Zhang Xuefeng and 360 AI's Cybersecurity Platform

An AI-Driven Cybersecurity Platform: Capabilities, Industry Impact, and Strategic Context

Executive Summary

This comprehensive report examines the leadership of Zhang Xuefeng as CEO of 360 AI, delves into his career and public persona, characterizes the evolving company profile of 360 AI (also known as 360 Security Technology Group or simply “360”), and presents a deep technical and strategic analysis of the firm’s newly launched AI-driven cybersecurity platform. Drawing on diverse and reputable web sources, the study details the platform’s architecture, machine learning and neural network foundations, real-time threat detection, and cross-industry applications-particularly within finance, manufacturing, healthcare, and energy. The report situates 360 AI’s offering and competitive positioning within the rapidly transforming Chinese and global cybersecurity industry, explores regulatory and compliance challenges, highlights strategic partnerships and adoption cases, and offers a forward-looking perspective on the platform’s likely impact on China’s digital security landscape.

Zhang Xuefeng: Background, Leadership, and Public Persona

Early Life and Education

Zhang Xuefeng, born Zhang Zibiao in 1984 in Qiqihar, Heilongjiang province, emerged from humble beginnings to become a prominent and sometimes polarizing public figure in China. After completing his undergraduate studies in civil engineering, Zhang initially navigated a conventional path, but pivoted to education and career coaching-a turn that set the stage for his rise to national celebrity.¹

Educational Entrepreneur and Public Figure

Zhang’s breakthrough came in 2016 with a viral video, “Seven Minutes to Explain 34 Top Universities,” which showcased his knack for translating complex educational topics into accessible, often blunt, pragmatic advice. His livestreams and commentaries-occasionally controversial, as illustrated by his harsh stance on certain academic majors-drew millions of followers and placed him at the center of debates about educational policy, economic opportunity, and social mobility in China. His persona combines candid authenticity with an eye for market trends, a combination that made him a bestselling author, trusted advisor to parents and students, and a top influencer in China’s Key Opinion Leader (KOL) ecosystem.¹

Broader Business Ventures and Investment Activity

Leveraging his fame, Zhang has diversified his involvement into entrepreneurship, especially through founding Suzhou Fengxue Weilai Education Technology Co., Ltd. (“Fengxue Weilai”). In 2024, Fengxue Weilai was reported to have entered the venture capital scene, making a high-profile investment of 16 million RMB in Yongxin Rongyao Fund. Zhang actively promotes talent development in technology and, more recently, has steered his influence and capital toward China’s “hard tech” and digital infrastructure sectors-including the AI and cybersecurity industries.

Leadership at 360 AI

In recent years, Zhang transitioned to a more formal role in technology leadership, assuming the position of CEO of 360 AI. His appointment reflects a broader paradigm in China, where opinion leaders from diverse backgrounds move into strategic roles in ‘new infrastructure’ industries. Zhang’s management philosophy stresses “practical innovation,” rapid commercialization, and a talent-centric approach to technology-driven business growth. As CEO, Zhang is tasked not only with deepening 360 AI’s technical capabilities but also translating public trust and brand equity into competitive advantage in cybersecurity-a sector where credibility and reputational assurance are crucial.

360 AI: Company Overview and Strategic Evolution

Historical Roots and Brand Evolution

Founded in Tianjin in 2005 as Qihoo 360 Technology, the company’s roots are in consumer-facing cybersecurity products, especially antivirus software, browsers, and internet utilities. As internet adoption accelerated, 360 rapidly became one of China’s preeminent tech brands, serving hundreds of millions of individual users. Surviving and thriving through rounds of restructuring, public listings, and competitive battles with both domestic and foreign peers, “360 Security” morphed into a multi-faceted group that encompasses cloud platforms, industrial security, and enterprise AI solutions.²

Business Model and Market Position

Initially focused on the to-C (consumer) market, 360 expanded into the to-B (business/government) sector through strategic pivots and spin-offs. While maintaining dominant market share in consumer antivirus tools, the group has increasingly prioritized large enterprise and government contracts-as reflected by its “security brain” strategy and investments in threat intelligence, cloud security, and regulatory compliance solutions.³ According to recent market intelligence, 360 AI is now viewed as part of China’s “first-tier” digital security providers, competing with Qi An Xin (now independent), Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba, and specialized start-ups.⁴

Organization and Talent Strategy

Under Zhang Xuefeng’s leadership, 360 AI is pushing an organizational culture focused on integrated R&D, rapid iteration, and strong collaboration with industrial and academic partners. 360’s teams amalgamate deep security expertise-accumulated over years of offensive-defense drills and malware analysis-with new AI talent trained in large language models and neural computation. The company claims to have one of China’s largest pools of cyber defense engineers and data scientists, fueling its efforts to innovate at the intersection of AI, big data, and security analytics.²

Financial Performance and Investments

Despite occasional swings in revenue and profitability-such as an annual net loss of 2.5 billion RMB in 2022-360 AI continues to benefit from strong brand recognition and recurring enterprise contracts. The company invests heavily in R&D, with public disclosures and media reports noting substantial deployment of capital toward data center infrastructure, proprietary AI model development, and cross-industry solution rollouts.

360 AI’s Cybersecurity Role

360 has played a pivotal role in raising collective standards in China’s cybersecurity sector. The company regularly engages with industry consortia and regulatory bodies, helping set benchmarks for threat intelligence gathering, vulnerability management, and incident response best practices. In parallel, 360 AI (with its “security brain” products) is influencing the national conversation on critical infrastructure protection-especially as China endeavors to align its digital transformation with new regulatory prescriptions for generative AI, data privacy, and information security.

The AI-Driven Cybersecurity Platform: Architecture, Technology, and Core Capabilities

360 AI’s recent launch of an AI-driven cybersecurity platform marks a substantial advancement in how digital security is conceptualized and operationalized across key sectors in China. The platform leverages machine learning, neural networks, and big data analytics to deliver real-time, adaptive, and context-aware threat detection and response.

Platform Architecture and Technology Stack

360 AI’s cybersecurity platform is built on what it terms “Security Brain” architecture-a unified system integrating on-premise and cloud-native analytics, supported by a vast reservoir of curated threat data and leveraged by advanced AI techniques.⁵

Data Lake and Cloud Engine: The platform ingests data at scale from endpoints, networks, IoT devices, and cloud applications. It integrates over 2 exabytes of security data, including billions of malware samples, trillions of security logs, and domain intelligence.
AI Analytics Layer: At its core is a multi-dimensional neuron matrix (“neural network” layer), consisting of specialized deep learning models trained to detect, classify, and prioritize security incidents across a spectrum of threat scenarios.⁶
Machine Learning Algorithms: The AI stack employs ensemble machine learning, with federated learning capabilities for collaborative security let across distributed networks-an especially valuable feature for sectors like finance and manufacturing where privacy cannot be compromised.⁷
Integration with Security Operations Center (SOC): The platform is designed to seamlessly plug into existing SOC workflows, providing automated incident triage, prioritization, orchestration (SOAR), and threat intelligence feeds.
Real-Time Response and Playbooks: Automated, expert-informed response playbooks are embedded, enabling the system to isolate compromised assets, block malicious actions, and notify stakeholders in real-time.

Real-Time Threat Identification and Prevention

The platform’s key value proposition is real-time, AI-powered threat detection:

Anomaly Detection: By continuously profiling network activity, user behaviors, and application interactions, the system identifies anomalous patterns that may signal insider threats, zero-day vulnerabilities, and advanced persistent threats (APTs).
Predictive Analytics: Predictive machine learning models forecast potential attack vectors and prioritize vulnerabilities, providing actionable alerts to security teams and enabling preemptive patching and mitigation.
Noise Reduction and Precision Alerting: Advanced data deduplication and noise reduction algorithms reduce false positives, merging similar alerts and refining incident triage for maximum clarity and efficiency.

Automated, Adaptive Defense

The use of reinforcement learning and deep neural network ensembles empowers the platform to:

Continuously Learn: The models adapt to evolving attack techniques, updating detection heuristics through continuous training on new malware and threat intelligence.
Automated Remediation: For a defined class of incidents, the platform initiates automated responses-blocking IPs, quarantining endpoints, and executing countermeasures-reducing mean time-to-response (MTTR) and limiting attacker dwell time.

Integration with Industry Standards

360 AI’s platform is designed to align with leading security frameworks and industry-specific compliance mandates:

Alignment with ISO 42001, NIST AI RMF: The platform offers built-in controls and logging to assist compliance with both Chinese and international norms.
Customizable Policy Enforcement: Sector-specific regulatory requirements (e.g., HIPAA in healthcare, CBIRC rules in finance) can be mapped into the platform’s policy engine, ensuring companies meet both national and regional compliance obligations.^{8, 9}

Table: 360 AI Cybersecurity Platform Capabilities and Industry Applications

Capability	Finance	Manufacturing	Healthcare	Energy
Real-time Threat Detection	✓ (Fraud, Insider Threats)	✓ (ICS/SCADA Anomalies)	✓ (Ransomware, Data Breaches)	✓ (Grid Anomalies)
AI-Powered Analytics	✓ (Behavioral, Transaction)	✓ (Predictive Maintenance, OT Monitoring)	✓ (PHI Access Monitoring)	✓ (Risk Modeling, Sensor Data)
Automated Response	✓ (Account Freezing)	✓ (Network Segmentation)	✓ (Incident Containment)	✓ (System Isolation)
Regulatory Compliance	✓ (CBIRC, ISO 42001)	✓ (National Industrial Standards)	✓ (HIPAA/HITRUST Alignment)	✓ (NERC CIP Alignment)

Commentary on Table

This table distills the platform’s core technological capabilities and cross-industry applicability:

In finance, the ability to detect and respond to fraud, monitor insider threats, and support regulatory audits is paramount, and 360 AI’s platform is equipped with specialized analytics and compliance tooling to this end. The demand for automated account freezing, rapid forensic investigation, and consortium-wide threat sharing (e.g., across joint ventures and interbank networks) plays into the platform’s strengths.⁸
Manufacturing environments involve a convergence of IT (information technology) and OT (operational technology), creating hybrid attack surfaces. The platform’s AI-driven monitoring of ICS/SCADA systems, predictive maintenance analytics, and capability to segment compromised network zones is crucial in an era of smart factories and IoT proliferation.¹⁰
Healthcare faces unique challenges around safeguarding personal health information (PHI), protecting Internet-connected medical devices, and ensuring HIPAA/HITRUST compliance. 360 AI’s behavioral analytics and incident response automation are tailored for early ransomware detection and rapid containment within hospital networks and across healthcare partners.¹¹
Energy sector systems-including power grids, distributed energy resources, and critical infrastructure-require robust anomaly detection, predictive risk modeling, and real-time response to both cyber and physical attacks. The platform’s machine learning models are designed to monitor SCADA data, predict system failures, and initiate fast shutdowns or isolation protocols when anomalies are detected.¹²

Industry-Specific Deep Dive: Platform Application and Impact

Financial Services: Advanced, Adaptive Defense

The financial sector in China faces relentless cyberattacks both from domestic and global actors seeking financial gain, disruption, or strategic leverage. Traditional defenses reliant on static signatures or basic heuristics are inadequate against sophisticated tactics such as polymorphic malware, AI-generated spear-phishing, supply chain attacks, and cross-border money laundering schemes.

360 AI’s platform addresses these risks through:

Advanced Multi-Model Analysis: By analyzing transaction flows, login events, message channels, and even voice patterns, the AI can flag suspicious activities and escalate high-severity anomalies for immediate review or automated blocking.
Fraud Detection: ML-driven behavioral analytics can detect anomalies in payment patterns, enabling banks to identify fraud and prevent loss in real-time, reducing reliance on slow, manual auditing systems.
Regulatory Alignment and Audit Support: The platform’s audit trails and compliance engines support Chinese Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) requirements, essential for regulated entities, and integrates with global best practices such as ISO 42001 and the NIST AI RMF framework.⁸
Consortium Intelligence Sharing: The use of federated learning ensures threat signals are shared across a network of institutions without exposing proprietary data, facilitating cross-bank collaboration without privacy compromise.

This is crucial as regulations tighten on cross-industry threat intelligence and as domestic AI risk management standards become increasingly enforced.¹³

Manufacturing: Protecting Smart Factories and OT Networks

Manufacturing is amid a sweeping transformation as connected machinery, IoT sensing, and AI-led automation become the norm. This digitization introduces new vulnerabilities-as legacy control systems are exposed to sophisticated cyberattacks, with potential for operational disruption, intellectual property theft, and supply chain compromise.

360 AI’s offering stands out through:

ICS/SCADA Security: The AI platform continuously monitors industrial networks for deviations from established behavioral baselines, allowing for fast identification of abnormal machine states or attempted lateral intrusions.
Real-Time Segmentation and Containment: In response to detected threats, the system can autonomously segment compromised zones, quarantining affected units to prevent propagation without shutting down entire production lines.
Predictive Maintenance and Threat Forecasting: Machine learning models analyze sensor data and maintenance logs to predict not just mechanical failures, but also early signs of cyber-physical attacks, facilitating proactive intervention.¹⁰
Compliance with National Industrial Standards: The platform accommodates industrial cybersecurity standards and can generate reports and evidence for regulatory audits under China’s Cybersecurity Law.

Healthcare: Safeguarding Patient Data and Medical Devices

The digitization of healthcare has amplified risks by connecting sensitive systems and patient data stores to broader networks. Hospitals and healthcare consortiums in China have reported increasing incidents of ransomware, data breaches, and AI-driven phishing.

Key benefits of 360 AI’s platform in healthcare include:

Protection of Patient Health Information (PHI): AI-powered user and entity behavior analytics detect anomalous access to medical records and can flag or block suspicious behavior from both internal and external actors.
Medical Device Security: The platform can monitor medical device traffic, identify vulnerabilities in connected equipment, and support rapid patch management and quarantine actions.
Automated HIPAA/HITRUST Compliance: While China’s regime is not identical to HIPAA, similar requirements for audit trails and privacy controls exist, and the platform’s compliance automation supports health sector regulations and best practices.¹¹

Energy: Securing Critical Infrastructure

The energy sector-including power grids, renewables, and oil/gas-represents a “high-consequence” target for both traditional and AI-enhanced cyberattacks. AI technologies are now recognized as both a source of resilience and of new attack vectors, as energy systems become increasingly software-driven and decentralized.

360 AI’s platform provides:

Continuous Monitoring of Industrial Systems: ML models process high-frequency sensor data from distributed energy resources, detecting threats no human analyst could reliably capture in real-time.
Grid-Scale Threat Analytics: The platform can forecast risks from network segmentation anomalies, suspicious traffic, or attempted intrusions across multiple plants or substations.
Incident Isolation and Automated Response: When an attack is detected, the system can execute automated shutdowns or isolation of affected subsections, reducing the risk of cascading failures and supporting incident forensics.¹²
Alignment with NERC CIP and National Standards: The platform supports compliance with new and emerging energy sector security regulations, facilitating reporting and evidence generation.

Broader Impact on China's Cybersecurity Landscape

Accelerating Market Adoption and Up-skilling

China’s cybersecurity market is expanding at a rapid pace, valued at over 220 billion RMB ($30.8 billion) in 2023, with over two dozen listed cyber firms operating in the field. AI-enabled tools are fueling a generational leap, as organizations seek scalable, automated, and adaptive defenses that can match the pace of increasingly automated threats. 360 AI’s platform has gained early traction owing to:

Integration into Existing Security Workflows: The system’s modular design and open APIs have made it compatible with both legacy and modern SOCs, facilitating rapid deployment across diverse IT/OT environments.
Case Studies and Early Wins: Reports from pilot implementations in municipal banks, manufacturing consortia, and hospital groups show significant drops in incident response times and improved compliance audit outcomes.
Workforce Upskilling: The platform not only automates routine incident response, reducing the human resource burden, but also builds capacity through in-platform training and support, echoing broader HR trends to “upskill” staff for AI transformation.¹⁴

Partnerships and Alliances

Strategic alliances-with cloud providers, telecommunications operators, and industrial partners-have featured prominently in 360 AI’s go-to-market approach. These partnerships allow for:

Scalable Distribution: By combining 360’s AI platform with telecom-scale networks and cloud infrastructure, industry partners can deploy advanced security at unprecedented scale.¹⁵
Accelerated Product Maturity: Collaborations with third-party AI vendors, research institutes, and SOC specialists bring fresh expertise, fostering innovation in the race to outpace increasingly adaptive adversaries.

Regulatory and Compliance Environment

China has recently enacted some of the world’s most comprehensive regulations on AI risk, cybersecurity, and data privacy. Key measures include:

AI Regulatory Framework: The Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services (coming into effect August 2023), new labeling rules for AI-generated content (September 2025), and several standards concerning data annotation, pre-training, and model security (coming into force in November 2025) require AI platform providers to build in safety, transparency, and compliance.¹³
Data and Network Security Laws: China’s Data Security Law, Personal Information Protection Law, and Cybersecurity Law set strict mandates for data handling, network monitoring, and algorithm governance-necessitating that platforms like 360 AI’s offer robust internal controls and auditable processes.
Industry-Specific Guidance: Guidelines for AI in financial services, manufacturing, energy, and healthcare sectors are being rapidly codified, raising the bar for baseline security and opening new opportunities for compliant, AI-powered services.

Competitive Landscape and Benchmarking

While 360 AI is a dominant player in the sector, competition is intense:

Peer Competitors: Companies such as Qi An Xin, Huawei, and Alibaba Cloud also offer AI-powered security solutions and are deepening their investments in vertical-specific offerings and real-time threat intelligence platforms. The market is further complicated by global players and innovative domestic startups.¹⁶
Comparative Advantages: 360 AI’s advantages are rooted in its legacy data troves, R&D talent, and ability to integrate threat intelligence and neural analytics at scale-backed by the credibility of national-scale deployments.
Challenges: Investors and analysts caution that China’s current VC environment is cautious, and that the whole-of-economy digital transformation may confront obstacles in talent supply, regulatory compliance, and ability to deliver truly interoperable solutions for both enterprise and SME users.¹⁷

Expert Perspectives and Forward Outlook

Leading Edge of AI Security

360 AI’s latest offering encapsulates industry trends highlighted by analysts and government advisors:

As AI and ML techniques continue to diversify, next-generation cybersecurity must combine adversarial robustness, explainability, and federated discovery of novel threats-even as attackers themselves harness AI for increasingly disruptive campaigns.
AI-driven defense is both a necessity and a risk; platform providers must bake in continuous learning and auditing features, and design incentive-compatible systems for sharing threat signals without undermining privacy or regulatory mandates.

National Security and Digital Sovereignty

360 AI’s positioning aligns with China’s strategic goals of digital sovereignty and technological self-reliance:

The company’s focus on developing indigenous large language models and neural frameworks underpins efforts to reduce foreign technology dependence and meet national content governance standards.
Government and SOE partnerships are likely to be a locus of growth, as “security AI” moves from a cost center to an essential enabler of national resilience and industrial modernization.¹⁷

Adoption Barriers and User Perspectives

Adoption of AI-driven security is inhibited by “friction factors” such as integration complexity, lack of in-house expertise, and organizational inertia.

Early adopters, however, report significant improvements in mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR), suggesting that those able or willing to invest in next-generation defenses achieve quantifiable ROI in operational risk reduction.

Continuous Evolution and Global Lessons

Global cybersecurity observers note that the Chinese market is setting precedents-both in technical innovation and regulatory alignment-that may be echoed elsewhere. Simultaneously, the “arms race” dynamic wherein AI is both a shield and a sword for defenders and attackers respectively necessitates continuous vigilance, collaboration, and investment across all players in the ecosystem.

Conclusion

Under Zhang Xuefeng’s leadership, 360 AI is redefining the landscape of digital security in China, merging deep AI and big data capabilities with hard-won experience in large-scale threat defense. Its AI-driven cybersecurity platform delivers real-time, automated, and sector-specific protections that are already transforming critical infrastructure in finance, manufacturing, healthcare, and energy. While the regulatory, economic, and competitive context presents real challenges, the launch marks a substantive advance toward robust, intelligent, and adaptive digital security in China-setting both a benchmark and a challenge for peers domestically and abroad.

360 AI’s experience also holds implications for enterprise technology leaders globally: In an era where cyber threats “think” as rapidly as defenders, only those armed with adaptive, transparent, and operationally integrated AI will be able to safeguard the data, infrastructure, and reputations upon which the digital economy depends.