How Huawei Plans to Lead the 2024 AI and 5G‑A Revolution

At the 21st Huawei Analyst Conference, Huawei Vice Chairman and rotating Chairman Xu Zhijun delivered a keynote titled “The Road to Comprehensive Intelligence.”

He opened by highlighting four 2024 trends and opportunities: (1) 5G‑A will begin large‑scale commercial deployment after the Release 18 standard freezes in June; (2) large‑model AI is accelerating technical breakthroughs and industry adoption; (3) clean‑energy generation from solar and wind is rapidly becoming a primary power source; (4) the new‑energy vehicle industry is moving from pure electrification to intelligentization, with Huawei’s super‑charging stations enabling one‑second‑per‑kilometer charging.

He noted that the global economic and geopolitical environment remains challenging, with continued U.S. pressure on China.

Based on these trends, Xu outlined five strategic actions for 2024:

1. Pursue quality‑driven high‑quality development. Huawei will deepen ISO 9000‑based quality management, extend it across the supply chain, and embed quality requirements into all business processes.

2. Optimize the industry portfolio to enhance resilience. The portfolio now includes ICT infrastructure, terminals, Huawei Cloud, digital energy, and intelligent automotive solutions, supported by the 2012 Lab and HiSilicon.

3. Build ecosystems and a unified developer platform. This includes migrating 5,000 dominant apps to the native HarmonyOS ecosystem, expanding the Kunpeng (openEuler) and Ascend (openGauss) ecosystems, and creating a unified developer portal on Huawei Cloud.

4. Deploy “light‑wind‑storage” generators. By combining storage and converters with grid‑control algorithms, Huawei aims to mitigate the grid impact of solar and wind power, allowing renewable energy to be integrated like traditional generation.

5. Accelerate comprehensive intelligence. Huawei will leverage Ascend cloud services and the Pangu large‑model series to enable industry AI, advance autonomous‑driving network (ADN) for telecom operators, and embed AI across internal management to improve efficiency.

Key AI initiatives include:

Using Ascend cloud and Pangu models to empower industry intelligence.

Developing autonomous‑driving network solutions for telecom operators, targeting L4 autonomy and zero‑wait user experiences.

Creating the “XiaoYi” super‑intelligent agent powered by Pangu, integrated into HarmonyOS Next.

Advancing AI‑enabled autonomous driving solutions (ADS 1.0 and 2.0) with multi‑sensor fusion.

Huawei also commits to AI basic research, publishing 200‑300 papers annually, investing in foundational models, efficient training, multimodal understanding, and AI governance to ensure technology benefits humanity and the environment.

In summary, since unveiling its AI strategy in 2018, Huawei has continuously executed a comprehensive intelligence roadmap, delivering AI‑driven products and solutions across sectors and aiming to make intelligent technology ubiquitous.