Joey Wat

Company: Yum ChinaTitle: Chief Executive OfficerIndustry: Food/restaurantNotable in 2024: Wat brought the generative AI revolution to fast food, launching new capabilities that provide Yum China's restaurants with a real-time view of food safety risks across the supply chain.

The U.S. and China are in a closely-watched rivalry over the future of technology and AI more specifically. One place you might not immediately look to monitor it – might not be able to see the rivalry because it's happening behind the scenes – is in the fast food industry. When it comes to adoption of AI to run operations, from customer-facing technology to vast supply chains, few companies have done more than Yum China under the leadership of CEO Joey Wat, who has been CEO since 2018.

Leading a company of over 400,000 employees and 16,000-plus restaurants in over 2,000 cities and towns across China, and serving one-third of the country's population, Wat has spearheaded a dual mission of operational efficiency and innovation that go hand in hand for brands including KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, as well as Little Sheep and Huang Ji Huang.

In addition to customer-facing digital initiatives, including the introduction of 600 new and upgraded products in 2024, Yum China has launched a digital supplier program to serve its supply chain management system, which has 800 core suppliers across food, beverages, packaging materials, construction, warehousing, and transportation.

The company also brought generative AI into the supply chain, to help its food safety efforts and to identify risks as early as possible across global supply chains. AI-driven logistics are also helping the company prepare for extreme weather events and traffic delays, with a pilot program currently running across more than 100 supplier locations offering up to three million route options.

The company's operating profits increased by 18% year-over-year in the quarter reported last November, a metric which Wat told CNBC shows, "We must have done something right."

In the just-reported fourth quarter, per share earnings hit an all-time high.

Wat is among the CEOs known to learn firsthand what will resonate with customers, sitting for hours in restaurants and observing behavior and engaging with patrons, or as she told CNBC, gaining "small insights from consumers that are very valuable."

The need for broader innovation and efficiencies will continue to increase given Yum China's ongoing expansion plans: 1,800 new stores in 2025, similar to the 2024 level.

As Wat's chief supply chain officer Howard Huang said in a recent keynote address at a conference, echoing Wat's view of the relationship between innovation and efficiency: "We don't see supply chain as a supporting function, but rather as a powerful enabler for our entire business."

At the end of 2024, Yum China had over a half-billion members. Yum is targeting 20,000 stores nationwide by 2026, which would give it the ability to reach up to 700 million people, half of the Chinese population.