On July 26, the 2025 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) officially opened in Shanghai, kicking off with thought-provoking discussions and immersive tech exhibitions.

A lecture delivered by the "Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton, entitled "Will digital intelligence eventually replace biological intelligence?", marked the beginning of a new chapter in AI discourse. Yet beyond philosophical inquiry, the real question driving WAIC 2025 is: Can AI truly integrate into industries and society to generate measurable value?

At the exhibition floor, AI's industrial applications were on full display. Keenon Robotics demonstrated a robot bartender, while Mech-Mind Robotics showcased a garment-folding machine. In the bustling World Expo Exhibition Center, curious visitors flocked to see humanoid robots writing calligraphy, playing drums, and even shelling boiled eggs—transforming the venue into a carnival of embodied intelligence.

Photo/Zhang Yun (NBD)

Foundation Models Move Downstream

In Hall H1, tech powerhouses including Google, Alibaba, Huawei, and Tencent showcased their latest AI advances, joined by emerging players like StepFun, which branded itself as the "multimodal powerhouse".

A representative from StepFun told National Business Daily (NBD) that their newly upgraded base model, Step 3, aims to define the next stage of AI reasoning. According to the representative, the new model reportedly achieves up to 300% inference efficiency of DeepSeek-R1 on domestic chips and has already been licensed to several Chinese chipmakers.

"Deploying AI in enterprise settings hinges on selecting the right foundational model and addressing data silos," the representative noted. "End-to-end industry collaboration—from model to chip to platform to application—is essential for real-world use."

He Yunqiu, Head of Overseas Marketing at Transwarp, demonstrated a financial research use case built on the company's enterprise AI infra platform. She told NBD that businesses are asking for intelligent agents that understand domain-specific language and have deep subject expertise, while platforms integrate corpus and knowledge management to extract high-quality data from massive specialized datasets, ensuring accurate content generation.

Humanoid Robots Steal the Show

Photo/Zhu Chengxiang (NBD)

While foundational models serve as AI's "brain", embodied intelligence brings it into the physical world. From warehouse picking bots to conveyor-belt-integrated agents, WAIC 2025 posed a new question: Can AI prove its value in physical environments?

In one highlight, four G1 humanoid robots from Unitree Robotics staged a crowd-pleasing boxing match, showing off agile motion control and dynamic reflexes.

Meanwhile, Shanghai-based Agibot focused on robot cognition and human-AI interaction. The company's humanoid robot, Lingxi X2, joined co-founder and CTO Peng Zhihui in a live conversation—becoming the first robot to appear as an official "guest" on the WAIC main forum. Their general embodied AI model recently won the WAIC SAIL award for outstanding technical innovation.

From Concept to Consumer: The Rise of AI Terminals

Photo/Cong Sen (NBD)

At the AI terminal exhibition in Hall H3, a new generation of smart glasses, AI notebooks, and offline agents was unveiled. Unlike previous years, this year's focus was on practical, user-ready AI. One example: Xiaomi's AI glasses, powered by SenseTime's latest model, offered real-time audio-visual interaction, object recognition, and context-aware responses.

Still, the path ahead is not without hurdles. Device-side large models face energy and computational constraints, while ecosystem fragmentation between apps, systems, and hardware remains a challenge. But the trend is clear: AI terminals are becoming more intuitive, affordable, and embedded into everyday life.

WAIC 2025 offered a glimpse into an AI future not just defined by theory, but built on application, scalability, and societal relevance.

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