The Web Summit 2026 opened in Lisbon on Monday, with China’s robotics, artificial intelligence and AI agents taking center stage alongside Nvidia’s expanding role in the global technology competition. Dancing robots from Aigibot opened the conference, underscoring China’s growing presence in AI development.
Web Summit CEO Paddy Cosgrave said the “superstars of the future are not coming from California; they’re coming from China,” and added that Chinese companies are building more of the world’s shared future than any other.
The United States and China are locked in an escalating artificial intelligence race, with Washington seeking to restrict exports of the most powerful chips to China.
Meanwhile, Nvidia is opening a probe into its CEO, Jensen Huang, after reports that Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort in his relationship with an alleged Chinese spy.
Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince said on stage that the reports were “very salacious,” though he said it remains to be seen whether Huang would be remembered as a hero or villain, adding that “Jensen did a lot to cement the AI ecosystem.”
AI agents also featured at the Web Summit stage. The technology is designed to take autonomous actions to assist humans and does not require a human to tell it what to do.
Manus AI, originally founded in China, demonstrated an impressive 30-second AI-generated video using its new 2.0 video technology from a 13-word prompt.
Tao Zhang, Manus co-founder and chief product officer, said AI is changing how he hires engineers. “We found the people we are looking for; it’s not just a good attitude. We don’t need more people; we need people who can work with AI,” he said.
Web Summit expected to attract close to 70,000 attendees, including 900 speakers and more than two thousand startups.
Cosgrave said it was the most international edition of Web Summit Lisbon, with every European country present.
