The key facts

  • Web Summit 2026 opened in Lisbon; around 70,000 attendees, 900 speakers and more than 2,000 startups are expected
  • The stage was opened by dancing robots from the Chinese company Aigibot; founder Paddy Cosgrave said that “the superstars of the future are coming from China”
  • Nvidia has launched a review concerning CEO Jensen Huang after reports that he was “the target of a foreign intelligence operation”

Opening of the conference and the focus on China

The Web Summit 2026 technology conference opened on Monday in Lisbon. The opening ceremony was graced by dancing robots from the Chinese company Aigibot, which, according to Euronews, put Chinese developments in artificial intelligence at the forefront of the event.

Statements by the organizer and the context of the AI race

Web Summit founder and CEO Paddy Cosgrave spoke before an audience of up to 12,000 people. “The superstars of the future are not coming from California, but from China,” he said, adding that “Chinese companies are building our shared future more than anyone else” — referring, in particular, to open-source technology. The statement came against the backdrop, as Euronews notes, of an intensifying tech race between the US and China, in which artificial intelligence holds a leading position and Washington is trying to restrict the export of the most powerful chips to the PRC.

The Nvidia review and the reaction at the conference

In parallel with the opening of the conference, news is being discussed that the American chipmaker Nvidia has launched a review concerning its CEO Jensen Huang. The trigger was reports that Huang had been “the target of a foreign intelligence operation” in connection with ties to an alleged Chinese spy. At the Web Summit stage, Cloudflare co-founder and CEO Matthew Prince commented on the situation: he called the news “very spicy,” but noted that in the long run it remains to be seen whether Huang will become a “hero or villain” for the industry, adding that “Jensen has done a lot to strengthen the AI ecosystem.”

AI agents and the scale of the event

A special place in the program was given to AI agents — systems capable of autonomously performing actions without human instructions. Manus AI, a company originally founded in China, showed a 30-second video generated by its new 2.0 technology from a prompt of just 13 words. The company’s co-founder and CPO Tao Zhang said that AI is changing his approach to hiring engineers: “We don’t need more people; we need people who know how to work with AI.” The organizers expect around 70,000 attendees, 900 speakers and more than 2,000 startups; according to Cosgrave, this is the most international edition of the Lisbon conference — all European countries are represented.