Zhou Hongyi, founder of Chinese internet security giant 360, recently released his report titled “AI Panorama 2026”, forecasting a transformative year for artificial intelligence in both technology and society.
He described 2026 as the “Year of 10 Billion Intelligent Agents,” signaling a shift in AI competition from raw model parameters to practical, real-world applications.
According to Zhou, humanity will face comprehensive changes spanning technical architecture, organizational structure, and economic systems. China, leveraging its industrial chain advantages, the “East Data West Computing” initiative, and open-source ecosystems, is positioned to gain a first-mover advantage in the global AI race.
On the technology front, Zhou predicts that the AI industry will pivot from a “training competition” to an “inference revolution.” He expects demand for inference computing power to grow by orders of magnitude, which could reshape the global chip market and intensify competition over energy resources.
Zhou highlighted that AI will evolve into “second brains” with long-term memory capabilities, fundamentally transforming the way humans interact with intelligent systems.
Zhou envisions the emergence of hybrid teams combining human (“carbon-based”) and AI (“silicon-based”) agents, which he believes will reshape organizational structures and workflows across industries.
He also pointed to future economic changes, predicting autonomous transactions among AI agents and highlighting the importance of AI safety. Zhou called for end-to-end traceable systems and “model-based defense” paradigms to ensure secure and responsible AI deployment.
The report reflects growing awareness in China that AI development is no longer just about scaling models, but about integrating intelligence into social, industrial, and economic systems, creating a new class of hybrid human-AI organizations.
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