A
Track A — Open Source Models & AI Infra
The main track and main-stage story. Covers open models, inference engines, local deployment, platform APIs, evals, tooling, and production reliability.
November 5–6, 2026 • Hilton Shanghai Hongqiao
AI Engineer
Shanghai
Open models. Real infrastructure. Physical AI.
Two days of technical talks and demos with the people behind World Labs, Kimi, HeyGen, Vercel and more. Compare how teams in China and around the world build, evaluate and ship AI systems.
English and Mandarin · Live translation
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
Featuring speakers & sponsors from
Meta
CursorConference tracks
Open Models &
Physical AI
B
Track B — Physical AI
The second engineering frontier. Covers VLA / robot foundation models, robot data, simulation and Sim2Real, robot inference, deployment, safety, and real demos. Connects back to Track A: what changes when inference, evals, and deployment move from software into the physical world?
Speakers
The researchers and engineers
shaping the conversation
November 5–6
Program
preview
Prepared technical talks, demos and room for conversations between sessions. This is a tentative overview, with more sessions and details to come. Final talk titles, timings and room assignments will follow.
Thursday · November 5
Open models, agents & infrastructure
Morning
From models to working systems
Open-model development, agent engineering and evaluation: how teams choose models, test behavior and turn capabilities into useful products.
Afternoon
Infrastructure behind reliable agents
Sandboxes, search, state and memory, inference economics, and billing. Technical sessions on the infrastructure choices that shape reliability and cost.
Across the day
Products, interfaces & developer workflows
Demos and engineering lessons from teams building AI-native software, alongside time to meet speakers and explore exhibitor demos.
Friday · November 6
Physical AI & AI-native systems
Morning
Spatial intelligence & the physical world
3D generation, world models, robotics and the data systems behind them: how representations of the world become inputs to interactive and embodied systems.
Afternoon
AI systems people can rely on
Agent reliability, identity and access, production workflows, and the design decisions that make AI useful in practice.
Across the day
Demos & engineering conversations
See systems in action and discuss implementation choices with the people building them. Conversations continue between sessions and around the demo floor.
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
Global partnerships · Speaker relations
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
Program architecture · Content programming · Community connections
Yuzheng founded Superlinear Academy, a community for AI builders across China and the US. He previously led data and AI work at Tencent and was an early team member at Statsig, which was later acquired by OpenAI. He holds a PhD from Cornell and 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
Share what you are building
AI Engineer Shanghai brings together researchers and engineers from China’s leading AI labs and top international groups for two days of deep technical talks. We’re looking for speakers who can share hard-earned lessons on LLM research, physical AI, and multi-agent systems.
Key Dates for Speakers
October 7ALL Submissions Deadline
October 10Final Wave Announcements
All submissions are reviewed using the same criteria; deadlines only affect review timing and announcement date.
Talk Lengths
Workshops
Stage Talk
Lightning Talk
During your session, dive right into the content with minimal self-introduction — the MC will introduce you. Your talk will be professionally recorded and published on our YouTube, X, and LinkedIn.
We invite you to submit your abstract and speaker information. You are highly encouraged to:
- Pick non-boring titles (you CAN change your mind later) and look at the best talks from past AIE confs and peer conferences. Your chances are ~epsilon if you simply resubmit talks that look at home at generic AI conferences.
- Multiple submissions are welcome and not held against you — you don’t need to guess at what we want. We just need to know the rough direction of 1–5 topics you could speak about.
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
Partner
with us
Connect with engineers, researchers and founders working on open models, AI infrastructure and physical AI. Contact the Shanghai team to discuss sponsorship opportunities.
Sponsorship inquiry →
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
Choose your preferred checkout. Ticket types, prices and any applicable offers are shown on each booking page.
Organized by
Standup Partners
Standup Partners is a San Francisco-based advisory helping AI companies build growth engines and expand between the US and China. The team has built and advised growth at Braintrust, Notion, MotherDuck, Statsig (acquired by OpenAI), and Tencent, and advises AI and developer-tool companies on GTM, data, and cross-border strategy.
