Mostly November 5
Open source models & AI infrastructure
Covers open models, inference engines, local deployment, platform APIs, evals, tooling, and production reliability.
November 5–6, 2026 • Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao • Bilingual, live translation
AI Engineer
Shanghai
Open models. Real infrastructure. Physical AI.
The first AI Engineer conference in China: two days of technical talks and demos from 50+ speakers at Microsoft, World Labs, Google, HeyGen and more, plus time to meet builders from China and around the world.
Shanghai organizers: Mengying Li (Standup Partners)Yuzheng Sun, PhD (Superlinear Academy)
About the conference
Where research meets
production
AI Engineer brings engineers, researchers and founders together to share how their systems work: code, demos, architecture choices and lessons from production.
Shanghai brings that format to open models, AI infrastructure and physical AI. Meet people building in different ecosystems, compare approaches, and continue the conversation between sessions.
From past AI Engineer flagship events
01 / 14
Conference themes
Open Models &
Physical AI
Mostly November 6
Physical AI
What changes when inference, evals, and deployment move from software into the physical world? Covers VLA / robot foundation models, robot data, simulation and Sim2Real, robot inference, deployment, safety, and real demos.
Speakers
Meet the people building it
Researchers, founders and engineers working on the systems and products shaping AI.
November 5–6
Two-day program
Prepared talks, demos, community and investor conversations, with 10-minute Rapid Fire sessions on the main stage. The AI applications breakout starts after the first afternoon's community panel; day two uses one main stage.
Changes will be communicated. Please check the online program for the latest updates.
Rapid Fire: Ten minutes, one concrete problem, engineering lesson or demo. Handovers are included in each slot; conversations continue in the breaks.
Thursday · 09:30-17:50
Open models, agents & infrastructure
Opening with swyx · Video
November 5 opening · 10 minutes
Enterprise agents, product design, inference & evals
Microsoft's opening keynote, Langfuse on agent observability, Cursor product design and You.com, followed by inference and evaluation.
13:00–13:40 · November 5 · First session after lunch · Main stage
Community in the AI era
- AJWaytoAGI · Founder
- KojiCrossing · Founder
- 高宁Linkloud · Co-founder
- Kai Qu42 Chapters · Founder & CEO
Moderator: Yuzheng Sun, PhD · Superlinear Academy
Agent runtimes, search, data & evals
After the community conversation: agent runtimes, search, production data and a model-systems Rapid Fire.
- Vincent KocOpenClaw Foundation
Dark Factory to Lobsterville: Intent Engineering for Persistent Multiplayer Agents
Personal agents & enterprise applications
After the community panel: YouMind, Harvey and Dify on adoption and delivery, followed by application short talks on coding, data context, agents and game creation.
- Joey WangHarvey
Trust Your Own Evals, Not the Leaderboard: What 7,000 Internal Agent PRs Taught Us About Adopting Open Models
Friday · 10:00-17:50
World models, physical AI & AI-native products
World models, AI-native products & voice
Spatial intelligence, generative video, agent design, real-time voice and evaluation.
13:15–13:55 · First after lunch · Conversation
AI startups: products, markets & what comes next
Moderator: Bibi
Discussion topic subject to final confirmation
Models, physical AI & engineering practice
MiniMax, embodied AI, world generation, on-device models and sovereign-agent communication, finishing with production-system rapid fires.
Venue
Hilton Shanghai
Hongqiao
Located in Shanghai’s Hongqiao business district, the Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao is a five-star hotel designed for international business events and conferences. Just a short drive from Hongqiao International Airport and the National Exhibition and Convention Center (NECC), the hotel features spacious ballrooms, state-of-the-art meeting facilities, and luxury accommodations. Its convenient location and conference facilities make it a premier venue for global business and technology events.
Check out the hotel →
Sponsors
Our sponsors & partners
Thank you to the sponsors and partners supporting AI Engineer Shanghai.
Platinum sponsors
Gold sponsors
Silver sponsors
AlayaLab
Supported by
Organizations helping make this event possible.
Media & community partners
Side events
November 4 · 18:00–20:30 · Shanghai time
Daytona AI Builders — Shanghai
Meet builders before the conference for talks on agent infrastructure and an evening of conversation, with pizza and drinks.
Separate free registration, subject to host approval. Location shared by the host after registration.
View event & apply on Luma ↗Visa information
Entry requirements for
China
US Passport Holders
US citizens are not on China’s 30-day visa-free list, but there are two good options depending on your travel route:
Most of European Countries, Canada, UK, Australia, Japan & South Korea
30-day visa-free
Citizens of 35 European countries (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, UK, Switzerland, and more) enjoy 30-day visa-free entry to China until December 31, 2026. No advance visa application needed. Just arrive with a valid passport.
Covers tourism, business, and transit. Full list includes all major EU/EEA countries plus the UK, Switzerland, and Norway.
All other Nationalities (e.g., India, South Africa, Mexico)
Visa Required
Fill out the Visa Letter Request Form here after booking your ticket, and take the generated document to your local consulate to apply for your China entry visa.
Visa policies can change quickly. Regardless of your nationality, please confirm your specific requirements, local consulate locations, and the most up-to-date documentation checklists via the official Chinese Visa Application Service Center Portal (www.visaforchina.cn).
Watch
Previous AI Engineer livestreams
AI Engineer Europe 2026
A recent global AI Engineer livestream while Shanghai-specific programming is finalized.
AI Engineer World's Fair 2024
A prior flagship recording from the AI Engineer channel.
Tickets
Join us in
Shanghai
Paying by card? Use the international checkout (USD). Paying with WeChat Pay or Alipay? Use the China checkout (CNY, fapiao available). Ticket types and prices are shown on each checkout page.
Shanghai 2026
The Shanghai organizing team
The Shanghai edition is organized by Standup Partners, working with AIE and local partner Arogo Intelligence. Mengying Li and Yuzheng Sun bring together speaker relationships, program development and communities across the US and China.
Standup Partners
Mengying Li
Co-organizer
Mengying has led growth and data work at Braintrust, Notion and MotherDuck. At Standup Partners, she advises AI and developer-tool companies on growth and cross-border expansion. For AIE Shanghai, she leads international partnerships and speaker relationships.
Superlinear Academy
Yuzheng Sun, PhD
Co-organizer
Founder of Superlinear Academy with a PhD in Economics from Cornell. He previously served as Vice Director of Data and Growth at Tencent, a data scientist at Meta, an economist at Amazon, and an early team member at Statsig (later acquired by OpenAI). He has hosted more than 200 conversations with researchers, founders and practitioners. For AIE Shanghai, he shapes the program, invites speakers and connects builder communities.
Shanghai organizer: Standup Partners · Local partner: Arogo Intelligence