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, all ten keynote speeches, both trend roundtables with every named speaker and their stated views, and the closing reflection. Market, revenue, user, efficiency, cost, tax and regulatory figures are source or speaker claims, not independently audited findings. Company, personal and work titles are transliterated where official English forms remain unverified. Product names, technical terms and organizational names are preserved as stated in the source.
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GO SUMMIT 2026 Shenzhen Event Recap
From Shenzhen to the World—Hardware Going Global and the New Globalization Paradigm
A high-density dialogue on AI hardware, globalization and new paradigms
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GO SUMMIT 2026 Shenzhen, co-hosted by Unique Research and AGI Villa, was officially held in Shenzhen on May 23, 2026.
With the theme "From Shenzhen to the World—Hardware Going Global and the New Globalization Paradigm," this summit brought together entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts from multiple fields including AI hardware, venture capital, legal compliance, education technology and affective computing, for a high-density in-depth dialogue on how Chinese technology companies go global.
Opening: The Belief in Co-Construction Amid Uncertainty
The summit opened with remarks by Monica Wang Shiyao, initiator of AGI Villa. She thanked the attending guests, partners and team, then put forward a core judgment on the global technology landscape: over the next decade, the world will not be dominated by a single country, but will move toward a new era of multi-country collaboration and co-writing. China is already a core global AI operations market, leading the world in development speed in fields such as foundation models, computing power, robotics and new-energy supply chains, and governments, capital and enterprises of all countries are eager to establish long-term cooperation with China rather than relying solely on one-off visits or simple information exchanges.
Monica introduced the positioning of the AGI Villa platform: as an open and inclusive international platform, its core value lies in connecting Chinese industry leaders with global operators, investors and policymakers. The platform operates global communities online, shares global tech innovation dynamics via weekly livestreams, and regularly hosts founder dinners and technology workshops offline, emphasizing that in-depth offline exchange is the foundation of cooperation that resists market cycles and geopolitical fluctuations. She also announced the GO Summit 2026–2027 world tour plan, covering four key markets—Greater China, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East—kicking off from Shenzhen, with subsequent stops in Rio de Janeiro, Singapore, Shanghai, Hangzhou and other cities.
Her opening concluded with one sentence: a new generation of entrepreneurs is now driving China to become a co-creator of the new era of global technology. Although the world has division and turmoil, uncertainty hides opportunities, and industry participants need not choose between East and West—upholding the belief of "just keep moving forward," they can jointly build bridges for China-foreign cooperation.
Keynote Speech 1: Entering Europe, Compliance First
Benjamin Klingsbo, co-founder of Ankra, delivered the first keynote, systematically breaking down the opportunities and paths for Chinese AI founders entering the European market.
He pointed out that Europe is currently in a critical period of the first large-scale restructuring of commercial cooperation relations since World War II. Due to geopolitical adjustments, Europe has significantly reduced its dependence on the US and turned to China for cooperation, creating a historic window for Chinese AI founders. On the data front, China leads in 64 of 74 core technologies globally, and top US venture capital data shows that 80% of AI products use Chinese large models, with outstanding efficiency advantages. Enterprise AI software, physical AI (robotics) and industrial automation are the three blue-ocean tracks he is optimistic about.
On financing logic, Benjamin emphasized that European early-stage venture capital focuses on "disruptive ideas + top teams," and supply-chain advantages alone are difficult to impress investors. Financing is the exclusive responsibility of the CEO, requiring months of investment and engagement with over a hundred institutions; the key is to proactively ask investors "what is the core obstacle to not investing today," turning every rejection into a clear improvement target.
On compliance, he explicitly designated data compliance (GDPR) as the life-and-death line for Chinese AI enterprises entering Europe: fines for violations can reach up to 7% of global revenue, and risks must be avoided through three measures—local cloud deployment, appointing a European data officer, and keeping data within borders. His final conclusion was: the European market is not won by "fast" and "cheap"; only by compliance first, quality upgrading and local symbiosis can one cross cultural trust barriers and build a long-term commercial moat.
Keynote Speech 2: Architecture First, Tax as the Guiding Principle
Bernie, founder of Fenghuang Cifang, drawing on his dual experience as a cross-border lawyer and entrepreneur, shared the practical logic of global equity architecture design and US tariff/tax compliance regarding the core pain points of Chinese enterprises going global to the US.
His core views concentrated on three points: first, US business can be conducted without a US entity—Hong Kong and Singapore companies can directly interface with the US market, and enterprises such as MiniMax and Kuaishou have adopted this model; second, the tax burden gap between China-US architectures is significant—for the same scale of business, a Hong Kong entity's after-tax profit is over 50% higher than a US entity's; third, US entity selection should be matched on demand—use a C-Corp for fundraising and an LLC for non-fundraising, with Delaware as the preferred registration state.
Bernie's practical advice was clear and specific: for going global to the US, prioritize building an offshore architecture centered on Hong Kong or Singapore; for hardware exports, strictly control customs declaration compliance to prevent freight forwarders from under-declaring; for capital outbound, prioritize using tax treaties or compliant service-fee models. The core principle is: do not establish a US entity unless necessary, and architecture design should center on tax reduction, compliance and flexible exit.
Keynote Speech 3: Day 0 Is Global
Zeneth Wong, founder of the Asian AI Startup Fund, opened with her own experience—born in Hong Kong, started in Singapore, founded Call Time a hundred days ago, and now rooted in Shenzhen. The core of her sharing this time was to help Asian, especially Chinese, AI startups break through geographical limitations to achieve true globalization, with a focus on explaining the value of the one-person company (OPC) model.
She put forward three core judgments: first, AI is reshaping the entrepreneurial paradigm—a one-person team, with the help of AI agents and without large technical investment, can build a complete AI company in 3 months, and some enterprises have already achieved 5 million in monthly revenue with 11 AI agents; second, Shenzhen-Hong Kong is the golden combination for Chinese AI globalization—Shenzhen provides hardware and low-cost development advantages, while Hong Kong has internationalized capital and compliance systems, and the complementarity of the two is the optimal springboard for going global; third, the Chinese AI ecosystem has shifted from following to leading, and ordinary people乃至 teenagers, without programming basics, can quickly deploy projects with AI.
Zeneth Wong ultimately concluded: this is the golden age of one-person AI unicorns—founders only need to focus on strategy, creativity and customer relationships, and AI can undertake the vast majority of execution work. She called on AI entrepreneurs to establish a global mindset from day one, and stated that her fund will build a global resource network to help more Chinese one-person AI enterprises go global.
Trend Roundtable 1: AI Entrepreneurs' Globalization Breakthrough
The closing segment of the morning session was a trend roundtable moderated by Zeneth Wong, where five guests engaged in in-depth exchange around "AI Entrepreneurs' Globalization Breakthrough—From Technological Advantage to Market Definition."
Albert Lin Zhixiang, co-founder of Nuoda Robotics, and Anthony Aurelien Ribout, founder and CEO of ARSK Sound-Form Creative Brand, shared their observations on AI hardware going-global paths; Anthony emphasized that small startups can use AI to narrow the gap with large firms, and the key is to focus on niche细分 markets overlooked by large firms, quickly building barriers with innovative AI hardware. Winson Kwok, founder of Ventureport, is optimistic about the going-global potential of high-quality domestic AI enterprises, focusing on Hong Kong ecosystem resources to help startups connect with global resources and brand exposure. Zhao Yijie, CEO of OneOneTalk AI, emphasized that the core of AI-native education is personalization; his product has partnered with ByteDance to build an AI education system, and he believes OPC is an irreversible trend, allowing non-technical founders to start businesses with AI agents. Sun Haiyang, CEO of Shenzhen Bi'an Xinzhi Technology Co., Ltd., shared an affective computing going-global strategy: focusing on intelligent meditation cushions, relying on private-domain marketing through North American yoga and educational institutions, and emphasizing "AI is auxiliary, business priority"—founders must always control core creativity.
The roundtable reached three consensuses: Shenzhen is fertile ground for AI hardware entrepreneurship; AI is leveling the gap between startups and large firms; the OPC era has arrived, but technology must serve business, and founders' strategic judgment and core creativity remain irreplaceable competitiveness.
Afternoon Session Opening: Ecosystem Connection and Individual Super-Capability
The afternoon session opened with Darren Su Peng, co-founder of AGI Villa, who shared frontline insights in three directions—overseas AI ecosystems, OPC cognition and AI Agent collaboration—under the theme "The World I See."
He observed that overseas conferences are shifting from one-off events to常态化 ecosystem connections, and the core of globalization is deep localization, requiring continuous exposure and integration into the local ecosystem rather than simple marketing output. His understanding of OPC also goes beyond the literal: it is not a narrow "one-person company," but AI-empowered individual super-capability, equally applicable to enterprise full-stack employee training and the construction of ecosystem-type collaborative organizations. In AI Agent practice, he summarized two major pain points in multi-agent collaboration—process gaps and knowledge-base redundancy interference; practice has shown that returning to a human-led knowledge base with AI-assisted execution mode yields better results. Darren's conclusion was: the core competitiveness in the AI era lies in ecosystem connection, individual capability amplification and efficient organizational collaboration.
Keynote Speech 4: The Going-Global Direction in a Torn World
Monica Wang Shiyao, initiator of AGI Villa, took the stage again, drawing on her experience of visiting nearly 60 countries, to focus on the product-selection and market-selection logic for Chinese enterprises going global in 2026.
She proposed that the world in 2026 presents a "torn" characteristic, with the global structure evolving from three layers to four. Going global requires jumping out of short-term fluctuations and focusing on three slow variables—population and talent, new-energy supply, and AI empowerment—to find deterministic opportunities amid uncertainty. She specifically broke down four emerging markets: Southeast Asia has a good Chinese foundation and mature e-commerce, but requires attention to local compliance and cultural adaptation; the Middle East has widespread English and open policies, with huge potential for small-language AI models and religious-scenario applications; in South America, Mexico is a springboard to North America, and Brazil has broad space for replicating the Chinese model, but labor-law risks must be guarded against; Central Asia has close relations with China and sufficient young talent reserves, making it a quality choice for AI going global, but financial risk isolation must be done well.
She summarized three major trends in Chinese enterprises going global: shifting from a single European-American market to a "European-American + emerging markets" dual-line layout; shifting from product going global to physically rooting locally; upgrading from brand going global to entrepreneur IP going global. The core conclusion is that the key to going-global success lies in deep localized cooperation, binding with national industrial development, and breaking information asymmetry to co-construct the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Keynote Speech 5: User Insight, the Weapon to Traverse the Failure Rate
Gao Lei, a user strategy and PMF expert, opened with his own personal experience of hardware startup failure, directly confronting the industry reality of Shenzhen's impressive technology-industry exports but extremely high hardware startup failure rates. He pointed out that the core reason most entrepreneurs fail is failing to achieve PMF (product-market fit), and user insight is precisely the key breakthrough to traverse this high failure rate.
He emphasized that PMF is the entrepreneur's core "North Star," and solid user insight is the necessary path to achieving PMF; he particularly advocates immersive research methods such as field research, and opposes relying solely on low-cost AI for shallow analysis. Through three real cases—electric modification user profiling, youth kitchenware market validation, and overseas maker tool positioning—he demonstrated that user insight can挖掘 users' multi-dimensional needs at the practical, emotional and spiritual levels, providing precise basis for product definition and marketing conversion. Ultimately he concluded: user insight runs through the entire lifecycle of product initiation, R&D, sales and financing, and is a required course for enterprises to "create customers"; his vision is to integrate user insight tools and methods into a complete equipment library to empower more entrepreneurs.
Keynote Speech 6: Restraint Is Product Power
Ryan Ju Ran, founder and CEO of Mengli Chuangxin, drawing on his design background and entrepreneurial experience, explored how to become a product-manager-type CEO in the C-end consumer electronics field in the AI era, and focused on the post-2000 entrepreneurial group, sharing his in-depth thoughts on industry changes, product logic and CEO responsibilities.
He put forward three core judgments: in the AI era, "doing becomes cheap, judgment becomes expensive"—the maturity of China's supply chain makes feature stacking and low-cost mass production simple, while precise judgment is the true core competitiveness, and the industry needs to shift from "the US sets the questions, China solves them" to cultivating domestic "question-setters"; products should uphold the philosophy of "restraint and极致"—technology is no longer an advantage but a baseline, and users essentially buy "solutions" when purchasing products; the core responsibilities of a new-era CEO are information filter, pace controller, vision builder and decisive decision-maker, rather than simply approving budgets and grasping execution.
Ryan's conclusion was: the core of C-end consumer electronics competition has shifted from technology to product definition, brand taste and value delivery. China's future consumer electronics industry needs more enterprises that can independently define new categories like DJI and Insta360, rather than simply following and imitating.
Keynote Speech 7: Compatibility Is Harder Than Disruption
Pucs, co-founder of No Capital, has 20 years of gaming industry experience and once led his company's NASDAQ listing. He opened with the historical story of the 1819 "Prairie" steam-sail ship—although the steam engine was advanced, pure steam ships had no commercial value because coal storage crowded out cargo holds, and it was ultimately the hybrid power of steam and sail that achieved commercialization—using this as an analogy for the pragmatic path of AI entrepreneurship today.
He put forward three core主张: reject blind disruption, make "hybrid power" products—use deterministic code to handle rule-based, high-risk business, and let AI handle fuzzy and flexible work such as information extraction; convert SaaS subscription costs into hardware BOM costs, reducing cloud dependence through on-device local models; conform to user habits and retain human control—AI should hide behind familiar user operations, while setting up review, rollback and stop mechanisms to hedge uncertainty.
He also provided a self-check list for AI product deployment, covering five dimensions—cost accounting, alternative solutions, risk fallback, user experience and security boundaries. The final conclusion was: those who can truly traverse cycles are not those who shout disruption slogans, but those who know how to integrate new AI technology into existing business systems.
Keynote Speech 8: The Next Big Opportunity in AI Hardware Going Global
Patric Yang Gang, host of Fenzi Fenmu, focused on trends and business model evolution in the AI hardware industry, putting forward several thought-provoking industry judgments.
He pointed out that the reverse-pricing logic of traditional 3C hit products has already failed, and the subscription model is becoming a mandatory option for the industry this year—hardware products without subscriptions cannot balance their cost accounts, continuously subsidize users, and ultimately hinder the R&D and market expansion of second-generation products. He is optimistic about entrepreneurial opportunities in niche-scenario phones, pointing out that Shanghai entrepreneurs have already taken the lead in vertical tracks such as pets, children and the elderly, and Shenzhen hardware entrepreneurs can boldly explore. In the sports health track, the industry has moved from data recording to active intervention; the watch track has low sensor costs and large algorithm space, presenting new opportunities.
He particularly emphasized: privacy and security will be the biggest barrier in the AR era. AI hardware collects sensitive data 24/7, and non-compliance will face overseas regulatory penalties and loss of Western markets; privacy protection capability has become one of the core competitiveness of Chinese AI hardware going global.
Keynote Speech 9: How AI Agents Are Reshaping Traditional Industries
Ark Zhang Zifeng, founder of iSpiral Inc,切入 with his own entrepreneurial experience, proposing that we have now entered an era of AI Agent-driven automation transformation, and the view that "SaaS is dead" is prevalent in Silicon Valley; future service forms will be dominated by agents and chatbots. His earlier ToC entrepreneurship went through difficulties, and after shifting to ToB business he successfully ran through cash flow and product-market fit.
He proposed a two-layer demand quadrant model: the basic layer divides real and fake demand by "whether used, whether paid," and the upgrade layer judges business potential from "usage frequency, customer unit price"—high frequency and high customer unit price are the quality tracks worth deep cultivation. He observed that after February this year, AI activity shifted from industry self-indulgence to traditional industry entry, and AI automation workflows and AIGC are the two core real demands—the former adapts to traditional industries such as e-commerce and chemicals, while the latter covers AI short dramas and product advertising, with going-global short dramas having even greater profit space. His conclusion was: the core of the AI era is to grasp the underlying demand of automation transformation, and as models continue to iterate, the value of related businesses will only continue to amplify.
Keynote Speech 10: Tennis Robots and Seven Dimensions of AI Sports Hardware
CG, founder of Yisi Tennis Robot,切入 from industry pain points, sharing the deployment practice of AI + sports hardware in the tennis training field.
He pointed out that traditional tennis training has pain points such as scarce coach resources, high fees, insufficient training standardization and difficulty in personalization, resulting in high entry barriers for the general public and low efficiency for professional training. Yisi Tennis Robot empowers hardware with AI technology, achieving precise and controllable serving, intelligent customization of training plans and real-time feedback on sports data—both replacing basic human coach work and reducing training costs, while adapting to multiple scenarios such as homes and venues, balancing general entertainment fitness and professional advanced training, forming a differentiated competitive advantage.
CG's conclusion was: AI sports hardware fits the era trend of mass sports consumption upgrading, and the industry core lies in fitting real training needs, balancing practicality and cost-effectiveness, rather than simply stacking technology. In the long run, intelligent training equipment will restructure the popularization model of tennis, effectively lowering sports barriers and improving training efficiency, with broad market space.
Trend Roundtable 2: From 0 to 1 to Global Growth
The closing roundtable was moderated by Harisen Zeng Runhao, founder and CEO of Mydow Wudao. Three guests—Ark Zhang Zifeng, founder of iSpiral Inc; Noah Zeming, founder of Tango AI; and Seven Wang Yue, co-founder of Zhishu Yinli—engaged in in-depth dialogue around "AI Product Going Global: From 0 to 1 to Global Growth."
Ark Zhang Zifeng proposed that the overseas AI market has returned from impetuous hot-topic chasing to rationality, shifting to挖掘 real rigid demand. The advantages of Chinese teams going global lie in fast iteration speed and low cost, while the shortcomings are insufficient judgment of overseas user needs and difficulty in building cross-cultural trust; he advises布局 in tracks that coexist with large firms, where "the stronger the model, the stronger oneself." Noah Zeming pointed out that current AI products are severely homogenized and user trial patience has dropped significantly; real demand must be verified by payment and continuous feedback, products need simplified design to fit user habits, and the key to going global is to go deep locally and build a trust system. Seven Wang Yue believes Chinese teams have outstanding advantages in engineering capability and customer acquisition cost control, but lack long-term brand-building thinking; in the cold-start stage, priority should be given to running through the minimum payment closed loop—B2C focuses on traffic and creativity, B2B focuses on precise users and trust accumulation.
The three guests jointly concluded: AI going global has bid farewell to the gimmick era, and the core is to return to product essence and solve users' real pain points. Chinese teams going global need to leverage efficiency advantages and make up for three shortcomings—local cultural understanding, long-term brand building and cross-cultural trust building; at the practical level, priority should be given to small-scale verification of payment demand, early-stage cautious financing and focus on cash flow, and founders must go deep into the frontline to get close to users, in order to achieve sustainable global growth.
A day of dialogue concluded amid the roundtable's lively discussion. From the compliance path of the European market to the geopolitical opportunities of emerging markets; from the tax logic of architecture design to the release of individual capability in the OPC era; from the subscription transformation of AI hardware to the trust building of going-global products—what GO SUMMIT 2026 Shenzhen presented was not merely a collective梳理 of industry trends, but the shared thinking of a group of entrepreneurs with global ambition, seeking certainty in an uncertain era. As Monica Wang Shiyao said at the opening: although the world is torn, opportunities always belong to those who dare to just keep moving forward.