Guided by multilateralism and an open, inclusive mindset, China has proactively advanced global artificial intelligence governance and international collaboration, contributing Chinese solutions to fuel global growth in the intelligent era.
Zhou Haibing, deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that China took the lead in rolling out the Global AI Governance Initiative, which upholds the core tenets of beneficial, secure, controllable, inclusive and equitable AI development.
Launched in 2018, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference bears the core mission of putting this initiative into practice and stands as one of China's most high-profile international events dedicated to AI.
WAIC 2026 kicks of in Shanghai on July 17 and will run through July 20.
"We look forward to taking this conference as an opportunity to further strengthen international cooperation on AI with all partners," Zhou said.
Centered on the theme "AI Partnership for a Brighter Future", this year's event consists of six core modules: conferences and forums, exhibitions and showcases, competitions and awards, application and experience, investment and incubation, as well as talent and recruitment, aiming to elevate its strategic leadership and global influence to new heights.
Boasting record-breaking professional strength and industrial momentum, the conference will host more than 140 forums and side events. It has built partnerships with 12 central government ministries, eight national key laboratories, more than 10 international organizations, over 10 top-tier research institutions and 20-plus world-class universities, bringing together more than 1,500 distinguished guests to exchange cutting-edge insights.
A breakthrough this year is WAIC Academic, a high-standard international AI academic conference hosted by the WAIC for the first time.
Professor Yao Qizhi, Turing Award winner and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, serves as the general chair.
This year's WAIC exhibition covers three major venues spanning a total area of over 100,000 square meters, each with distinct positioning.
The Shanghai World Expo Exhibition Hall presents a full-spectrum showcase of AI applications; the West Bund International Convention and Exhibition Center in Xuhui district functions as an immersive hub showcasing futuristic technologies for the public; and the Zhangjiang Science Hall puts intelligent infrastructure and chip development front and center.
More than 1,100 enterprises are displaying more than 4,400 cutting-edge exhibits, including over 300 AI products making their global debuts. More than 200 enterprises are focusing on intelligent computing and embodied intelligence.
To discover outstanding AI talents and cultivate young innovators, this year's conference has upgraded its competition lineup. It retains the well-known SAIL Award while introducing new contests such as the OPC Independent Pioneer Challenge, forming a full-cycle talent development system integrating competitions, industry exchanges and startup incubation.
From left on the front row: Mark Nitzberg, executive director of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence at UC Berkeley AI Research Lab; E Weinan, mathematician and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Richard S. Sutton, professor of computing science at University of Alberta, research scientist at Oak Lab Inc, and chief scientist at Openmind; and Omar M. Yaghi, winner of the 2025 Nobel Prize in chemistry and chair professor at Tsinghua University. From left on the back row: Harry Shum, former executive vice-president of Microsoft Corp, foreign member of the US National Academy of Engineering and council chairman of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology; Nicholas B. Dirks, president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Gilles Brassard, winner of the 2025 Turing Award and professor of Computer Science at the University of Montreal; and Yoshua Bengio, winner of Turing Award, full professor at University of Montreal, Canada, and co-president and scientific director of LawZero.
WAIC CONNECT
WAIC CONNECT, the official industrial matchmaking platform of the annual event, is built to accelerate the commercial rollout of AI technologies.
This year, the platform will unlock 20 billion yuan ($2.93 billion) in real procurement demand and establish partnerships with industry leaders including COFCO, CRRC, Changan Automobile, China Energy Investment, Shanghai Electric, India's Tata Group, Unity and Nestle. It facilitates seamless one-on-one business matchmaking between tech solution suppliers and industrial buyers.
The scope of on-site matchmaking spaces has been expanded to three core zones with differentiated positioning.
The Shanghai World Expo Exhibition Hall serves as the core venue for industrial application exchanges, showcasing industrial large models, embodied intelligence, digital transformation solutions for finance, manufacturing and healthcare, as well as pathways for cross-border market expansion.
The Zhangjiang venue operates as a dedicated hub for computing infrastructure, with a focus on chip manufacturing, computing centers, quantum computing and chip-computing integration.
In contrast, the Xuhui West Bank venue acts as a gateway to future life scenarios, centering on smart wearables, AIGC (AI-generated content) cultural creation, intelligent public services and cultural tourism consumption.
Complementing fixed-zone exhibitions, over 20 themed industrial matchmaking sessions will run throughout the conference. Each session is tailored to specific procurement requirements and supported by exclusive purchasing delegations.
From left on the front row: Liu Ziming, principal investigator at Shanghai Qi Zhi Institute and assistant professor at Tsinghua University; Cha Hao, chairman and CEO of Shanghai Smart Logic Technology; Cao Yue, founder and CEO of Sand.ai; and Hu Xiaohe, Infrawaves founder and CEO. From left on the back row: Yin Qi, chairman of StepFun and chairman of Afari Technology; Su Hao, "Haoqing" distinguished professor at Fudan University and inaugural dean of the Fudan Institute of General Physical Intelligence; Roger Jiang, founder and CEO of Light Origins; and and Shen Yichen, founder and chairman of Lightelligence.
WAIC UP!
WAIC UP!, the conference's flagship publication, tracks cutting-edge developments across the entire AI landscape.
As of June, seven quarterly volumes have been released, featuring more than 70 cross-sector global trailblazers ranging from Turing Award laureates and academicians to sci-fi authors, artists and astronomers, with exclusive in-depth analysis amounting to 700,000 words in total.
Back in January, WAIC UP! hosted its debut year-end global summit at Hong Kong Science Park. Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu delivered a video address, and over 40 top global scholars and industrial leaders took the stage.
The event marked a landmark strategic alignment between AI industrial practices on the Chinese mainland and Hong Kong's strength as an international innovation hub.
This year, WAIC UP! has rolled out a suite of upgraded offerings to enrich its global influence, starting with a newly launched youth observer column. It recruits outstanding young minds from top universities worldwide.
These young participants take on triple roles as industry observers, agenda co-creators and opinion contributors, whose unique viewpoints and firsthand industry insights are published alongside views from veteran industry leaders.
Building on these upgrades, the WAIC UP! team will co-host a schedule of events both day and night in July, before returning to Hong Kong in December for another year-end summit. The gathering will bring together insightful industry discussions to recap milestones of the year and map out forward-looking trends for all AI stakeholders.
WAIC 2025 attracts a multitude of participants from global academic and business communities. CHINA DAILY
WAIC YOUNG
Centered on nurturing the creators of tomorrow, WAIC YOUNG bridges the gap of real-world practical opportunities rarely available in school curricula. It builds a comprehensive growth ecosystem spanning creation, hands-on training, competitions and exhibitions.
Empowering young people to imagine and break boundaries, the platform unlocks a brand-new AI landscape driven by their vibrant ingenuity.
Between 2025 and this year, WAIC YOUNG has rolled out regular campus training programs while launching three flagship competitions: AIGC music creation, AI meets intangible cultural heritage and a quadruped robot obstacle challenge.
This year, WAIC YOUNG debuts the Music Creation Universe, WAIC's first dedicated AI music showcase spotlighting original AIGC works by teenage creators, which offers a bespoke stage for young talents to display their musical inspirations.
Unlike most mainstream music variety shows that rely heavily on virtual singers and merely use AI for auxiliary arrangement, this showcase stays true to creative ethos of Generation Alpha (those currently under 17 years old), guided by its core principle of "youth creation, live human performance".
All award-winning and short-listed pieces from the AIGC music contest will be featured in rotating showcases on the dedicated performance stage. Celebrity guests will host on-site sharing forums, enabling young creators to connect with top-tier industry resources.
WAIC Future Tech
Groundbreaking disruptive innovations often lie in the hands of young talents yet to gain global recognition — and Future Tech exists to discover these breakthroughs ahead of the curve.
As the venture capital ecosystem arm of WAIC, Future Tech identifies promising youth-led startups and connects them with investors, industrial application partners and technical resources.
In 2025, Future Tech selected over 200 early-stage projects from more than 600 global entries to showcase at the conference. About 70 percent of these ventures were founded within three years, and post-1990s founders accounted for over 40 percent of all founding teams.
This year, 22 one-person companies, or OPCs, and 158 startups stood out from 1,200 innovative projects after rigorous screening and secured booths in WAIC's venture ecosystem exhibition zone.
The participating enterprises focus on four core tracks: industrial applications, embodied intelligence and end devices, computing infrastructure and cutting-edge technologies. Industrial applications and embodied intelligence remain the most competitive tracks this year, with these young teams deeply embedded in real-world industrial scenarios.
Future Tech also launched the OPC challenge this year, centered on three core concepts: originality, open-source and individual entrepreneurship. The national grand finale concluded on June 17, where eight top teams prevailed from over 600 projects across eight regional divisions to compete in the final round.
Covering gaming, sleep health, education, finance, office efficiency, healthcare and other verticals, the eight teams will receive direct access to this year's WAIC in July, displaying their products at dedicated booths for in-depth exchanges and on-site discussions.
Selecting promising projects is merely the starting point, Future Tech delivers tangible, high-value matchmaking resources for startups. For WAIC 2026, its venture ecosystem has forged partnerships with numerous capital firms and investment institutions, extending targeted invitations to over 200 professional AI investors and setting up an exclusive zone for capital matchmaking.
AI GRAVITY
Positioned as a core builder of global arenas for Chinese AI enterprises, AI GRAVITY has constructed a high-trust, self-evolving and sustainable global AI collaborative ecosystem, offering a brand-new solution to help the industry break free from inefficient overseas expansion.
Singapore serves as the pivotal starting point of AI GRAVITY's global strategy. Boasting solid overseas operation capabilities, the platform has entered a long-term comprehensive strategic partnership with MP International, moving beyond superficial one-off event cooperation to participate in the regular development of the global AI ecosystem.
Built on this foundation, a replicable overseas industrial layout with a benchmark value for the sector has taken shape, creating a mature, reusable channel for Chinese AI companies to expand globally.
Drawing on proven operational experience in Singapore, AI GRAVITY formally rolled out its dual core strategy this year. Rejecting the half-hearted trial-and-error mindset prevalent in the industry, it focuses on two core high-value markets: ASEAN and Northeast Asia. Customized collaboration frameworks tailored to each region's industrial characteristics enable deep localized symbiosis and refined in-depth market cultivation.
Harnessing the premier international influence of WAIC 2026, AI GRAVITY has taken the lead in partnering with IPI, Singapore's official innovation agency, to launch a flagship ecosystem forum — the ASEAN-China AI Technology and Industrial Cooperation Forum.
This forum centers on tangible commercial implementation, addressing the widespread pain point of domestic tech innovators: possessing robust technology yet struggling with overseas commercialization. It delivers targeted, in-depth and actionable cross-border industrial dialogues revolving around three key pillars: cross-border strategic layout, localized deployment mechanisms and industrial commercial monetization.
The forum will also host the launch ceremony for the AI GRAVITY APAC 2026 Annual Initiative, officially opening full access to ASEAN industrial resources, cross-border collaboration channels and localized supporting services, laying a long-term service foundation for subsequent regional expansion projects.
