China Connect Summit 2026: Where China's Innovation and European Capital Converge

China Connect Summit is built specifically to bring Chinese innovators and European institutional capital into the same room — through direct conversation, live product demonstration, and structured introduction. The Main Conference is a full day of keynotes, panels, and live demos spanning physical AI, robotics, deep tech, and macro strategy, closing with an AI & Robotics Founders Drink. 🎯 Audience Family offices & HNWIs Institutional Investors & LPs European Venture Capital & Private Equity Asset and Wealth Managers Deep tech, AI, and Robotics Founders Corporate Executives & Strategic Partners 🗓️ Program — Main Conference Morning 09:00-09:30 Registration & Welcome 09:30 - 09:50 Opening Keynote — Danchun Chen, Founder at Varen Partners 09:50 - 10:30 China Venture Landscape Keynote — featuring Kathy Xu, Founder, Capital Today. Three decades of venture investing in China, and where the next cycle of growth is headed. 10:30-10:50 Fireside Chat — Kathy Xu and Danchun Chen 10:50-11:20 Coffee Break and Networking 11:20-12:00 European Allocator Panel: a candid look at how Europe's family offices and institutional allocators are actually approaching public and private-market exposure to China today Lunch Break 12:00-13:00 Live Robotics Product Demo — an immersive showcase of leading Chinese robotics and hardware companies Afternoon 13:00-13:10 Forward-Looking for Generations: How one of Europe's oldest family-owned private banks - LGT, approaches cross-border wealth management for a new generation of globally mobile capital. 13:10-13:40 China Macro Overview — An inside read on China — where the economic recovery stands, which sectors are leading, and what public-market signals mean for capital allocation into China. 13:40-14:00 Hong Kong IPO Market — an update on Hong Kong’s IPO landscape, the return of technology listings, and the market’s role in connecting Chinese growth companies with global investors. 14:00-14:30 Coffee Break & Networking 14:30-15:00 AI LLM Spotlight Session — the latest from the frontier of Chinese large language models, featuring leaders from Minimax and Zhipu, two of the labs defining China's AI pace. 15:00-15:40 Physical AI: Inside China's Embodied AI Stack— featuring Genrobot (data), Sudo AI (sim-trained foundation models), Spirit (full-stack brain), Wuji Hand (dexterity/hands) - how China's embodied AI is actually being built, across the full chain from movement and manipulation to the data and foundation models underneath 15:40-15:50 Closing Remarks — key takeaways from the day and a closing perspective on the next chapter of China–Europe investment and innovation. 🎙️ Confirmed 2026 Speakers Kathy Xu — legendary founder of China-focused Capital Today Group, Kathy is one of China's most respected and successful venture capitalists. With a career spanning decades, she has a track record of identifying and backing some of the country's most iconic companies, including JD.com, NetEase, Meituan, Moonshot, Zhipu, Bytedance etc. Danchun Chen - Founder at Varen Partners. Danchun has spent over a decade in Europe supporting family offices and institutional investors on China allocation. She founded Varen Partners, a specialized investment firm investing directly in next-gen Chinese growth-stage companies and venture funds. Alice Han - Director of China at Greenmantle, a prominent expert in Chinese macroeconomics, political economy and global fintech, Alice leads China coverage at Greenmantle, a macroeconomic and geopolitical advisory firm. Educated at Harvard and Stanford, her work centres on China's economy, its foreign policy and its evolving role in global relations. Leah Zheng - Co-Founder & COO, Spirit AI. Leah co-founded Spirit AI, a leading embodied AI company focusing on full-stack AI+robotics technology, developing general-purpose "Universal Brains" and vision-language-action (VLA) models for robots. Martina Hansen — Co-Founder & COO, Sudo AI. Martina co-founded Sudo AI, which develop foundation models for robot manipulation, trained in large-scale simulated environments where robots learn across millions of scenarios before ever entering a factory, warehouse, or home. Rio Shen — General Manager, EMEA, MiniMax. Rio leads MiniMax's expansion across EMEA. MiniMax, founded in 2021, is one of China's leading AI labs, best known for its Hailuo video-generation model, and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in January 2026. Fu Bo - Head of International Investor Relations at Zhipu AI, one of China's foremost AI labs and developer of the GLM model family. She leads the company's overseas investor communications as Zhipu expands globally. Shijie Min - Vice President and Head of Global Business Ecosystem, WUJI Hand, a category-defining leader in dexterous robotic manipulation. WUJI Hand arrives with one of the industry's most rigorously engineered track records: a 20-DoF, human-sized hand rated for 300,000+ grasp cycles. William Wang - Vice President, Global Expansion at Genrobot.AI. An innovative embodied intelligence data solutions provider dedicated to building the critical data infrastructure necessary for advanced physical artificial intelligence models. Herbert Mangesius - General Partner at Vsquared Ventures, the Munich deep-tech fund, investing in capital-intensive European hard tech — space, semiconductors, quantum, robotics, energy. Lotan Levkowitz - Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Grove Ventures, a leading VC fund from Israel. They partner early with exceptional Israeli entrepreneurs who believe that the Deep Future is now. Hemant Sabherwal - Head of Corporate Solutions