Original · Unique Research · 2026-05-23
Editor's note: The first-person report and its judgments belong to the original Chinese author. This English rendition retains the opening event overview, opening keynote, AI-GROW keynote, all eight trend roundtables, the Global AI 100 awards ceremony, the Baiguoyuan afternoon keynote, and the Unique DemoDay sub-venue summary. All named speakers, companies, roles and panel topics are preserved. Company, personal and product names are transliterated where official English forms remain unverified. Market projections, performance claims and company-specific figures are source or speaker attributions, not independently verified findings.
Unique Awards
2026 Unique Awards · Shenzhen Unique Go AI Globalization Growth Summit Event Recap
From technology trends to commercial landing, from product revolution to organizational evolution—the most authentic industry picture under the AI globalization wave
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In 2026, an intellectual gathering bringing together global AI entrepreneurs, brand going-global operators and industrial investors concluded in Shenzhen.
This summit drew over 2,000 registrations, covering more than 1,000 AI companies, over 500 founders and more than 500 investment institutions. With "globalization growth" as the core theme, it presented the most authentic industry picture under the AI globalization wave from all dimensions—from technology trends to commercial landing, from product revolution to organizational evolution.
Opening Keynote: From "Going Out" to "Digging In"
The summit officially kicked off with a keynote by Jason from Unique Research. Using the application data from two editions of the Global AI 100 awards as his entry point, he presented the clearest evolutionary trajectory of AI globalization—the industry has moved from "concept demonstration" into the "commercial validation" stage. The application layer share rose to 76%, industry applications nearly doubled, while productivity tools clearly contracted. Agent is no longer a label but has quietly merged into more concrete product forms such as digital employees, smart customer service and marketing automation.
The application data equally corroborates this judgment: companies actually covering overseas markets rose from 41% to 55%, those with over half of revenue from overseas rose from 15% to 25%, and those with overseas teams rose from 15% to 22%. Jason specifically pointed out that team is the hardest indicator to fake—the three numbers moving in sync means going global has shifted from a slogan into a real operating fact. He concluded that in the next stage, the industry will begin rewarding companies that can simultaneously accomplish three things—products standardized enough to replicate across markets, delivery close enough to scenarios to truly solve customer problems, and organizations global enough to earn revenue overseas rather than just traffic.
Keynote: AI-GROW Growth Flywheel and AI-Native Organizational Evolution
Next to take the stage was Chen Pengfei (Captain), China's first listed-company AI-CGO and expert judge on CCTV's "Winning at AI+." Opening with his personal experience of 1,000 days entering AI, he directly put forward four core judgments about AI: AI intelligence will comprehensively surpass humans; the next 3 years are the greatest deterministic commercial variable; AI is the core driving force of commercial evolution; and agents will become the capability units of enterprises. This is not merely at the cognitive level—it is backed by hundreds of millions of AI practical battles. Chen Pengfei led his team to deploy China's first AI super store manager agent and the retail industry's first AI member multi-agent, validating the significant value of AI in enterprise cost reduction and efficiency improvement with actual ROI data, becoming benchmark cases at Alibaba Cloud's Apsara Conference and Tencent's Global Ecosystem Technology Conference. Between "knowing" and "doing," what is missing is a reusable practical theory system—the "AI-GROW" digital intelligence growth pioneering theory system, officially released in Shenzhen this year. He emphasized that the first step for an enterprise to truly implement an AI strategy is not tools, but the AI cognitive upgrade of the executive team, achieved through the numerical closed loop of "conversation efficiency → scenario skill encapsulation → organizational evolution." The core is not making AI adapt to the existing organization, but letting the organization actively grow AI-native capabilities.
Finally, to promote the deep integration of AI and the real economy, Captain's OPC-AI fund and AI Symbiosis TOP circle are vigorously introducing talents such as AI-OPC technology, FED engineers and AI CEO coaches. He suggested that enterprise leaders should first make good use of AI with an AI symbiosis mindset rather than a utilitarian tool mentality. The chairman does not need to become an AI expert, but the chairman must become the first person to use AI to re-understand their own industry. "AI is not the goal, but a means of capability." He closed with a kind appeal: "Live with AI, live with love—AI is love."
Trend Roundtable 1: Product Revolution—When Next-Generation AI Products Are No Longer Designed for Humans
The first morning roundtable was moderated by Wu Wei, founder of Unique Research. Kelly, founder of Buda.im; Aaron Jiao Zhengdao, CPO of Kuse.ai; Li Kejia, founder of Botlearn; and Li Yafei, founder of Clacky—four frontline AI entrepreneurs—all took the stage for in-depth exchanges around AI-native products, the Agent ecosystem, organizational change and commercialization.
Kelly shared a detail: after seeing non-technical employees become addicted to AI chatting in early 2025, she completely solidified her transformation direction. Today, over 80% of the team's daily communication interfaces with AI, and she advocates that future entrepreneurship only requires the boss to define goals while AI takes full responsibility for execution. Jiao Zhengdao put forward a clear product framework—internet products are information containers, while the essence of AI products is productivity containers; in design, users must be able to clearly issue instructions, AI must decompose and complete tasks, and the entire process must be auditable. He emphasized that gross margin is far more important than user volume, and user migration cost is the true moat. Li Kejia believes that in the AI era, humans still need to learn dialectical thinking and decision-making ability; the future is a hybrid of humans and Agents, and the plummeting cost of computing power will cause Agents to explode to a scale of 100 billion within five years. His platform focuses on Agent evolution assessment, currently free and open, with future commercialization through courses. Li Yafei took a completely different path: abandoning the cloud route, insisting on local deployment plus open-source free access, focusing on domestic substitution, relying on community iteration to optimize the product, with installation volume maintaining a weekly doubling pace.
This discussion ultimately converged on a core consensus: AI-native products are by no means simple feature stacking—the core is reconstructing the human-AI collaboration paradigm, and deep organizational binding plus user migration cost is the long-term competitiveness. Commercialization cannot merely be a cost搬运工 for model vendors; the Agent era is approaching an explosion tipping point, and entrepreneurs need to enter early to seize the core position of the ecosystem.
Trend Roundtable 2: Traffic Reshuffle—How Can Going-Global Brands Intercept New Traffic in the Era of Large Models?
The second roundtable was moderated by Bruce, founder of OpenClaw Asia. Wang Jiancong, co-founder of AhaCreator; Chen Erhang, senior vice president of Yixuan Technology; and Wu Yizhao, founder and CEO of Youyou Rabbit Technology—three guests—respectively broke down the going-global traffic transformation in the era of large models from three tracks: influencer marketing, B2B independent site operation, and content asset building.
Wang Jiancong's core judgment is that AI is driving the decentralization of influencer advertising—brands should abandon high-budget投放 on top influencers and shift to分散 budgets among mid-to-long-tail and micro-influencers. The value of AI lies in replacing repetitive labor such as influencer screening and value matching, and precisely judging sales-driving potential. Chen Erhang, deeply engaged in B2B going global, proposed that AI search is an extension rather than a replacement of SEO; foreign trade independent sites need to adapt to AI large models, focusing on outputting structured content, enterprise qualifications and success cases to gain AI's trust and become credible suppliers. Wu Yizhao emphasized that content asset accumulation is the core competitiveness in the AI era—AI lowers content production costs but simultaneously triggers content inflation; brands must first establish a standardized content asset library to avoid AI amplifying chaos.
The meeting ultimately clarified: AI is an efficiency tool, not a master key for traffic. The root of going-global brands' traffic anxiety lies in weak brand power and chaotic channel management. For SMEs expanding into new markets, they should test on a small scale, replicate quality content, and run lightweight advertising; in the long term, they need to complete three capabilities—growth matrix, content AI adaptation, and infrastructure construction—insisting that humans control core content while AI handles repetitive work.
Trend Roundtable 3: Cross-Border E-Commerce—How Is AI Reshaping Product Selection, Live Streaming and Fulfillment?
The third roundtable was moderated by Yu Jing Scarlett, partner and CMO of Youyou Rabbit Technology and operator of "Brand Going-Global Sister S." Chen Guang, founder of QuickCEP; Henk, product lead at Linkfox; and Zhang Keyi, founder of LynxAI—three guests—broke down the landing value of AI across the full cross-border chain from different perspectives of customer service operations, content production and product innovation.
Zhang Keyi brought a stunning number: AI can compress the traditional 13-week product selection cycle to 4 hours. The core is capturing supply-demand imbalance opportunities; AI-assisted product selection can significantly improve the success rate of hit products, but humans still need to verify AI's data and logic. Henk pointed out that the普及 of AI is leading to homogenization of live streaming content; the key to differentiation lies in scenario-based understanding, accumulating proprietary data assets, and rapidly iterating content. AI-generated materials combined with proprietary data can greatly improve usability. Chen Guang extended the boundary of fulfillment from backend logistics to frontend user experience—AI smart customer service and Agents can effectively solve multilingual and after-sales return/exchange pain points, but he advises sellers to prioritize product selection and marketing first, then systematically optimize the fulfillment system after scale takes shape.
The three guests jointly confirmed: AI does not replace human labor but reconstructs the cross-border e-commerce workflow—product selection relies on AI to capture data opportunities, live streaming relies on data plus iteration for differentiation, and fulfillment relies on AI to improve user experience. Sellers need not焦虑 about technology catching up; the core is accumulating proprietary data assets and steadily using AI as a lever for efficiency improvement and value amplification.
Highlight Moment: 2026 Global AI 100 Awards Ceremony
The morning agenda concluded with the most ceremonial segment of this summit—the 2026 Global AI 100 Awards Ceremony was grandly held, recognizing outstanding enterprises that have率先 completed commercial validation and truly "dug in" on the AI globalization track.
Afternoon Keynote: Baiguoyuan's AI Dimension-Upgrading Practice
The afternoon agenda opened with a keynote by Zhang Weili, ecosystem lead at Baiguoyuan Technology Center. As a leading fruit chain enterprise with over 90 million cumulative members across all channels, Baiguoyuan relies on its technology center to position itself around three scenarios—digital agriculture, smart supply chain, and digital retail—with the positioning of "technology connecting the industrial closed loop, serving the industrial ecosystem," deeply integrating AI technology into the full industrial chain as the core support for enterprise digital transformation.
Baiguoyuan has always used AI technology as a lever for business empowerment, focusing on reducing frontline operational burden and helping management achieve data-driven scientific decision-making,推动 operational decisions to upgrade from experience-driven to data-driven. At the specific implementation level, it has successively launched digital intelligence systems such as AI inspection, fruit knowledge large model, AI smart ordering, smart customer service and AI business diagnosis, effectively achieving frontline operation standardization and overall operational efficiency optimization.
On the technology accumulation and ecosystem co-building side, Baiguoyuan continues to promote全员 digital capability building,搭建 an internal technology asset sharing platform to accumulate reusable capabilities, and building a digital employee foundation to固化 efficient workflows. At the same time, it opens mature technology capabilities to empower upstream and downstream partners, jointly promoting the full-chain digital intelligence upgrade of the fruit industry.
Trend Roundtable 4: AI Marketing—How to Rewrite the Narrative Rules of Global Brands?
This roundtable was moderated by Xu Yuan Vera, marketing lead at Unique Research. Charley, founder of FOSHO; Max, CMO of DeiNai; and Alex, founder of AllyClaw—three guests—discussed how AI is reshaping the global marketing of going-global brands.
Charley believes AI is shifting going-global marketing from "market segmentation" to "data precision calculation," enabling precise budget allocation and full-chain data connectivity. Brands must坚守 a unified core, then adapt to the localization needs of different markets; SMEs can use AI to effectively control going-global costs. Max proposed that AI can efficiently avoid overseas cultural taboos and precisely match influencers, suggesting that brands build influencer marketing from scratch, collect user feedback early, and simultaneously accumulate digital assets. Alex emphasized that AI can reshape e-commerce marketing processes, achieve data self-iteration, help SMEs calculate economic models at low cost, and quickly find profitable channels.
The three guests ultimately formed a consistent judgment: the core role of AI is efficiency improvement, decision support and amplifying brand advantages, but it cannot replace the brand core—quality products, clear brand value and unique brand taste are the unshakable competitiveness of going-global brands in the AI era. Brands must have humans control the vision core, and use AI to achieve refined, low-cost global growth.
Trend Roundtable 5: Infinite Studio—How Does AI Industrially Produce Global Content?
This roundtable, moderated by Jeffrey Wu Shenliang, VP at Unique Capital, gathered Shen Yang, founder of Qiyu Shuke; Wang Jun, founder of Jisu Yinqing; Henry Li Deheng, co-founder of Guomai Zhiyu & Xingjutong OpenReels; and Luo Hui, founder and CEO of Yunxigu Technology—to jointly explore the current state, bottlenecks and future of AI content production.
Shen Yang focused on AI marketing content, proposing that AI will become an enterprise's "elite troops," and the core industry barrier is not productivity but the team's aesthetic ability and the ability to industrialize aesthetics. Wang Jun bluntly stated that fully automated AI video is difficult to achieve in the short term, rooted in the底层 limitations of AI training paradigms; his company is currently接近 semi-automation, relying on a unique team architecture and organizational adaptability for differentiation. Li Deheng, deeply engaged in the IP field, believes AI significantly improves IP adaptation efficiency; IP going global can leverage AI to achieve technology globalization, but the story core must retain localized cultural attributes. Luo Hui pointed to a deeper industry bottleneck: not model capability, but the immature industrial chain ecosystem and the yet-to-be-perfected brain-product assembly line; in the long run, industrialized production of global content is entirely foreseeable.
The consensus formed at the meeting was: AI greatly reduces content production costs, but also makes user attention increasingly scarce and the value of quality content increasingly prominent. In the short term, the industry will see three major changes—business model innovation, distribution format iteration, and digital cultural assetization. In the long run, aesthetic originality, localized narrative and engineering capability are the core competitiveness of enterprises; technology empowerment must be combined with humanistic value to promote the healthy development of the AI content industry.
Trend Roundtable 6: Growth Strategy—How to Achieve Low-Cost Viral Growth and Scalable Replication of Overseas Users?
Wang Lu, partner at Yangfan Chuhai & Xinzhi Unicorn, moderated this roundtable focused on AI going-global cost reduction, efficiency improvement and scalable growth. Zhan Qi, founder of Chengjue Intelligence; Yang Rui, partner at Luckyshot; Liu Peng, operations director at Ruiyun Technology; and Wang Bolin, founder of FlowEight—four guests—each brought highly practical frontline experience.
Liu Peng pointed out that AI video creation has matched or even surpassed traditional live-action shooting; domestic costs have dropped to 1/3 of traditional, overseas to 1/5, with efficiency improved by dozens of times. Zhan Qi emphasized that AI Agent is a sharp tool for going-global operations, able to reduce customer service manpower by 70% to 80%, and private-domain operations can achieve thousand-person-thousand-face personalization; the core lies in solidly extracting the enterprise knowledge base. Yang Rui shared the astonishing results of AI short-drama going global: per-drama cost plummeted from $10,000–20,000 to $1,000, with one person producing one per day, and AI can rapidly replicate hit logic. Wang Bolin took a different approach, focusing on the metaphysics (Oracle) track, proposing that AI products should rely on the industry's natural traffic, with the core being providing users with emotional value rather than simply competing on technology.
The guest consensus was clear: AI is the core lever for going-global enterprises to reduce costs, improve efficiency and rapidly grow virally. The industry moat lies not in a single technology, but in the composite barrier of deep industry experience, deep user understanding and cross-cultural operational capability. Faced with rapid technology iteration, entrepreneurs need not过度焦虑; the key is to accumulate internal strength, find the right track, and rely on long-term accumulation to seize market opportunities.
Trend Roundtable 7: Claw's Great Voyage—Dividends and Business Opportunities Behind the Lobster Frenzy
Tim Chen Yunfeng, visiting mentor at HKU ICB, moderated this roundtable around AI industry landing and regional ecosystem differences. Wang Weiyang, founder of Zenkit; Bruce, founder of OpenClaw Asia; and Sun Xuefeng, CEO of Xiaoshui Intelligence—three guests—shared their practical observations from three dimensions: industry integration, global layout and enterprise operations.
Wang Weiyang proposed that OpenClaw is an efficient IM bridge that can greatly lower the ToB service threshold and improve customer service efficiency by a hundredfold, serving as a sharp tool for small teams to serve massive users at low cost and rapidly expand scale. Bruce pointed out that China's AI application landing is already in a leading position globally; North America and Japan have high willingness to pay but insufficient supply, and TOKEN e-commerce is a medium-to-long-term structural opportunity—entrepreneurs can focus on细分 tracks such as compliance and hardware services to break through. Sun Xuefeng observed an interesting regional divergence: Beijing AI enterprises emphasize platforms and capital, while Shenzhen is pragmatic and strong in landing; SMEs难以 compete head-on with large enterprises and need to band together, relying on secure AI platforms and Shenzhen's hardware industry chain cooperation to create incremental value.
The three guests unanimously agreed that AI is the core driving force for industry integration, going-global layout, cost reduction and efficiency improvement. The industry moat lies in the composite barrier of industry collaboration capability, user pain point insight and cross-domain resource integration. SMEs need not焦虑 about technology iteration; the key is to band together, leverage resources, find the right track, and rely on tool empowerment to achieve steady development.
Trend Roundtable 8: Cross-Border Collaboration—Global Talent Strategy and Culture Building for AI-Native Enterprises
The closing roundtable was moderated by Xenia Wang, senior partner at CGL. Ken, co-founder of Milu Interactive Wapitee; Yang Kai, partner at Benmo Dynamic Technology; and Simon, founder of Wuzhong Qiyuan—three guests—respectively explored organizational transformation, talent selection and culture building in the AI era from three tracks: AI-native going-global marketing, hard-tech manufacturing, and established enterprise AI education transformation.
Ken believes the core trait of AI talent is maintaining curiosity; organizations should build an open, diverse and relaxed exploration culture,坚持 small and elite teams, focus on real market demand, and refuse to blindly follow AI concepts. Yang Kai, from the hard-tech field, proposed that AI talent needs the traits of "want to do, can do, should do"; the enterprise core is improving organizational efficiency, uniting the team with the unified belief of "driving the world," and avoiding cultural dilution caused by scale expansion. Simon focused on the AI transformation dilemma of established enterprises, pointing out the need to break bureaucracy and move toward a node-network system; AI talent should possess three major capabilities—learning transfer, systematic thinking and AI proficiency—allowing excellent grassroots talent to be seen and release vitality.
The final consensus reached by the three guests was also a kind of echo of the entire day's discussion at the summit: in the AI era, the core competitiveness of enterprises is no longer business narrative, but AI-adapted organizational architecture, new talent standards and a unified yet open culture. The traditional "look at experience, look at background" talent selection logic has failed; curiosity, self-drive and systematic capability have become key. Only by breaking hierarchical constraints, respecting talent value and anchoring long-term value can enterprises stabilize their foundation and go further in the AI wave.
Sub-Venue: Unique Awards Unique DemoDay AI Pitch Day
Concurrent with the summit, the sub-venue hosted the ever-popular Unique DemoDay AI Pitch Day, where startup projects from diverse tracks including agriculture, healthcare, content, robotics and emotional companionship took the stage one after another, covering the cutting-edge application exploration of AI landing.
In the morning session, Chunyun Zhinong used brain-computer collaboration to reshape the agricultural production paradigm, replacing post-hoc remediation with proactive prediction optimization to build a staple-grain field management closed loop; Show3D focused on self-developed next-generation 3D and AI infrastructure software platforms, breaking dependence on specific operating systems and high-performance hardware, supporting multi-end operation; Attributuly (AllyClaw) appeared with marketing agents for global DTC brands, already serving over 20,000 brands; FOSHO demonstrated going-global marketing automation capability with one-click execution of affiliate marketing and media investment research; Qiyu Shuke brought full-chain AI agents based on performance delivery; OMO pet companionship robots used multimodal AI and the PABI behavioral intelligence system to let owners care for pets with peace of mind even when away; Puchen Intelligence led the construction of the world's first pathological semantic graph and biological model standard BioModels, recognized by top international institutions such as Nature and EBI, already routinely used by top institutions including GSK, AstraZeneca and Mayo Clinic, creating the "ImageNet moment" for medical AI; Zhisheng Ren used AI + psychology to build a privacy-zero-contact compliant financial asset management platform; Loova, as a next-generation video creation entry for global creators, uses Video Agent to help creators efficiently complete the full process from idea to delivery.
In the afternoon session, Genieus brought the world's first real-creator AI network, integrating AI content creation with real-creator distribution; Demeter agricultural harvesting robots pioneered commercial harvesting robot services, using China's PPI to serve developed countries' CPI; Nano Robotics focused on high-precision mobile robots, targeting smart factory logistics solutions, already securing single-batch orders of over 100 units from Foxconn; AIhealing built an emotional full-lifecycle layered system with an AI-customized audio healing platform; Shunqu AI gave the "guzi" (merchandise fandom) circle a "soul," creating a soulmate experience; Biyou Technology committed to AI-Live content creation office agent applications; Bi'an Xinzhi's Meike smart meditation cushion used无感 monitoring technology to precisely identify users' heart rate, breathing and emotional changes during meditation, achieving real-time dynamic guidance; Yujian Nunu positioned itself as "AI trendy toy + companionship robot + software-hardware interaction bridge," pioneering the "IP + hardware + game" trinity ecosystem, endowing dolls with independent zodiac personalities through full-chain self-developed Agents.
As the day's agenda concluded, Shenzhen once again became the densest intellectual intersection for China's AI globalization.
The most frequently appearing words at the summit were not the name of a certain model, nor the label of a hot track—but "landing," "data," "moat," and "long-term." This is perhaps the most authentic footnote of the 2026 AI wave: after the noise subsides, those who stay to do serious work are truly changing the world.