WAIC 2026 Opens in Shanghai with 300+ Global AI Debuts
The 2026 World AI Conference (WAIC) & High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance officially opened today in Shanghai, marking one of the largest AI showcases on the planet.
By the Numbers
Under the theme "Intelligent Partners, Co-create the Future," this year's conference brings together more than 1,100 companies and over 3,000 exhibits, with more than 300 AI products making their global debuts. The scale underscores AI's accelerating transition from research labs into practical, real-world applications.
Historic International Agreement
In a landmark development, 29 countries signed an agreement to establish the World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO), an independent intergovernmental organization headquartered in Shanghai. The organization, which upholds the purposes of the UN Charter, aims to promote international cooperation and global governance on AI, ensuring it remains beneficial, safe, and fair for all humanity.
Humanoid Robots Take Center Stage
Several cutting-edge embodied AI products are making their public debuts at the conference:
- AGILINK's OmniHand 3 Ultra-M: A dexterous robotic hand matching human hand size with 20 degrees of freedom, visual-tactile sensors on all five fingertips, and distributed 3D tactile sensing across the palm. The company will showcase the world's only publicly demonstrated bimanual balloon-dog folding. - Agibot's Genie G2 Max: A heavy-duty embodied intelligent robot developed with JD Logistics, featuring an 18 kg single-arm payload and up to 50 kg peak payload, with sub-millimeter precision and 24/7 autonomous operation. - SenseTime's SenseMart Go: An AI retail solution featuring humanoid robots that independently pick products, organize shelves, conduct inventory, and handle exceptions.
AI Models and Infrastructure
Beyond robotics, the conference showcases breakthroughs in AI models and computing:
- MiniMax's M3: A next-generation native multimodal flagship model supporting 1 million token context, built on the proprietary MSA (MiniMax Sparse Attention) architecture. - BrainCo's Brain-Controlled Robot Training Platform: Described as the world's first integrated, graphical, one-stop AI research platform for brain-controlled robotics. Developers without prior BCI expertise can enable mind-controlled robot operations within 10 minutes. - Huawei's Atlas 950: The industry's largest commercial supernode, featuring a minimum 64 cards per cabinet and scaling to 8,192 NPUs for training trillion-parameter AI models.
Real-World Impact
The exhibition features a fully automated new energy vehicle production line operating in real time, covering five major processes from battery module assembly to interior speaker installation. This demonstrates how AI is actively reshaping industrial manufacturing.
"The future of AI will be defined not by computing power or model parameters alone, but by its ability to solve real-world problems," said Chen Jing, vice president of the Technology and Strategy Research Institute.
WAIC 2026 runs from July 17 to 20 in Shanghai.
