WAIC 2026 Signals Top-Level Endorsement for China's AI Ambitions

The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC 2026) and High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance, kicking off on Friday in Shanghai, marks a powerful top-level endorsement of both the city's rapid development and China's strategic AI roadmap.

It is confirmed that President Xi Jinping will attend the event.

As AI increasingly integrates into smartphones, robotics, manufacturing and daily life, this high-profile attendance underscores its role as a cornerstone of future economic growth for the world's second-largest economy.

The four-day conference has drawn a record-breaking footprint across Shanghai, featuring over 1,100 confirmed exhibitors who will display more than 3,000 innovative products, including 300 global debuts. The exhibition covers an unprecedented 100,000 square meters across venues in the Pudong New Area and Xuhui District.

Under the theme "AI Partnership for a Brighter Future," WAIC 2026 includes major sections spanning high-level forums, interactive exhibitions, competitions, application showcases, innovation incubation, and talent recruitment. The summit expects more than 1,400 international guests across 140-plus forums.

This is not the first time President Xi has engaged with China's flagship AI event, having previously sent congratulatory messages to prior editions. His involvement was heavily visible when he visited the Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center in Xuhui last year – now the world's biggest AI incubator and an AI computing capability "supermarket" spawned from a previous WAIC initiative.

There, he observed demos of advanced humanoid robots and large language models (LLMs). Today, several of those incubated startups have successfully gone public on the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong bourses, emerging as high-profile capital market performers.

Shanghai's role as a global AI hub makes this top-level support unsurprising. According to Shanghai Vice Mayor Chen Jie, as of 2025, Shanghai was home to 394 large-scale AI enterprises that generated a combined revenue of 637 billion yuan (US$94 billion), reflecting a staggering 39.5 percent year-on-year growth.

Looking ahead, Xu Qi, deputy secretary-general of the Shanghai AI Industry Association (SAIA), projected that annual AI industry revenues in the city will surpass the 1-trillion-yuan threshold during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030).

The WAIC has evolved beyond a standard industry convention into an expansive, highly active ecosystem. WAIC 2025 drew over 350,000 visitors despite severe summer weather and facilitated 156 procurement groups resulting in 16.2 billion yuan in intended deals.

With WAIC 2026 featuring an extended four-day format, organizers expect to shatter previous records, as daily exhibition tickets were already completely sold out ahead of the opening.

The event has also become a leading academic platform, featuring prominent global voices. Speakers this year include Turing Award winner Yao Qizhi; Professor Richard Sutton, renowned as "the father of reinforcement learning;" Zheng Qinghua, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Engineering; and Lee Kai-Fu, a veteran technology investor and former head of Google China.

In terms of groundbreaking debuts, Huawei's Ascend 950 SuperPoD, or Atlas 950 SuperPoD, will be unveiled to the public for the first time as the industry's largest-scale physical AI supernode, illustrating the scale and momentum of China's underlying computing power.

Next-generation edge-AI mobile devices will also be unveiled by hardware innovators, including StepFun, ZTE and Honor. Meanwhile, a specialized robotics zone will deploy at least 200 humanoid robots, showcasing live automations intended to reshape factory floors and consumer service industries.

The push aligns with data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which expects China's domestic production to surpass 100,000 humanoid robots as automation deepens nationwide.

Reflecting structural shifts in AI entrepreneurship, WAIC 2026 is introducing a dedicated One-Person Company, or OPC, Zone.

Enabled by sophisticated LLMs and autonomous agents, lean teams and independent developers can now manage the entire product cycle from ideation to delivery alone. According to WAIC organizers, Shanghai has rapidly become a hotbed for this paradigm, already hosting more than 600 officially active one-person companies.

A new WAIC City Walk activity makes debut this year, connecting 24 urban landmarks across Shanghai. The routes will cover six themes and show the city's existing AI innovations, covering ecosystems, science education, urban renewal, consumer and entertainment applications and industrial innovation. The sites include the Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center in Xuhui, which President Xi visited last year.

Visitors will be able to use Alipay's tap function to open the City Walk mini program, access route information and join stamp-collection activities.