July 31, 2026 — The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference & High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance (WAIC) was held acrossthree venues and four exhibition halls in Shanghai from July 17 to 20. Under the theme “Smart Partners, Co-Create the Future”, the event featured an exhibition floor exceeding 100,000 square meters, gathering over 1,100 enterprises showcasing more than 3,000 cutting-edge exhibits, with over 300 products making their global debut.
A host of local tech innovators and industrial platforms from Hongkou District participated in the exhibition, presenting a full spectrum of the district’s AI industrial layout and real-world applications, ranging from consumer smart hardware and vertical industry AI solutions to urban computing infrastructure and industrial embodied intelligence. Three local industrial sites were also included in the official “WAIC City Walk” experience route, forming a standout tech calling card for Hongkou at this year’s conference.
As the core innovation booth at the event, the D.Transformer Incubator on the North Bund, developed with support from the Shanghai Institute of Innovation, Creativity and Design, built a compact “Future Living Lab” to display a lineup of cutting-edge AI hardware and digital tools for public livelihood and industrial use.
In smart hardware, Plantalk launched the Plantiemoji intelligent plant sensor. Powered by a dedicated plant large language model and IoT perception technology, the device visualizes plant growth conditions via emoticons and automatically generates tailored care regimens. The TUTU 3D Photo Frame delivers glasses-free autostereoscopic 3D imaging; many visitors placed on-site orders after testing the product. The Ride & Bloom miniature wind power generator by Youleneng suits stationary bikes and outdoor cycling, combining wind energy generation with floor projection interaction. The product previously raised nearly RMB 100,000 via crowdfunding, winning market recognition.
Industry AI tools also drew crowds of professional attendees. ICOCO, an automotive design engine co-developed by ICONA and DIIS, leverages conversational AI to streamline full-vehicle design workflows, cutting design cycles from weeks to mere hours. GoAgentAI, a virtual digital employee developed by Jiuwei Turing, independently handles workflow approvals and client communications. Haimeta, an all-in-one content creation platform from Bingjing Technology, unifies text, short video and 3D content generation pipelines. Miin AI’s disease prediction large model, trained on a dataset of 25 million Chinese medical records, enables early risk screening for multiple illnesses. Sini Environmental’s lightweight AI intelligent temperature control equipment can slash building air conditioning energy consumption by up to 50%, with deployments already completed at Starbucks stores and NYU Shanghai.
During the forum session, the incubator released the 2026 In-Depth Insight Report on China’s OPC Sector, sharing trends in AI startup tracks. Since settling on the North Bund in 2024, the incubator has facilitated registration, financing and industrialization for over 50 tech projects. It regularly hosts public open days and tech workshops, forming an AI innovation hub deeply integrated into the urban ecosystem.
In computing infrastructure, China Tower Shanghai North Branch, located on the North Bund, exhibited the parent group’s full-stack AI capabilities under the theme “Connect All Intelligence via Towers, Forge a Shared Future”. Its booth showcased satellite internet, integrated “Indoor Distribution + X” solutions, edge computing networks and vertical AI industry applications. Drawing on 2.15 million tower sites and nearly one million computer rooms nationwide, China Tower has built distributed satellite ground stations with rapidly deployable Ka-band mobile gateways. Its innovative indoor distribution system integrates Beidou indoor positioning, emergency broadcasting and Wi-Fi coverage, bridging communication gaps in underground and enclosed spaces.
Leveraging existing computer room resources, China Tower has upgraded traditional telecom rooms to standardized data centers, launching multi-tier computing cabinets and a unified edge computing scheduling platform. This activates widespread network nodes to build inclusive edge computing networks. The booth also featured AI deployment cases across five sectors: transportation, agriculture, environmental protection, smart energy and more, offering mature, viable solutions for urban digital infrastructure development.
Shuzhuan Group, a leading digital publishing enterprise, brought its complete publishing AI ecosystem to the exhibition. Having specialized in the sector for nearly four years and expanded its scale with Hongkou’s industrial support, the firm provides end-to-end AI solutions covering content creation, marketing, distribution and reader services, partnering with over 400 publishing institutions accounting for 70% of China’s publishers nationwide.
Its flagship exhibit, Shuling Mobao, is China’s first exclusive AI platform tailored for publishing, with data security embedded as a core design principle. Isolated servers, restricted file access permissions and sensitive information interception mechanisms safeguard copyrights and core manuscript content against leakage. The platform is backed by four product lines: Shuyi, Shuchuan, Shujia and Shumai. Its AI editing studio empowers topic selection, manuscript review and graphic creation; AI marketing tools mass-produce short videos and graphic promotional materials; and the “One Book, One Model” interactive system lets readers scan books to chat with dedicated knowledge bases and access exclusive author insights and professional interpretations.
Also showcased was the Guma Zhiyuan Lab, which focuses on foundational AGI data. Backed by a top expert team, it constructs high-quality vertical datasets to address gaps in professional cognition for large models, providing underlying support for iterative upgrades of industrial AI systems.
In industrial intelligence, Synthoid.ai, a representative embodied intelligence firm that settled in Hongkou in 2025, signed a key district-level project during WAIC. The company specializes in algorithm-defined universal robot hardware platforms, with fully functional complete systems already validated on high-end new energy component production lines under real working conditions. It is one of China’s few embodied intelligence projects to deploy explicit world models for industrial use.
Besides Synthoid.ai and Shuzhuan Group, a number of other Hongkou enterprises including Youbang Hongdu Intelligence and Sheji Huanyu also took part in the exhibition, covering diverse sub-sectors and demonstrating the vibrancy of the district’s AI industrial ecosystem.
For offline interactive experiences, three venues — the Siemens Intelligent Manufacturing Innovation Center, Shanghai Carbon Secret Museum and Bluepha Biotechnology Exhibition Hall — were selected for the WAIC City Walk route, opening interactive exhibits on AI manufacturing, low-carbon green development and synthetic biology to the public.
Through the exposure platform of this year’s WAIC, Hongkou comprehensively demonstrated integrated AI applications across consumer livelihood, cultural publishing, industrial manufacturing, urban infrastructure and green low-carbon sectors. The district will continue to pool sci-tech resources, drive in-depth AI empowerment of the real economy, and contribute regional momentum to Shanghai’s development as a national hub for artificial intelligence industry.