WAIC 2026: Sunbo's Yu Linyi on Enterprise AI as a "Validated Business Loop"
At WAIC 2026, Sunbo Technology chairman Yu Linyi told 36Kr that enterprise AI is won not by "tech seeking scenarios" but by "scenarios forging tech."
From "demo dazzle" to "an ROI-bearing partner"
The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) opened in Shanghai on July 17 under the theme "Intelligent Partners, Co-Creating the Future." In an interview at 36Kr's live studio, Sunbo Technology chairman Yu Linyi said the very theme is a clear signal of an industry inflection point — AI is shifting from an "on-demand tool" to a "partner that must enter workflows and justify ROI."
The core view: from "tech seeking scenarios" to "scenarios forging tech"
Yu's key observation: versus prior years' focus on model capability, parameter scale and demo effects, the 2026 conversation has moved downstream — enterprises now care whether AI can enter real processes, take on concrete tasks, and be validated by business outcomes.
Under this view, general model capability is already strong enough; once inside the enterprise, what decides results is often not the model itself but business context, domain methodology, process decomposition, and verifiable outcome feedback. Hence Sunbo's framing: enterprise AI is won by "scenarios forging tech," not "tech seeking scenarios."
A company's own transformation
Sunbo is itself pivoting from a marketing-services firm to an AI-driven technology-services company, a path that reflects the same logic: for enterprise agents to truly land, they must embed into the organization, collaborate with people, and create ROI validated by business results — rather than stopping at "answering questions." That echoes the broader WAIC 2026 mood, in which the landing logic for enterprise agents is becoming clearer.