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Heat, hardware and high stakes at China’s biggest World Artificial Intelligence Conference

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…

By Samantha Johnson / July 22, 2026

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 2018.

That call was heeded by AI research centres from around the world, with the Hong Kong Generative AI Research and Development Centre announcing the launch of an “LLM Going Global Strategy”, adding that it planned to use the city’s special role as a “superconnector” to help share mainland China’s AI technologies with the rest of the world.

The endorsement from the top leader, along with the global frenzy around agentic AI, also pushed attendee enthusiasm to an unprecedented level, something especially evident at the World Expo Exhibition and Convention Centre, an exhibition hall a few hundred metres from the main conference venue.

Tickets officially priced at 168 yuan (US$24.82) were scalped for upwards of 1,000 yuan, snapped up not just by industry insiders who wanted to learn about the latest AI trends, but also by parents eager to paint a tech-forward future for their children and young graduates looking to secure jobs in the booming industry.

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