Yirun Chen is the founder of VBNCITY and the creator of Lumi, a screen-free AI companion plush for children that listens, thinks and answers in under 2 seconds. He conceived the product and carried it through every stage, from character design, materials and plush sampling to the circuit board, firmware, cloud speech pipeline, parent app, certification and launch. In 2026 Lumi received a Mom’s Choice Award and a MUSE Design Award.
His work at each stage, from the first sketch to the first sale.
Yirun
Streaming in both directions: the child hears the first word less than two seconds after finishing the question.
A language model tuned for how 3–8-year-olds speak and what they ask: short, warm, concrete answers.
Every reply is scored by an independent safety model before it is spoken; a fallback model replaces any that fail. Parents are alerted to risky conversations.
Lumi remembers across conversations, so each talk picks up where the last one left off.
A US seal for products made for children and families. Entries are evaluated by an independent panel of parents, educators, librarians and child-development professionals, bound by an ethics code that bars ties to the manufacturer.
Winner page ↗
An international design competition run by the International Awards Associate, judged by a panel of working professionals in product design, architecture and creative direction.
Winner page ↗Lumi is on sale at vbncity.com and on TikTok Shop. For partnerships, distribution, or hardware and AI projects, write to Yirun directly.
