decade
• How Kuku produces more than 200 AI-assisted shows a month, each as long as a movie
• Why Vinod believes India can train a million people to use AI and build content for the world
• Why YouTube and Instagram's algorithms make you want to click, but Netflix and Disney+ often don’t, and how AI could close the gap for professionally produced content
• How Kuku FM’s audio production costs fell to one-twentieth, and how that philosophy carried into Kuku TV
• Why “vernacular” means context and culture, not just a different language
• Vinod’s advice for content creators

About the Guest

Vinod Kumar Meena is the Co-founder and COO of Kuku. He and his two co-founders started Kuku FM in 2018 as an audio app for Indians who prefer to listen in their own languages. Kuku has since expanded into Kuku TV, which makes mobile-first short vertical dramas. In this conversation, he explains why he is an engineer at heart, why he believes only the paranoid survive in the age of AI, and why the barrier to entry for creators is already gone.

About Building Blocks

Building Blocks is a podcast by Granite Asia that deconstructs how innovation transforms industries, society, and the systems we live in. Each season dives into a timely theme, bringing together industry leaders, innovators, and policymakers to discuss how technology can drive progress.

Season 2 continues the conversation with the people building the technology, products, and businesses shaping the region.

About Granite Asia

Granite Asia, formerly GGV Capital Asia, is a leading private capital platform in Asia, partnering with visionary founders and leaders to build industry champions.

With US$11 billion in assets under management and co-managed capital, the firm has invested in 121 companies valued at over $1 billion and supported 70 IPOs worldwide.

Investing across private equity, private credit, and public capital, Granite Asia combines deep technology expertise with flexible capital solutions to help ambitious companies scale, navigate inflection points, and unlock long-term value across global markets.

Links

Granite Asia: https://www.graniteasia.com
Kuku: https://kuku.app/
Subscribe to Building Blocks: https://graniteasia.buzzsprout.com
Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0jOWZWFX62JXDMcv1g5uJl?si=3d5fe743a9ca44ef
Follow Granite Asia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/granite-asia/
Follow Granite Asia on X: https://twitter.com/graniteasia
Follow Granite Asia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notgraniteasia/

Follow us for more industry stories, unique perspectives, and career opportunities.

Why would a carmaker build a humanoid robot? XPENG's Vice Chairman and President, Brian Gu, explains how electric vehicles, AI models, and in-house chips became the building blocks (pun fully intended) for IRON, XPENG’s humanoid robot. And what it takes to build a supply chain for a category that does not yet exist.

IRON walked across a stage, and people thought there was a human inside. XPENG’s Chairman and CEO, He Xiaopeng, then cut open the robot’s leg in front of the media to show what was underneath. In this episode, we get into how a carmaker came to build a humanoid robot. Plus, what XPENG is building next.

This is the first episode of Building Blocks Season 2.

In This Episode

• Why XPENG put intelligence ahead of electrification, and technology ahead of automotive
• How XPENG’s chips, AI models, and EV research became the building blocks for a humanoid robot
• Why a strong, high-quality, and competitive EV business lets a company move into adjacent areas such as flying cars, robotaxis, and humanoid robots using the same core technology
• What it takes to develop suppliers for a category without an established supply chain
• The viral moment when people said IRON looked “too real” and must be a person in disguise, and how the team responded
• Why Brian says “you have to be crazy” to reach ultimate excellence and creativity
• How He Xiaopeng’s vision shaped the company’s long-term direction of using intelligence to explore future mobility
• Brian’s advice for builders willing to take a leap into the unknown

About the Guest

Brian Gu is Vice Chairman and President of XPENG. In this conversation, he explains how XPENG’s EV, chip, and AI work connect across their different pursuits, and why he sees the connection as a decision to build new things from capabilities the company has developed, rather than simply ambition.

About Building Blocks

Building Blocks is a podcast by Granite Asia that deconstructs how innovation transforms industries, society, and the systems we live in. Each season dives into a timely theme, bringing together industry leaders, innovators, and policymakers to discuss how technology can drive progress.

Season 2 continues the conversation with the people building the technology, products, and businesses shaping the region.

About Granite Asia

Granite Asia, formerly GGV Capital Asia, is a leading private capital platform in Asia, partnering with visionary founders and leaders to build industry champions.

With US$11 billion in assets under management and co-managed capital, the firm has invested in 121 companies valued at over $1 billion and supported 70 IPOs worldwide.

Investing across private equity, private credit, and public capital, Granite Asia combines deep technology expertise with flexible capital solutions to help ambitious companies scale, navigate inflection points, and unlock long-term value across global markets.

Links

• Granite Asia: https://www.graniteasia.com
• XPENG: https://www.xpeng.com/
• Follow Granite Asia on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/granite-asia/
• Follow Granite Asia on X: https://twitter.com/graniteasia
• Follow Granite Asia on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/notgraniteasia/
• Follow Granite Asia on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@graniteasia

Follow us for more industry stories, unique perspectives, and career opportunities.

For decades, chemistry labs have looked almost exactly the same — manual, slow, and heavily dependent on human trial and error. While biology rapidly automated, chemistry quietly fell behind.

In this episode of Building Blocks: Living Machines, we go inside one of the world’s first fully AI-powered chemistry labs with Sean Lin, Founder & CEO of ChemLex, a next-generation contract research organisation reimagining how molecules are discovered.

Joined by Jenny Lee, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia, we explore:

• Why chemistry lacked automation for decades
• How ChemLex’s robotic lab runs up to 800 reactions per day
• Why this matters for drug development, national resilience, and the future of scientific work

This is a story about rebuilding one of the most fundamental layers of science — with machines.

Follow us for more industry stories, unique perspectives, and career opportunities.

What makes the world’s best airport tick? Beyond the architecture, shopping, and gardens lies a hidden engine — a living system of automation, robotics, and human ingenuity working in perfect sync.

In this episode of Building Blocks: Living Machines, we go inside the future of Changi Airport with Li San Poh, Senior Vice President of Terminal 5 Planning at Changi Airport Group, and Jixun Foo, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia.

From her unconventional journey as a helicopter pilot to leading one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects in Asia, Li San shares how search-and-rescue missions shaped her mindset for building resilient systems.

We explore:

• Why designing for uncertainty and contingency is critical at airport scale
• How carpets, chairs, and art installations reveal the hidden trade-offs in making airports feel like home
• The role of automation and robotics in tackling labor shortages and creating safer, more sustainable ground operations
• Why Changi works with both incumbents and startups—and what separates successful collaborations from failed ones
• Li San’s philosophy on leadership, innovation, and fearlessness in the face of uncertainty

From the quiet details (like carpet pile height) to massive industry-shaping bets (automation of apron operations), this conversation shows why Changi isn’t just an airport— it’s a national icon and a testbed for the future of human-machine collaboration.

Follow us for more industry stories, unique perspectives, and career opportunities.

How do you automate one of the world’s busiest ports — without losing the human touch?

In this episode of Building Blocks: Living Machines, host Rita Yang visits PSA International, a leading global port operator and trusted supply chain partner. She’s joined by Ong Kim Pong, Group CEO of PSA, and Jixun Foo, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia and PSA board member, to reveal how PSA's flagship terminal in Singapore - including Tuas Port, the world’s largest fully automated terminal - is building a seamless ecosystem where machines, data, and people work in harmony. 

Handling over 100 million containers annually, PSA International is reshaping port operations worldwide by deploying automation where it matters most, driving efficiency while upskilling its 55,000-strong workforce for the AI era. Kim Pong also shares lessons from navigating a shifting global trade landscape, while Jixun offers an investor’s take on why the best companies are built for both innovation and trust.

 🎧 Listen to how the world’s most advanced port became a blueprint for the future of work and trade.

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Can a robot save lives — or learn from a spider?

In this episode of Building Blocks – Living Machines, host Rita Yang sits down with Prof. Mohan Rajesh Elara, Provost Chair Professor at SUTD and Co-founder of LionsBot, Singapore’s home-grown robotics company.

From a dragonfly robot that traps dengue-carrying mosquitoes to a spider-inspired machine that crawls, rolls, and climbs walls, Prof. Mohan shows how nature is quietly shaping the next generation of automation. Together, they discuss how bio-inspired design leads to smarter, more adaptive robots — and how the rise of AI-powered machines can still keep humans at the center.

They also explore his journey from researcher to entrepreneur, scaling thousands of robots globally, and why he believes the future of robotics is not about replacing people but creating new jobs, compassion, and creativity.

🎧 Listen to how living machines are learning from life itself.

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Shipping keeps the world moving — but it also contributes nearly 3% of global carbon emissions. The surprising culprit? Biofouling: the buildup on ship hulls that drives fuel use up by as much as 40%.

In this episode of Building Blocks: Living Machines, host Rita Yang speaks with Elizabeth Chan, CEO of Neptune Robotics, and Jixun Foo, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia, about how robotics is rewriting the rules of maritime efficiency.

You’ll hear how Neptune:

• Built robots that clean entire Cape-size vessels in under 24 hours, above and below water.
• Aims to make diver-based hull cleaning obsolete by improving safety and scalability.
• Is scaling globally — from Asia’s busiest ports to Japan, Europe, and beyond.

Jixun also shares why Granite Asia backed this unconventional team, and how Neptune’s journey illustrates what it takes to push hard-tech innovation from prototype to global scale.

👉 Listen in to see how robots beneath the waves may hold the key to decarbonizing one of the world’s largest industries.

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Forget robots that vacuum your floor or fetch you coffee. What if the next big machine in your life was built just to love you?

In our very first episode of Building Blocks: Living Machines, host Rita Yang sits down with Kaname Hayashi, the creator of LOVOT — a wide-eyed, huggable robot designed to melt hearts. Think warm body, expressive gaze, playful coos… and zero productivity.

Also joining is Jenny Lee, Senior Managing Partner at Granite Asia, who has spent two decades betting on the future of robotics — from flying cars to factory machines. Together, they dive into:

• Why a robot designed for affection, not efficiency, might be the boldest idea in tech
• The surprising science of how LOVOT learns, adapts, and builds emotional bonds
• How robots could transform mental health and elder care in aging societies
• Whether we’re headed for an “iPhone moment” in robotics — or something stranger
• Why the business model isn’t about selling hardware, but “emotion as a service”

Follow us for more industry stories, unique perspectives, and career opportunities.