Zhang Shuyu, the product lead behind QClaw — the lobster-themed assistant app that exploded in popularity earlier this year — announced on social media that she officially left Tencent on June 29.
Born in 1999, Zhang joined Tencent in September 2025 and spent just 10 months at the company. She led a five-person team to build QClaw with zero budget, and within a week of its closed beta, the app attracted millions of users, quickly becoming a core strategic project for Tencent.
As for rumors of Tencent’s notorious internal competition (“horse racing”), Zhang flatly denied them. She revealed that QClaw and another Tencent AI tool, WorkBuddy, were under the same manager, and even shared the same growth team during some phases. In her view, different product paths within a large organization carry different missions, and the optimal solutions change over time. “Chasing individual heroism is meaningless,” she said.
As for what’s next, Zhang said she had set a goal of creating a breakthrough product before turning 30 — a target she hit at 26 with QClaw. Now, she wants to tackle problems that plague humanity.