WAIC 2026 Kicks Off Soon: Side Events Focus on Agent Deployment, GDPS Embodied AI Competition Follows in October

The World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) 2026 will be held in Shanghai from July 17 to 20, spanning three venues across four locations. The exhibition area exceeds 100,000 square meters for the first time, with over 1,100 enterprises showcasing more than 4,000 exhibits, including over 300 global debuts. More than 140 forums will feature over 1,400 guests, including 11 Turing Award, Nobel Prize, and Fields Medal laureates.

First Night Side Events: Focus on Agents and AI Action

On the evening of July 17, the official side events series "WAIC UP! DAY & NIGHT" will launch. Two key activities:

• WAIC UP! AI Pioneers' Night: Led by ModelSpace and WAIC UP!, co-organized by Datawhale, AGI Villa, and Silicon Star, with Alibaba Cloud as co-host. Themed "What Agents Are You Building This Year?", it includes two segments: "Scene of Creation" and "Scene of People", inviting AI-native developers, foreign entrepreneurs, hardware bloggers, and creators in public welfare and education to share. Participants include AI-native talents aged 9-13 and a Bilibili hardware blogger with 500,000 followers. The event is by invitation only, with simultaneous online streaming.

• WAIC AI Mixer: Initiated by QuantumBit, inviting frontline builders, researchers, and investors in Agent, embodied intelligence, and world models to discuss "AI from Proving Intelligence to Proving Action". Guests include Zhang Haoyang (17), founder of EvoMap; Li Zhiyu, CTO of Memory Tensor; Liang Ding, CTO of VAST; Lu Hongyuan, founder of FaceMind; and Chen Tianrun, chairman of MagicCore Technology. Held at a café in Shanghai Pudong, with simultaneous online streaming.

During the Conference: Multiple Events by Datawhale

As the official community partner, Datawhale will co-host the WAIC UP! Night, launch the "Global AI Creator Ecosystem Connection Plan", and host an offline forum and strategic signing on the afternoon of July 18. It will also collaborate with institutions such as Shanghai Science and Intelligence Research Institute, Fudan University, Alibaba Cloud, SenseTime, and Memory Tensor for multiple online live streams and offline exhibition tours.

October Relay: GDPS International Embodied Intelligence Skills Competition

From October 23 to 25, 2026, the Global Developers Pioneer Summit (GDPS) and International Embodied Intelligence Skills Competition will be held at the Shanghai Zhangjiang Science Hall. The competition focuses on the theme "Labor is the Most Glorious", recruiting teams from robot manufacturers, AI algorithm companies, and innovation startups, with a prize pool of millions of RMB and tens of millions in intended investment.

• Scenario Solicitation: Based on the nine key scenarios (manufacturing, inspection and analysis, maintenance, warehousing and logistics, distribution and retail, medical and health, safety production, emergency rescue, disaster prevention and mitigation) from the "2026 Humanoid Robot and Embodied Intelligence Real-world Training Special Action" jointly launched by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, enterprises are invited to submit real-world pain points.
• Team Benefits: The champion team receives capital recommendations at the city and district levels, access to tens of millions in intended investment, and free incubation space at Model Community; award-winning projects can directly enter the 2026 Dubai AI Conference and the 2027 Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition.
• International Zone: For the first time, an international competition zone is set up at the Oriental Hub International Business Cooperation Zone. Overseas participants can enter with valid travel documents and invitation registration certificates, stay for up to 30 days with extension possible, enabling "land and compete".

Scenario representatives include Jingtai Technology (intelligent sorting in life science labs), Changdian Technology (sealing and testing in hazardous environments), Aptiv (composite processes in injection molding workshops), and Shanghai Fuxing Island (urban governance and distribution), with technical solutions verified through previous competitions.

QuantumBit Exhibition Tour and Community

QuantumBit will set up a booth at H1-A134 in the World Expo Exhibition Hall, planning multiple exhibition tour live streams and forum live streams during the conference, covering large models, Agents, embodied intelligence, and AI hardware, and establishing a WAIC live community for real-time updates.