Huawei Connect 2024: Reimagining a future powered by AI and industrial digitalisation

Huawei has conjured a grand vision: accelerate the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into industries globally to intelligently drive transformation within each sector.

Amid the rising demand for AI solutions and services across traditional industries globally, Huawei has set its sights on expanding their AI ecosystem to attract more enterprise clients. With the theme ‘Amplify Intelligence’, Huawei Connect 2024 in Shanghai showcased how different industries can embrace AI and digitalisation to innovate, grow, and maximise efficiency.

In the opening keynote, Eric Xu – Huawei’s Deputy Chairman and Rotating Chairman – highlighted to an audience of more than 20,000 how “AI is becoming the most impactful technology” across industries globally. “In this regard, it’s crucial to first envision what intelligent enterprises will ultimately look like,” he said – before listing six key attributes:

• adaptive user experience,
• auto-evolving products,
• autonomous operations,
• augmented workforce,
• all-connected resources, and
• AI-native infrastructure.

Xu believes that these will serve as a guide to shape the strategies and actions that enterprises should adopt as they transform intelligently.

He also outlined Huawei’s near-term strategy, which focuses on several key areas: developing new and sustainable solutions, upgrading Huawei Cloud and their HarmonyOS for AI, as well as creating smarter autonomous driving solutions.

But the vision doesn’t stop at technology, Huawei is also deeply committed to its ecosystem. Xu stressed the importance of partnerships in building a unified developer platform and advancing AI as a means of contributing to sustainability.

Equipped with a wealth of experience in transforming businesses – both their own as well as their clients’ – Huawei shared case studies and examples of how they laid the foundation for change throughout the three-day event.

Expanding on the Chinese tech titan’s role in helping industries transition to digital and AI-assisted operations, David Wang – Huawei’s Executive Director of the Board – highlighted two of their major computing businesses: Kunpeng for general-purpose computing and Ascend for AI.

Ascend is accelerating innovations in AI models and applications, while Kunpeng has been widely adopted across various industries. According to the company, it has collaborated with 7,600 partners and 6.35 million developers to build more than 20,000 industrial solutions within these ecosystems.

Wang pointed out that digital transformation is already underway across many industries, creating unprecedented opportunities. “We want to work with customers and partners to build powerful infrastructure,” he said – adding that they could “bridge the digital chasm” together and “help more customers quickly go digital”.

Huawei’s vision for a future powered by AI extends across many different industries – from smart railways in South Africa to intelligent power grids in China, and even talent development for the field of information and communications technology in Oman.

As enterprises transition into a new era of AI-powered digitalisation, Huawei has positioned itself as a critical enabler of this global transformation. The collaborative spirit showcased at Huawei Connect 2024 demonstrates a clear desire to work closely with enterprises across industries to unlock the full potential of AI, paving the way for an intelligent and interconnected future.