China will host the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and High-Level Conference on Global AI Governance in Shanghai from July 17 to July 20, an event anchored by an opening address from Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry announced Monday that President Xi will systematically outline Beijing’s policy positions and regulatory philosophies regarding the rapidly evolving technology during his keynote speech.
Operating under the theme of "Smart Partners, Creating the Future", the high-level summit comes during a period of intense innovation in artificial intelligence, which Chinese officials describe as an era-defining global challenge that carries deep implications for international security and economic development. Beijing has issued wide invitations to foreign government representatives, industry executives, and international organization heads to participate, positioning itself as a central public goods provider and coordinator for AI capabilities, particularly within the Global South.
The conference marks a substantial expansion in scale for the eight-year-old event, with total exhibition space exceeding 100,000 square meters for the first time. More than 1,100 companies are slated to display roughly 3,000 exhibits, including over 300 products scheduled for their global commercial debut. The exhibition will focus heavily on intelligent computing infrastructure and embodied AI, drawing participation from state-owned enterprises, domestic industry leaders, and major multinational corporations.
Academic and regulatory framework discussions will feature prominent global figures, including nine Turing Award and Nobel Prize laureates. Richard Sutton, a pioneer in reinforcement learning, will deliver a keynote address, while deep learning researcher Yoshua Bengio is scheduled to present a proposed United Nations framework for artificial intelligence governance. A new academic division, WAIC Academic, will be chaired by Turing winner Andrew Yao to foster international research collaboration, while tech author Kevin Kelly will join discussions regarding the integration of physical hardware and digital intelligence.
On the exhibition floor, industrial giants and domestic startups will introduce next-generation computing hardware, including the public debut of the Atlas 950 SuperPoD, a large-scale computing infrastructure node. Other notable product debuts include the DF1000, a software-defined three-dimensional near-memory computing chip developed by Shanghai Oriental Chip Technology, and MiniMax’s M3 multimodal large model. Additionally, developers will showcase new AI-native smartphone operating systems alongside advanced humanoid robots designed for automotive manufacturing applications.
The event aims to demonstrate the practical application of artificial intelligence across legacy sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, and education. Shanghai has integrated the conference into its urban landscape via structured industrial tour routes to highlight how its regional AI economy reached 637 billion yuan in 2025, representing a year-over-year growth rate of 39.5 percent and establishing a new engine for municipal economic growth.
To cultivate younger technical talent and address funding bottlenecks for early-stage ventures, the summit is introducing a venture capital matrix backed by over 80 investment firms, including Sequoia, Hillhouse, and ZhenFund, alongside a 500 million yuan research fund for young scientists. Ultimately, Chinese diplomats intend to use the summit to advance the Artificial Intelligence Global Governance Action Plan introduced at last year's conference, seeking to build international consensus around a unified, multilateral framework for technology regulation.