Record Scale
July 17-20. The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance opens in Shanghai.
The numbers:
- 1,100+ companies exhibiting — a record
- 300+ global product debuts
- Exhibition area breaks 100,000 sqm for the first time
- 140+ forums, 1,400+ guests from China and abroad
- 9 Turing Award or Nobel Prize laureates
The intelligent computing and embodied intelligence zones each host 200+ companies. These are the two hottest tracks this year.
What to Watch
Compute: Domestic Super-Nodes Debut
Huawei exhibits the Atlas 950 Super Node — a 1,024-GPU cluster with total capacity exceeding 500,000 GPUs. The industry's largest-scale super-node.
Sugon rolls out the scaleX 100,000-GPU ultra-intelligent converged cluster — China's largest AI-for-Science compute cluster.
ZTE, with Biren, Enflame, Tianshu Zhixin, and others, showcases the domestically developed Matrix super-node based on OEX plus dOCS architecture.
Dongfang Suanxin uses software-defined chip design plus near-memory computing to match advanced-process performance, relying entirely on a domestic supply chain.
Models: MiniMax M3 Multimodal Premiere
MiniMax globally debuts the M3 multimodal LLM. StepFun's Agent operating system is also on the premiere list.
Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, and SenseTime all showcase their latest models and AI agent applications. This generation of agents isn't just assistants — they natively handle cross-app workflow understanding, desktop operation, autonomous task decomposition, and long-term memory.
Embodied AI: Humanoid Production Lines
The National-Local Joint Innovation Center for Humanoid Robots partners with Huawei to build an embodied intelligence training system on Ascend compute, with a cloud-edge-device architecture.
It also launches a pilot production platform for small-batch humanoid manufacturing, solving flexible production from prototype to mass. Unitree debuts a robotic lights-out factory.
WAIC Academic, First Edition
This year launches WAIC Academic — a high-level international academic conference chaired by Turing Award winner Andrew Yao, with 280+ paper submissions worldwide.
Reinforcement-learning pioneer Richard Sutton delivers a keynote. Deep-learning leader Yoshua Bengio presents the UN's AI governance work. 2025 Turing laureate Gilles Brassard and 2025 Nobel laureate Omar Yaghi both attend.
A Number to Remember
In 2025, Shanghai's 394 AI companies above designated size generated 637 billion yuan in output, up nearly 40% year-over-year. AI has become a key driver of the city's economic growth.
What Regular People Can See
WAIC isn't just closed-door forums. This year it extends AI experiences across all of Shanghai: Zhangjiang AI Carnival features robot combat, robot dog obstacle races, and AI tennis. West Bund has an AI-native zone and AI Geek Training Camp. A 24-landmark City Walk route lets you join with an Alipay tap.
Nighttime brings a youth AI music show and a creators' night. For ordinary citizens, it's a zero-barrier chance to touch the AI frontier.
If you're in Shanghai, worth a visit. If not, streams and a virtual hall are available online.