By the Huangpu River, crowds surged.
The annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference arrived as scheduled, and the scale this year was astonishing—the total exhibition area exceeded 100,000 square meters for the first time, with over 1,100 enterprises showcasing more than 3,000 exhibits, and over 300 products making their global debut. The venue was packed, and the excitement was palpable.
"It's too hot; without booking in advance, nearby hotels were simply unavailable," said an AI investor who had traveled from Beijing, securing his trip as early as last month. On the high-speed train to Shanghai, he unexpectedly found several peers.
Even more exaggerated was the ticket situation. Standard tickets originally priced at 168 yuan were scalped for up to 2,000 yuan. "Having money doesn't guarantee a ticket," remarked an investor who managed to secure one only through a portfolio company, adding, "This must be the most popular year in WAIC's history."
"If you didn't come, you can't be considered a qualified AI investor"—a subtle sense of FOMO permeated the air.
This Year's Hottest Conference
1,100 AI Companies Gather
Now in its ninth year, WAIC is like a condensed history of AI evolution.
Upon entering the venue, an intense atmosphere hit immediately. Recalling two or three years ago, the most prominent items on company displays were parameter counts, context lengths, and benchmark rankings. By 2025, embodied prototypes and Agent demonstrations began appearing on the stages.
This year, every exhibitor presented products capable of running in real-world scenarios, even displaying production and delivery figures. From "comparing parameters" to "comparing implementation," AI has finally stepped out from the screens.
This year's WAIC adopted a "three locations, four venues" model for the first time, linking Zhangjiang, World Expo, and Xuhui. Among them, the Shanghai World Expo Exhibition Center is the largest and most comprehensive exhibition area, covering the entire industry chain and hosting the most concentrated array of global debut products—H1 focuses on industrial applications, H2 on foundational computing power, H3 on robotics, and H4 on startups.
H1 Hall concentrated on showcasing the implementation progress of large models and intelligent agents, MiniMax M3, Wu Wen Xin Qiong InfiniClawBox secure and desensitized intelligent agents, Kimi released its most powerful model, K3, on the opening day. H2 Hall resembled a "military review" of computing power, with Huawei premiering the industry's largest-scale super-node Atlas 950 SuperPoD, displaying 1,024 Ascend cards on-site, a scale 56.8 times that of the NVIDIA NVL144 solution.
The most popular venue was undoubtedly H3 Hall, a paradise for robotics enthusiasts. Over 200 leading robotics enterprises, 208 embodied intelligent terminals, and more than 300 real machines performed dynamic demonstrations simultaneously, leaving the venue packed and impassable.
Unitree Technology showcased the world's first manned transforming mecha GD01; Zhiyuan exhibited a "Workaholic Team," directly moving a real production line into the venue; Tashi Zhi Hang A1 robots demonstrated operational capabilities on an actual industrial production line. Additionally, Leju, Yinhe Tongyong, Kuaguai Intelligent, Fourier, Qianxun Intelligent, Geek+, Zhuji Dynamics, and others brought their next-generation embodied products, differentiating from those that merely "walk" to those that truly "work."
The Xuhui West Bund venue was equally lively. Sheng Shu Keji, Bilibili, and Tencent gathered in the digital perception exhibition area; Honor, NetEase Youdao, iFLYTEK, and others showcased the latest AI-powered daily devices. There were also devices like Rokid·Leqi AI glasses, Liangliang Vision Hey2 AR translation glasses, and Xin Mou Keji Monet AI glasses, so light they were almost unnoticeable. The Zhangjiang exhibition area assembled over a hundred computing power chip companies, with nearly all mainstream domestic GPU manufacturers present, and 67 products making their domestic debut.
Many familiar faces also presented new achievements: Xiaohongshu demonstrated the RED Skill and Vibe Coding content ecosystem, Baixing Intelligent released the new product OntoZ, Qiyuan Robotics introduced the world's first transformable personal robot T1, and Mianbi Intelligent, in collaboration with the Zhiyuan Research Institute, released a latest report.
The list goes on and on.
Investors Are Frantically Busy
"WAIC available for meetings," AI investors collectively updated their WeChat signatures.
Investors focusing on AI naturally wouldn't miss this annual AI extravaganza. "Just shout out in a friend circle, and you can easily organize a train car to go," said an investor friend within the circle, barely containing his excitement about organizing a trip to Shanghai.
Looking around, investors were everywhere. The WAIC Future-Tech Venture Capital zone in H4 Hall gathered over 160 outstanding startups, more than 70% of which were founded less than three years ago, and over 50% of the founders were post-90s. Over 80 top investment institutions, including Sequoia Capital China, Hillhouse Capital, and ZhenFund, set up dedicated capital对接 (connection) zones. Perhaps the next unicorn will emerge from here.
"Must go see the 'Six Dragons' of world models share the stage." During the conference, founders of six leading world model companies gathered for an exclusive roundtable: Tao Dacheng (Founder of Da Xiao Robot), Shen Yujun (Chief Scientist of Ant Lingbo), Zhu Zheng (President of Jijia Vision), Xia Zhongpu (CTO of Wujie Dynamics), Ren Guanghui (Technical Head of Zhiyuan Robotics), Wang Hao (CTO of Argument Robotics). This was a moment physical AI investors did not want to miss.
The presence of Shanghai Guotou (State Investment) was also notable. Its hosted "POWER·Open Mic" event brought together for the first time key enterprises across computing power, algorithms, data, embodied intelligence, and AI applications. Additionally, Zhou Zhifeng, Managing Partner of Qiming Venture Partners, would release the "2026 Qiming Venture AI Top 10 Outlook" at a forum.
Side events led by investment institutions were equally popular this year. Lanchi Ventures hosted Booming Night, Source Code Capital initiated WAIC After Hours, Linear Capital held an AI circle "True/False Rumors King Competition" by the Huangpu River, Hua Ying Capital organized "Tsinghua Science and Innovation Night," and Jin Qiu Capital held Founders Back Founders.
Other venture capital and FA institutions, including 5Y Capital, Yunqi Partners, 9F Capital, Ming Shi Capital, Xing Lian Capital, Changshi Capital, MiraclePlus, Gao Hu Capital, and Guangyuan Capital, also launched their own events.
This clearly kept investors incredibly busy; walking 20,000 steps a day is no exaggeration.
Their schedules were fragmented into half-hour blocks: viewing real computing power chip launches in the morning, having closed-door in-depth discussions with embodied intelligence founders at noon, rushing to three vertical track roundtables in the afternoon, followed by multiple consecutive closed-door pitch sessions and after-parties in the evening. If you invest in AI but didn't attend WAIC, you likely missed the most authentic and interesting changes in China's AI landscape.
Youth Storm
AI Is Giving Birth to a Batch of Trillion-Dollar Companies
The popularity of WAIC is precisely a vivid reflection of this year's AI investment boom.
Public data shows that in the first half of 2026, the total financing amount in China's embodied intelligence sector exceeded 90 billion yuan, more than five times the amount from the same period last year. Expanding the scope to the entire AI sector, there were 1,203 financing events in the first half of the year, with a total amount exceeding 300 billion yuan, far surpassing the entirety of 2025.
In other words, just the AI sector alone absorbed nearly half of the VC funds in the first half of the year.
Billion-dollar valuation unicorns surfaced one after another. Names like Yun Shen Chu, Argument Robotics, Zhi Ping Fang, Xing Hai Tu, Qianxun Intelligent, Zhong Qing Intelligent, Xing Dong Ji Yuan, Zhuji Dynamics, and Kuaguai Intelligent successively crossed that threshold.
The heat from the financing end soon spread to the IPO side. According to incomplete statistics, at least 20 embodied intelligence companies have clarified their IPO plans this year. Quietly, an IPO listing has become a race concerning survival—whoever lands on the capital market first has a greater chance of staying in the game.
Unitree is about to list on the STAR Market, opening a window for the industry. Everyone is wondering: can a Chinese embodied company truly stand at the center of the global stage? This is the most imaginative part of the Chinese embodied intelligence narrative.
Outside the venues, discussions about the next billion, trillion-dollar valuations were happening in every corner. "The internet ultimately produced trillion-dollar companies, and artificial intelligence will definitely produce trillion-dollar companies too, and it will come faster than the internet," judged a managing partner of a dual-currency fund in Shanghai.
This is not fantasy. Zhipu's market cap once surged past one trillion, DeepSeek has a latest valuation exceeding 350 billion yuan, reportedly preparing for a STAR Market IPO; Kimi , valued at over 200 billion yuan, is expected to complete its Hong Kong listing within six months. Looking overseas, when Anthropic and OpenAI set valuation caps in the trillions of dollars, the ceiling for China's AI sector is far from being touched.
The flow of money is always profound.
At this very moment, those investors shuttling between exhibition booths, with "ammunition" in hand, are step by step drawing the technological map for the next decade. Perhaps, the next trillion-dollar company is hidden in some booth, some closed-door meeting, or some inadvertent conversation. No one wants to miss it.
This article is from the WeChat public account "Investment Community" (ID: pedaily2012), author: Zhou Jiali
