Inside WAIC 2026: Analysis of 1,020 Exhibitors Across Seven AI Tracks and Their City Distribution

WAIC 2026 took place from July 17‑20 in Shanghai Expo, Zhangjiang, and Xisan venues. Although the official count exceeds 1,100 companies, we retrieved a complete list of 1,020 exhibitors directly from the WAIC website API on 2026‑07‑16.

Each exhibitor was classified into one of seven quantifiable tracks based on its name, description, and official industry field, aligning with the eight official exhibition directions. The classification yielded the following distribution:

Robotics & Embodied Intelligence – 260 companies (25.5%) – products such as humanoid robots, robotic arms, dexterous hands, VLA/world models.

Large Models & Agents – 227 companies (22.3%) – foundation models, Agent OS, multimodal, AIGC.

Industry Applications – 170 companies (16.7%) – AI for manufacturing, finance, healthcare, government, education.

Intelligent End‑Devices – 165 companies (16.2%) – AI phones/PCs/glasses, AR/VR, wearables.

Chips & Compute – 159 companies (15.6%) – GPUs/NPUs, AI clusters, super‑nodes.

Data & Cloud Services – 15 companies (1.5%) – cloud platforms, data labeling, AI‑compute operation.

Comprehensive/Other – 24 companies (2.4%) – branding, ecosystem cooperation.

Three notable signals emerge from the data:

Robotics leads the track count (260), surpassing large models (227), confirming the official emphasis on embodied intelligence.

The top five tracks together account for 96.2% of exhibitors, forming a clear AI industry chain: models, compute, devices, robotics, and industry applications.

Industry applications represent 16.7% of exhibitors, indicating a shift from "chatty" AI to "usable" AI in vertical scenarios.

Geographically, nearly half of the exhibitors come from five cities:

Shanghai – 301 companies (29.5%) – strongest in large models (84).

Beijing – 175 companies (17.2%) – strong in large models (46) and chips (33).

Unmarked – 163 companies (16.0%) – national brands or overseas firms where city cannot be inferred.

Shenzhen – 105 companies (10.3%) – 42 in robotics (40% of Shenzhen exhibitors).

Hangzhou – 55 companies (5.4%) – balanced across robotics (20), large models (12), and intelligent devices (12).

*"Unmarked" refers to exhibitors whose registration city cannot be deduced from name or description, many of which are nationwide brands (e.g., Honor, H3C) or foreign companies.

City‑specific insights:

Shanghai shows a balanced presence across all seven tracks, with the highest number of large‑model exhibitors (84) and a strong robotics cohort (66).

Beijing concentrates on large models (46) and chips (33), together accounting for 45.1% of its exhibitors.

Shenzhen is a "robotics capital" – 42 robotics firms (40% of its total) but only 14 large‑model firms (13.3%).

Hangzhou features three comparable tracks: robotics (20), large models (12), and intelligent devices (12).

Suzhou reflects a manufacturing‑focused robotics narrative, with 12 of its 22 exhibitors in the robotics track.

Cross‑analysis of the five leading cities with the three hottest tracks (large models, compute, embodied intelligence) highlights the regional strengths: Shanghai excels in large models, Beijing in both models and chips, while Shenzhen dominates robotics.

In conclusion, WAIC 2026 exhibitor composition has shifted from a single‑track "large‑model" focus to a five‑pillar structure—robotics, large models, chips, devices, and applications. Shanghai remains the central hub, Shenzhen leads in robotics concentration, Beijing is strongest in models and chips, and Suzhou hints at the manufacturing‑oriented AI narrative.