The MEET2026 Intelligent Future Summit, hosted by Quantum Bit, concluded in Beijing on December 10, 2025, marking a pivotal gathering for China's artificial intelligence ecosystem. The event, themed "Symbiosis Without Bounds, Intelligence Ignites the Future," brought together nearly 30 leading figures from academia, major tech corporations, and pioneering startups. Over the course of a densely packed day of presentations and discussions, the conference served as a comprehensive snapshot of the current state of AI, highlighting a clear industry-wide shift from theoretical model development towards practical, large-scale deployment and the exploration of new frontiers like embodied intelligence and world models. The discussions underscored a consensus that 2025 is the "Year of the Agent," with a focus on how AI will move beyond digital applications to interact with and understand the physical world.
Reported Attendance & Reach:
- Offline Attendees: Nearly 1,500
- Online Live Stream Viewers: Over 3.5 million
- Number of Featured Speakers: Nearly 30
Academic Leaders Outline the Convergence of Intelligence
The summit opened with foundational perspectives from leading academic institutions. Zhang Yaqin, Founding Dean of Tsinghua University's Institute for Intelligent Industry Research and a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, framed the next wave of AI as a profound fusion. He described it as the convergence of information intelligence, physical intelligence, and biological intelligence, representing a fundamental merging of bits, atoms, and molecules. This vision sets the stage for AI's expansion from pure software into robotics, biotechnology, and material science. Wang Zhongyuan, President of the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence, echoed this theme in his talk "The Year of AI Awakening: From the Digital World to the Physical World," emphasizing the critical challenges and opportunities in bridging these two domains.
Industry Giants Detail the Full-Stack AI Deployment Pipeline
A significant portion of the conference was dedicated to the practical mechanics of deploying AI at scale. Presentations systematically covered the entire technology stack, from underlying compute infrastructure to end-user applications. Companies like Baidu and Google Cloud discussed their strategies for building and supporting AI agents and developer ecosystems. Baidu's Wang Ying showcased progress on "super personal agents" for content creation and organizational intelligence, while Google's Dennis Yue emphasized the future of autonomous collaboration between intelligent agents. On the hardware front, Qualcomm's Wan Weixing detailed advances in "Hybrid AI" architectures that distribute processing between the cloud and the edge, a key enabler for performant and private on-device AI. Meanwhile, executives from SenseTime and PPIO focused on the next generation of AI infrastructure, with SenseTime's Xuan Shanming introducing a "compute-electricity symbiosis" paradigm and PPIO's Yao Xin positioning agent infrastructure as the "operating system" for the AI era.
Key Industry Themes Discussed:
- AI Agent commercialization and infrastructure
- Hybrid AI (Cloud-Edge) architectures
- Embodied Intelligence and Robotics
- World Models and Simulation
- Next-generation AI Compute Hardware
- AI's economic and societal impact
The Rise of the AI Agent as a Central Paradigm
A dominant thread throughout MEET2026 was the maturation and commercialization of AI agents. Multiple speakers, including Chen Xiaojian from Amazon Web Services and Fang Han from Kunlun Wanwei, declared that "Agentic AI is here." The consensus was that agent technology represents a qualitative leap from previous AI tools, enabling systems to pursue complex goals with autonomy. A dedicated roundtable session tackled the pressing question: "How far are we from AI Agents revolutionizing all industries?" Participants from Xiaosu Tech, Lianhui Tech, and Ant Group debated the remaining hurdles. They identified key challenges in achieving reliable technical and commercial closed loops, particularly around data integration, scenario-specific tuning, and organizational adaptation. Despite these challenges, the discussion was forward-looking, with participants sharing successful early deployment cases in customer service and financial claim processing.
Startups Pioneer New Frontiers in Hardware and Embodied Intelligence
The conference highlighted how nimble startups are pushing the boundaries of AI into new form factors and capabilities. Several presentations focused on moving AI into the physical realm. Wang Qian, founder of Independent Variable Robotics, discussed the immense difficulty of building foundational models for the physical world, citing the randomness and complexity of real-world interactions. Zhang Yanbo from Lingxin Qiaoshou presented a platform centered on dexterous robotic hands and a cloud-based "brain," showcasing practical progress in embodied intelligence. Other innovators are rethinking compute itself. RockAI's Liu Fanping argued for moving beyond Transformer-dominated architectures to create hardware with native memory and autonomous learning capabilities, while Guanglun Intelligent's Yang Haibo discussed their work on full-stack simulation infrastructure to accelerate the development of world models and physical AI.
Major Outputs from the Summit:
- "2025 Top Ten AI Trends Report" – Analysis of key trends in infrastructure, model evolution, applications, and China's role.
- "2025 Artificial Intelligence Annual Rankings" – Awards across five categories: Leading Enterprises, Promising Startups, Outstanding Products, Outstanding Solutions, and Focus Figures.
Reports and Awards Cement the Year's Trends
The summit also served as a platform for industry analysis. Quantum Bit's think tank released two key documents: the "2025 Top Ten AI Trends Report" and the "2025 Artificial Intelligence Annual Rankings." The trends report synthesized major directions for the coming year, analyzing developments from infrastructure and model evolution to the application landscape, with a particular focus on China's growing role. The awards recognized achievements across five categories, including leading enterprises, promising startups, outstanding products, solutions, and influential figures, providing a curated view of the most impactful players and technologies that defined the AI landscape in 2025. Together, these outputs from MEET2026 paint a picture of an industry in a crucial phase of transition, moving from explosive model development to the hard, rewarding work of integration, application, and physical-world embodiment.