As the size of artificial intelligence models expands beyond 1 trillion parameters, a new concept is dominating the computing landscape: “supernode”. At this year’s World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), China’s top AI summit, domestic chipmakers from Huawei Technologies to Biren Technology showcased new hardware designed to knit hundreds or thousands of chips together to act as one giant supercomputer, which they called a supernode. The focus on supernodes at WAIC reflected a shift in...
Traffic almost came to a standstill 2km (1.2 miles) from the Shanghai Expo Centre on Friday, the first day of the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC). With temperatures nearing 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), scores of attendees abandoned their taxis to walk the rest of the way under the hot sun. This year’s conference mirrored the weather: it was the hottest, most crowded WAIC in my six years covering the event and, I was told, the most vibrant since its inception in...
Chinese robotics companies lack both sufficient data and a good “brain” to improve the interaction of their products with the physical world, according to industry insiders at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), which concluded on Monday in Shanghai. The most critical challenge for the embodied AI industry was to “link hardware, data, models and real-world scenarios into a closed-loop iterative system”, said Wang Xiaogang, co-founder of SenseTime and chairman of its robotics...
Chinese tech giants are doubling down on enterprise artificial intelligence agents with new products unveiled at the country’s top AI summit, signalling heightened domestic rivalry to win over business clients as agent-based AI adoption accelerates. At the four-day World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai which concludes on Monday, major tech companies including Ant Group, Tencent Holdings, Alibaba Group Holding and Baidu launched or showcased offerings designed to integrate...
Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the dual nature of artificial intelligence’s opportunities and challenges, calling for a principle of “openness” and regulations to keep the technology “secure and controllable” in a speech at the country’s flagship annual AI conference. Xi’s first speech to the World AI Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai showed AI is a national strategic priority as China seeks to build greater technological self-reliance amid its tech rivalry with the United States. Earlier...
President Xi Jinping will speak on Friday at the opening of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), China’s largest annual event for the AI industry. Xi’s personal attendance elevates the conference’s profile, and indicates AI development has become both a technological imperative and a cornerstone of China’s geopolitical strategy. As Washington maintains strict export controls on advanced semiconductors and restricts overseas access to top AI models, Beijing is accelerating...
Alibaba Group Holding and Honor are set to deepen their tie-up over an operating system for AI-powered devices, as competition in the nascent “AI phone” genre gains momentum in China. The partnership is expected to be announced at the coming World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), which kicks off on Friday in Shanghai, alongside demonstrations of new agent capabilities developed by both, according to people familiar with the matter. Shenzhen-based Honor, spun off from Huawei...
The coming World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) is set to feature major new product releases, such as Huawei Technologies’ next-generation computing cluster, as China doubles down on AI in the global technology race. This year’s WAIC, the ninth since 2018 and running from July 17 to 20 in Shanghai, would include the first physical display of Huawei’s Atlas 950 SuperPoD, Tang Wenkan, director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatisation, said at a press briefing...