Lisbon (AFP) – China flexes its technological muscle at the global Web Summit in Lisbon from Tuesday, showcasing dancing robots and low-cost artificial intelligence models.

First modification: 10/11/2026 - 13:37

"Increasingly, the superstars of the future are not coming from California. They are coming from China," said Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave at the opening ceremony on Monday.

At least 70,000 participants from 164 countries, including 10,000 startups and 1,500 investors, are attending the technology conference, which runs until Thursday.

This includes "more than 50 superstars from China's top AI labs, robotics startups, automakers, quantum computing startups, energy startups, and more," Cosgrave detailed.

The beginning of the meeting is overshadowed by the scandal in which Nvidia, the American company that dominates the market for chips used in the main AI systems, has been involved.

Its executive director, Jensen Huang, has acknowledged having had a romantic relationship with a woman whom US intelligence considers a spy for China. Beijing denies it.

Tao Zhang, co-founder of Manus AI, a Chinese artificial intelligence company, will use the summit to present Manus 2.0, an agent capable of autonomously completing a sequence of tasks.

Also participating are Li Chen, co-founder of robotics company Unitree, and William Shi, European president of rival Agibot, whose robots took the stage Monday to dance and perform tai chi moves.

Chinese companies Galbot and Ubtech Robotics are expected to demonstrate their humanoid robots.

Mechanisms for Chinese robotaxis, electric vehicles and open source AI models are also presented.

© 2026 AFP

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