China's flagship artificial intelligence summit opened in Shanghai on Thursday with a landmark moment: President Xi Jinping taking the stage at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) for the first time since the annual event launched in 2018. The four-day conference, running July 17–20, features more than 300 product debuts and positions China as a leading voice in global AI governance.
Key Highlights
- Xi Jinping delivers his inaugural WAIC keynote, framing AI as central to China's global strategy
- China proposes a World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO) to be headquartered in Shanghai
- Huawei unveils the Atlas 950 — an 8,192-chip Ascend supercomputing cluster claiming to surpass NVIDIA's NVL series
- ZTE launches the world's first AI Agent smartphone running StepFun's Agent OS and ByteDance's Doubao assistant
- More than 300 products make their global debuts at the 1,100-exhibitor event
Xi's Vision: "People-Centred" AI for the Global South
In his keynote address, Xi called for a "people-centred" approach to AI development, pledging that China would cooperate with nations across Africa, Latin America, Asia, and BRICS to provide inclusive access to AI capacity building. He warned against creating "new historical injustices" through an unequal distribution of AI capabilities.
Xi introduced two concrete initiatives: a "China Wisdom for the World" case collection documenting AI cooperative projects across more than 20 countries, and an "Action Plan on Cooperation in AI Development" outlining a framework for shared computing access and open-source ecosystems for developing nations.
WAICO: A Shanghai-Based Global AI Body
The most consequential diplomatic proposal from the conference is the creation of the World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO), which Beijing is pushing to have headquartered in Shanghai. The proposal emerged from a parallel High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance running alongside the main conference. If adopted, WAICO would give China significant institutional leverage in shaping international AI norms — positioning Shanghai as a rival to Western-dominated technology governance bodies.
Huawei Atlas 950: 8,192 Ascend Chips
On the hardware front, Huawei staged the first public display of its Atlas 950 SuperPoD computing cluster at WAIC 2026. The system scales up to 8,192 Ascend neural processing unit cards and is designed for ultra-large-scale model training and inference. Huawei claims the Atlas 950 surpasses NVIDIA's upcoming NVL series in performance on large-model workloads — a claim independent benchmarks have not yet verified. The announcement comes as Chinese AI labs continue to seek domestic alternatives to NVIDIA silicon amid ongoing US export controls.
ZTE's AI Agent Phone: Smartphones as Autonomous Agents
ZTE's Nubia division unveiled what it describes as the world's first AI Agent smartphone. The device runs StepFun's Agent Operating System — a platform that replaces the traditional file-and-application model with intent-driven task execution — with ByteDance's Doubao AI assistant integrated at the OS level. The phone is designed to handle multi-step tasks autonomously, transforming the smartphone from a communication tool into an active digital agent.
Academic Weight and Global Participation
The conference drew nine Nobel and Turing Prize laureates, including deep learning pioneers Yoshua Bengio and Richard Sutton, Turing Award winner Andrew Yao, and economist Thomas Sargent. More than 1,400 guests from 1,100 exhibitors across 140-plus forums make WAIC 2026 one of the largest AI gatherings of the year.
What's Next
The conference runs through July 20, with additional product reveals and governance sessions expected throughout the week. Adoption of the WAICO proposal will depend on multilateral negotiations; observers expect China to formally submit the framework to the United Nations before year-end. For AI developers, the Huawei Atlas 950's real-world performance against NVIDIA hardware will be closely watched in the coming months as Chinese labs report training results.
Source: Bloomberg