The Tech Buzz China China AI Trip Days 0 & 1 Recap:

We began with a welcome dinner on one of the most famous shopping streets in China, Nanjing East Road. Guests joined us Alibaba Group, Google, Deep Pharma Intelligence, Huashan Capital and Weijin Research. The conversations moved easily from ESG strategy and cloud infrastructure to clinical research models and investing. It was a strong start that brought the group together. After dinner, some of us walked over to the Bund to take in the skyline, while others got lost shopping for their kids.

The next morning we headed into a private AI and robotics forum that was co‑hosted by our team along with several local partners - ShineGlobal, Unique Research, National Innovation Center par Excellence and Sinnvoll Global Strategy. Members of our group also spoke, sharing perspectives on the US and European markets.

We had a mini roadshow where wall‑climbing robots, robot arms and an electronic skin technology that can sense as little as one gram of weight presented. Super fascinating stuff!

After the forum we bussed over to the main conference. The face‑recognition system to enter WAIC was lightning fast, and the halls were packed with business folks as well as families and kids exploring the exhibits.

We pre-arranged booth demos with several companies. Infinigence AI, which has recently been in the news for a meeting with Xi, presented on high‑performance AI chips and edge computing. Mootion showed its work on AI‑generated content and creative tools. MiniMax, a leading foundational AI model company in China, gave us an intro -- we are going back for an in depth meeting on Tuesday.

Exhausted, we made it to dinner with guests from Lenovo Capital and Syft AI. The conversation turned to venture investing, consumer AI products and early company building.

It has been a whirlwind! We have so much more to come, with meetings scheduled with Alibaba Cloud, Momenta and zhihu.com for Day 2, along with more time at the conference. Can't wait!

-Rui