There is a specific kind of technology conference mood that comes from being slightly ahead of the curve and slightly behind on clarity: a lot of superlatives, a lot of product names, and a visitor walking out with a phone full of photographs and no clear idea what changed. The Light of the Internet Expo, the flagship exhibition of the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, is trying something different this year. It opens on 2 November in Wuzhen, the canal town in eastern Zhejiang, and its theme — "Intelligent Connectivity, Smart Future" — rests on a single argument: that connectivity itself has become the substrate for everything else.
The numbers are large in the way this show's numbers always are. More than 670 companies from 54 countries and regions will exhibit, presenting more than 1,000 technical results, with more than 20 products scheduled for first public unveiling on the floor. The confirmed exhibitor list reads like a roll-call of the global technology economy: Intel, Schneider Electric, Kaspersky, Qualcomm, Microsoft, SAP, Alibaba, Huawei, Tencent, ZTE and iFlytek, among others. The summit itself, running 2–5 November, organises 27 sub-forums around AI governance, robot and embodied intelligence, and spatiotemporal intelligence.
What is genuinely new is the floor plan. For the first time, the expo presents what organisers call the "intelligent internet" in full, across six themed zones running from infrastructure to everyday life: space-air-sea connectivity, an AI-emergence space, human-machine symbiosis, industry applications, smart living, and technology for good. The headline technologies are the ones furthest from being consumer products, and they are being shown rather than described. Satellite internet, quantum communications, 6G and ultra-wideband all appear in concentrated form for the first time. The GSMA brings a group pavilion with Qualcomm and Keysight Technologies, including an end-to-end 6G prototype system and a live demonstration of remote operation of construction machinery over a 6G network.
Then there is the compute. Four vendors are showing AI super-node systems together — a cluster architecture for training and serving large models at scale — from Alibaba, Huawei, ZTE and Sugon. In models, Alibaba is exhibiting its latest omnimodal large model, alongside new products from Tencent and iFlytek, while Hangzhou-based Kokoni shows MoWorld 2.0, a four-dimensional world model. On the terminal side, Nubia's Navi X Ultra is billed as the world's first AI-agent phone, and Alibaba debuts Qwen-branded AI earclip earphones. Embodied AI has its own zone: humanoid robots from Agibot, UBTech and Unitree.
The edition most likely to surprise a visitor is the marketplace. Alongside the innovation hall, a new "super experience" hall turns the expo into a retail floor for the first time: more than 130 products from over 80 companies can be seen, handled and bought on the spot, including cars, UBTech robots, smart beds and exoskeletons. There is also a new AI "OPC" — one-person company — carnival, an Ant Group robot smart pharmacy, and a future-factory zone showing flexible garment sewing and precision assembly working cells.
The closing takeaway is about where this show has landed. A decade ago the Wuzhen expo's argument was connectivity as infrastructure for the internet; the 2026 edition's argument is that connectivity is now infrastructure for physical industry, for commerce and for a person's day. Whether the 6G prototype and the humanoid robots feel like the future or a very expensive demo depends on what happens after November — but the show is no longer content to illustrate a future it believes is already arriving, and for an industry still arguing over whether embodied AI is a product category or a demo, that confidence is the story.Editor note — verify before publishing:(a)All figures are organiser/press-briefing statements, not audited results.The 670+ companies from 54 countries and regions, the 1,000+ technical results and the 20+ on-floor first launches come from the 19 October 2026 provincial press briefing (reported by China Economic Net, China Daily and the World Internet Conference's own Chinese site) and from China Daily Zhejiang's 21 October English report. Attribute them as pre-event figures from the organisers. (b) The summit theme — "Open Source and Openness, Joint Contribution and Shared Benefits – Jointly Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace" — and the expo theme "Intelligent Connectivity, Smart Future" (智能互联、智见未来) aretwo different themes for two different parts of the programme; do not merge them. (c) Thesix exhibition zone namesare translations of organiser marketing labels ("空天地海·新连接" / "智能涌现·新空间" / "人机共生·新入口" / "赋能百业·新生态" / "智惠万家·新生活" / "科技向善·新安全"). Check the official English wording on wicinternet.org before publishing a fixed English list; the translations above are working glosses, not official terms. (d)"The world's first AI-agent phone"for the Nubia Navi X Ultra is amanufacturer/organiser claimand must be attributed as such — a "first" claim about a product category is exactly the kind of figure an editor should challenge. (e) The claim that the four super-node systems from Alibaba, Huawei, ZTE and Sugon will "appear together" is from the press briefing — confirm on the floor or via exhibitor pages. (f) The "Straight to Wuzhen" 1,347 projects / 31 countries record is confirmed by China Daily Zhejiang and China Daily; the earlier cumulative figures (8 editions, 7,932 projects from 52 countries and regions; 40.6% of the first seven editions' 313 winners raising new funding totalling nearly 120 billion yuan; 14 becoming unicorns, 22 reaching unicorn status, 5 listing) come from the 19–20 October briefing release and should be checked against the organiser's own competition pages. (g) The 16 completed regional finals were held in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Changsha, Beijing and Shenzhen; the finals are on 3 November in Tongxiang and the ceremony on the morning of 5 November in Wuzhen — confirm with the competition's official page. (h) The 27 sub-forums figure is from the 23 October China Daily report; the Zhejiang sub-forum on 4 November has a "leading releases" segment and a "future scenarios" segment — programme detail from the organiser's briefing. (i) The "Global Youth Leaders" programme (4th year, 2,600+ applicants from 140+ countries, 20 selected) is from the same release and can be used as a closing colour note. (j)No visitor figure for 2026 has been published, and visitors must register with a mobile number and await approval — do not estimate or reuse a prior-year number. (k) The 2025 baseline (665 companies from 53 countries, from the WIC's own 2024 recap) is the wrong year to cite as a baseline for a 2026 event — if a comparison is wanted, pull the official 2025 edition recap from wicinternet.org. (l) The expo runs 2–5 November but the summit itself also runs 2–5 November; the Zhejiang sub-forum is 4 November and the competition finals 3 November — verify the day-by-day programme before publishing a schedule. (m) WIC was established as an international organisation on 12 July 2022 and is headquartered in Beijing, initiated by GSMA, CNCERT, CNNIC, Alibaba, Tencent and Zhijiang Lab — the organiser's own framing, from wicinternet.org.