WAIC 2026: AI moves from labs to real business, new agents and robots

The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai from July 17 to 20 marked a shift in AI narrative from technology showcasing to real-world application and commercial value. Highlights included Hewa's global launch of Domi, a headhunting agent powered by self-developed HWE industry model and Match System, aiming to automate repetitive tasks for recruiters. Yixin Group introduced an automotive finance agent that compresses a 90-minute offline process to 10 minutes. Om AI unveiled VLX streaming multimodal models for drone vision, enabling autonomous operations even offline. PPIO showcased its Agentic Cloud and intelligent model gateway for cost-effective AI deployment. Tenfanger exhibited a virtual digital human of Teresa Teng. Qingwei Micro demonstrated its REX81 Supernode 4K system and RAISA software stack, with applications in space computing and AI prospecting. Alibaba Cloud presented a full-stack AI solution covering chips, cloud, models, inference, and applications. Several other companies like Hwayan Robot, Qiongche Intelligent, and others demonstrated embodied AI in real-world scenarios like pharmacies, hotels, and factories. 36Kr's coverage identified three key trends: shift from model competition to vertical intelligent partner deployment, embodied AI moving from performance to stable real-world operation, and fine-grained evolution of computing and data infrastructure.