AI Hardware Takes Center Stage at WAIC 2026 as Chips, Phones, and Robots Drive the Conversation

The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference opens in Shanghai on July 17. The event runs through July 20 across four venues in Pudong, Zhangjiang, and Xuhui . This year’s theme is “AI Partnership for a Brighter Future.”

Image Source: 699pic.com

The scale is hard to ignore. Exhibition space exceeds 100,000 square meters for the first time. Over 1,100 companies are participating. More than 3,000 products are on display. Over 300 products are making their global debut .

The conference comes at a significant moment. Nine Turing Award and Nobel Prize winners are confirmed to attend. Richard Sutton, known as the “father of reinforcement learning,” will deliver a keynote speech. Yoshua Bengio, one of the “deep learning trio,” will also be there .

What makes this year different? The focus has shifted from imagination to productivity.

Hardware takes center stage
This year’s WAIC is a hardware show. The spotlight is on AI infrastructure.

Huawei is displaying the Atlas 950 SuperPoD in person for the first time. The system supports up to 8,192 NPU cards interconnected. It targets trillion-parameter model training and high-volume inference scenarios . One observer noted that the Atlas 950 remains competitive against Nvidia’s planned 2027 NVL576 offering .

ZTE is showing its OEX supernode, featuring a unique design approach. The OEX uses a backplane-free design to eliminate traditional cable connections, reducing costs by 80 percent .

Dawning Information Industry is presenting the “Dengfeng” 10,000-card AI supercluster. The system uses domestically produced components across the full stack. It supports precision from FP64 to INT8, covering scientific computing and AI inference .

Chinese chip companies are also making their presence felt. More than a dozen domestic chip firms have set up booths. Moore Threads is showcasing its “cloud-edge-device” computing matrix. The company’s strategy is organized around three “AI factories”: model training, token production, and agent production .

Enflame Technology is presenting a full product lineup from AI chips to supernodes. The company’s recent Hong Kong listing plans are drawing attention, but industry watchers are more interested in its customer case studies .

AI phones become a reality
The conference comes just days after a major regulatory milestone. On July 15, Chinese regulators approved seven smartphone-side AI model services. The list includes Apple Intelligence, Huawei’s Xiaoyi, OPPO AndesGPT, vivo BlueHeart, Xiaomi HyperAI, Samsung Galaxy AI, and Nubia’s Doubao phone model .

For Apple, this matters a lot. The company had been unable to offer its AI features in China. The approval means Apple Intelligence is closer to launching in the country. Alibaba’s Qwen model will provide AI capabilities for Apple users in China .

Counterpoint estimates that 45 percent of global smartphone shipments in 2026 will have generative AI capabilities, up from 36 percent in 2025 . In China alone, IDC projects AI phone shipments will reach 147 million units in 2026, up 31.6 percent year-on-year .

The competition is not just about features. It is about who controls the entry point. AI phones are moving from simple app integration to system-level intelligence. The operating system itself becomes the AI agent.

Step AOS, an agent-native operating system developed by Stepfun, is making its debut at WAIC . The company is also showing its STEPX Neo phone, which was named one of the conference’s top exhibits .

Robots go from demos to work
Robots are also a major focus. More than 200 companies are showcasing humanoid robots and related products.

Fourier Intelligence is demonstrating “Smart Home 2.0,” a full-stack solution for home companion robots. The system moves beyond simple voice commands. It interprets natural language, understands scene semantics, plans tasks, and executes them across mobile platforms .

Uplifting New Materials is showing the Qiyuan T1, which the company calls the world’s first transformable personal robot. The system switches between wheeled humanoid and quadruped modes based on terrain .

Ant Group’s Lingbo division is showcasing its general-purpose embodied AI brain technology 2.0. The system aims to work across different robot hardware and scenarios. A robot pharmacy demonstration will show multiple robot types collaborating to fulfill orders .

What is emerging is a broader trend: the competition is moving from individual robots to integrated systems that combine models, hardware, and real-world applications .

Shanghai’s AI ecosystem
The conference reflects a broader trend in Shanghai. The city is home to 394 major AI enterprises. In 2025, their total output exceeded 637 billion yuan, a 39.5 percent increase from the previous year . The city hosts nearly 300,000 AI professionals, roughly one-third of China’s total .

A 60 billion yuan national AI industry fund has been established in Shanghai, along with a 22.5 billion yuan city-level fund .

The numbers tell a story. AI is not a future concept anymore. It is powering chips, phones, and robots that are entering production lines and homes. The question is no longer whether AI will arrive, but how quickly it will spread.