Wang Dengke
Wang Dengke (王登科, often credited as DK) is the founder of Duxiang (独响), an AI companion app its website calls “your AI friend circle.” His team also built The One, an AI companion product that runs inside WeChat. Related entry: The One.
Background and products
Earlier projects: per a May 2025 PingWest profile and a Z Potentials interview (republished by Tencent News), Wang Dengke became known for “one-wave” AI micro-apps such as the HongHong Simulator (哄蹦模拟器). He started Mianbaoduo (mbd.pub), a content-monetization platform, in 2019, and built 6pen, an early text-to-image product he says he shut down after burning several million RMB. The interview also says he ran his first company from late 2016 to 2023, raising four small rounds.
Duxiang: the Z Potentials interview says the app launched in 2024, after he decided to “use large models for consumer products that bring people emotional value” and spun the team into a new company with its existing shareholders; the first round was invested by Jinqiu Fund (a ByteDance-affiliated fund), which PingWest reports at about US$1 million. Duxiang avoids one-on-one chat and instead uses an asynchronous, feed-like interaction where AI characters reply to what users post; PingWest reports about 50,000 daily active users in roughly ten months, with a user base concentrated among high-school and college students. The Duxiang website’s copyright line names the operating entity as Beijing Baolie Guoshi Technology Co., Ltd. (北京暴裂果实科技有限公司).
The One: in a May 2026 blog post, Wang Dengke writes that theOne, a WeChat-based AI companion, gained one million registered users in three days starting April 24, 2026, and burned hundreds of billions of tokens in a single day; the post describes how the product connects to WeChat through the OpenClaw plugin entry that Tencent opened in March. Third-party tracker Bonjour! lists Wang Dengke as the founder of the Duxiang/TheOne team.
Discussion in the show
Wang Dengke does not appear in the episodes quoted on this page. In Weekly #002’s chapter on in-platform AI assistants, while discussing the importance of interface entry points, Orange says “Wang Dengke’s team built The One, and it just exploded,” then relays what he heard from the team when he asked about problems: the OpenClaw QR code provided by WeChat is unstable and about 10% of messages fail to arrive; when asked why they don’t build an app or website, they said users love staying in their WeChat contact list. See the line in the Chinese transcript. Yang Pan then asks which product this is, and Orange answers “The One — it isn’t even an agent, it’s just a chat,” adding that scanning a QR code to start chatting raised conversion roughly sixfold. See that line and the chapter. These are Orange’s relayed accounts and his own assessment, not statements by Wang Dengke.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Wang Dengke?
The founder of Duxiang, often credited as DK, previously known for one-wave AI micro-apps like the HongHong Simulator. He should not be confused with other people of the same name; this page is about the AI-application entrepreneur.
What is The One?
A WeChat-based AI companion app by the Duxiang team, where users chat with AI characters inside their WeChat contact list. Wang Dengke’s blog records one million registered users in three days in late April 2026; see the blog post.
What is Duxiang?
An AI companion app positioned as “your AI friend circle,” using asynchronous interaction rather than live chat, operated by Beijing Baolie Guoshi Technology Co., Ltd. and seed-funded by Jinqiu Fund; see the official site.