The fever of AI agents subsides, domestic players break through with core technologies, and NVIDIA reshapes the industry landscape again.

In late March 2026, the tech circle shed the blind euphoria at the beginning of the year and entered a crucial period of "coexistence of technology implementation and controversy." AI agents calmed down from the nationwide "shrimp - raising" craze. Hard - core technologies such as brain - computer interfaces and nuclear fusion achieved milestone breakthroughs. The NVIDIA GTC conference redefined the underlying logic of the AI industry, and domestic tech forces continued to break monopolies. Amid the interweaving of six major hotspots, the tech industry is accelerating the shift from "concept hype" to "value implementation." Every breakthrough and controversy is outlining a clear picture of future technology.

AI Agents: From "Nationwide Euphoria" to "Rational Return", Implementation Pain Points Emerge

If the tech circle was swept by the AI agent craze in the first half of March, the keywords in the second half were "cooling down and reflection." Although the popularity of OpenClaw (commonly known as "lobster") has not completely subsided, with the daily download volume on GitHub still maintaining at over 100,000, the feedback from users about "paying to uninstall" has gradually increased, exposing the core shortcomings of current AI agents - lack of stability and disconnection from practicality.

Behind this craze is the race among big tech companies: products such as ByteDance's ArkClaw, Tencent's WorkBuddy, Alibaba's CoPaw, and Zhipu's AutoClaw were launched intensively, trying to seize the "agent track" in the second half of the AI era. However, as observed by Huxiu Think Tank at a recent AI closed - door meeting, many AI projects still essentially remain at the "toy" stage. Even when implemented in the ToB field, it is difficult to form a real closed - loop of business value. Many corporate technology leaders admitted that there is still a large gap in the accuracy of task decomposition and tool invocation of AI agents, especially in complex scenarios, which often requires manual intervention, far from the expectation of "autonomous task completion." However, not all players are "following the trend." Some domestic products have taken the lead in implementing scenarios.

It is worth noting that Manus, an AI agent company acquired by Meta for over $2 billion, has achieved a commercial verification of an annualized revenue of $125 million but still faces the challenge of "technology adaptation." Among domestic players, ArkClaw launched by ByteDance's Volcengine has taken the lead in scenario implementation. This cloud - based SaaS product based on the OpenClaw architecture features "zero - threshold." It does not require manual environment configuration, and the pay - per - request model has significantly reduced the usage cost. Currently, it has served leading game companies and logistics enterprises. A leading game company uses it to handle over 10 million customer service conversations per day, with a three - fold increase in efficiency. Oujian Network has achieved automated processing of customs declarations, with the accuracy rate increased to 99.8%. As the industry shifts from "chasing hotspots" to "seeking practical results," the focus of competition for AI agents is shifting from "rapid launch" to "scenario implementation." Only products that can truly solve corporate efficiency pain points and reduce trial - and - error costs can stand firm after the cooling - down.

Domestic Milestones: Invasive Brain - Computer Interface Approved, Hard - Core Technology Breaks Monopoly

In late March, domestic technology achieved a major breakthrough - the National Medical Products Administration officially approved the world's first Class III medical device certificate for an invasive brain - computer interface, marking that China has officially entered the commercial clinical stage in this cutting - edge field, completely breaking the monopoly of foreign enterprises. This domestic product named the NEO system has not only achieved technological breakthroughs but also delivered excellent results in clinical applications.

Compared with non - invasive brain - computer interfaces, this domestic invasive product named the NEO system uses minimally invasive epidural implantation and wireless energy - supply communication technology, achieving a quantitative improvement in signal accuracy and response speed. It can accurately capture brain nerve signals and help patients with paralysis and nerve injuries achieve "mind control" to complete simple limb movements and language expressions. Before its approval for market launch, the system had completed clinical implantations for 32 patients with cervical spinal cord injuries in 11 hospitals across the country. All patients achieved brain - controlled grasping, and their hand motor function scores were significantly improved. After six months of training, 22 patients also showed obvious improvement in their autonomous hand motor functions. More importantly, domestic substitution has significantly reduced the product cost, making the once "sky - high - priced" brain - computer interface technology accessible to millions of patients, truly achieving "usable and affordable."

In addition to brain - computer interfaces, domestic hard - core technologies are blooming in multiple fields: Shanghai's "Honghuang 70" all - high - temperature superconducting tokamak achieved a stable operation of 1,337 seconds, breaking the world record for commercial nuclear fusion, with a domesticization rate of over 96%, providing new possibilities for future clean energy; The magnetically - controlled nanorobot jointly developed by the PLA General Hospital and MIT completed the world's first non - invasive thrombolysis clinical application. The robot with a diameter of only 200 nanometers can accurately remove blood clots within 15 minutes, completing treatment without surgery; Alibaba's DAMO Academy's XuanTie C950 RISC - V chip achieved a breakthrough in 5nm process technology, with a single - core performance exceeding 70 points and an overall performance three times higher than the previous generation, further promoting the process of domestic chip substitution.

NVIDIA GTC 2026: Setting the Tone for the Second Half of the AI Era, Physical AI Becomes the Core Direction

The NVIDIA GTC 2026 conference, known as the "AI Super Bowl," was held as scheduled in late March. Every announcement by NVIDIA affects the nerves of the global tech industry. This conference centered on the themes of "Physical AI," "AI Factories," and "Agentic AI," fully demonstrating its ambition to transform from an "AI training card" provider to a "full - link AI ecosystem" builder.

The most significant announcement at the conference was the Vera Rubin architecture roadmap. NVIDIA announced that this new architecture, which will be mass - produced in 2027, includes six new chips such as Vera CPU and Rubin GPU, forming an "AI supercomputer" that can accurately map the physical world to the digital world, significantly improving the implementation efficiency of AI in industrial manufacturing, autonomous driving, biomedicine, and other fields. According to industry forecasts, the order volume of chips based on the Vera Rubin architecture is expected to exceed one trillion US dollars in 2027 alone.

Meanwhile, NVIDIA reached a deep - seated cooperation with Oracle. Through GPU acceleration technology, it optimized Oracle's cloud services, further expanding its advantages in AI inference and edge computing. In terms of stock price performance, although NVIDIA's stock price has fluctuated recently, maintaining in the range of $175 - $180 in late March, its total market value of $43.4 trillion still demonstrates its dominant position in the industry. This conference not only set the development direction for the second half of the AI era but also consolidated NVIDIA's monopoly advantage in the AI infrastructure field, leaving less and less competitive space for other manufacturers.

In late March, the generative AI field continued to iterate, no longer limited to the competition of "parameter scale," but shifting to the in - depth competition of "efficiency improvement" and "scenario adaptation." Among them, the Uni - 1 model launched by Luma AI became the focus of the industry due to its technological innovation and commercial implementation ability.

In late March, the generative AI field continued to iterate, no longer limited to the competition of "parameter scale," but shifting to the in - depth competition of "efficiency improvement" and "scenario adaptation." The Uni - 1 model launched by Luma AI became the focus. Developed by a team of 150 people, this model uses a single - decoder autoregressive Transformer architecture, completely subverting the technical path of mainstream diffusion models, achieving a complete unity of image understanding and generation. In the RISEBench inference benchmark test, its overall score exceeded Google's Nano Banana 2, with a 23% improvement in spatial reasoning ability and twice the logical reasoning ability of competitors. At the same time, it reduced the cost of generating 2K images by 25%, achieving a double breakthrough in "performance and cost." Currently, the Luma Agents intelligent creative platform built on Uni - 1 has cooperated with companies such as Publicis Groupe and Adidas, compressing an advertising campaign that originally took one year and cost $15 million to 40 hours, with a cost of less than $20,000, and an efficiency improvement of over 200 times.

The commercial implementation of Uni - 1 provides a new model for the scenario application of generative AI, while OpenAI continues to make efforts in technological iteration, constantly promoting the optimization and upgrading of GPT - 5.4. It is reported that the 1 - million - token + native Agent ability of this model is an important milestone, meaning that the model can handle longer texts and more complex tasks, further narrowing the gap between AI and "general intelligence." More symbolically, AI godfather Andrej Karpathy announced that his workflow has been "fully agentized," and he no longer writes code by hand but completes core tasks such as programming and research through AI agents. This change also indicates that AI is accelerating its penetration from an "auxiliary tool" to a "core productivity."

However, there are still concerns in the industry. As discovered by Huxiu Think Tank at the AI closed - door meeting, generative AI still faces the problems of "chaotic data governance and difficult - to - measure value" in ToB implementation. Many enterprises invest a large amount of budget in introducing generative AI tools, but in scenarios such as content production and customer service, it is still difficult to form a clear ROI closed - loop. How to integrate generative AI into business processes has become an urgent problem to be solved in the industry.

Aerospace and Energy: Frontier Exploration Continues to Break Through, Commercialization Process Accelerates

In late March, the frontier exploration in the aerospace and energy fields was also full of highlights. On March 26, the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center successfully launched the Siwei Gaojing 2 - 05/06 satellites using a Long March 2D carrier rocket, further improving China's high - resolution commercial remote - sensing constellation, providing high - precision data support for fields such as agriculture, environmental protection, and urban planning, and promoting the commercial application process of commercial aerospace.

In the field of energy and frontier physics, CERN achieved a major breakthrough - for the first time, antiprotons were successfully transported by truck, breaking the technical bottleneck of antiproton transportation and opening up a new path for antimatter research and application. As one of the most mysterious substances in the universe, antimatter research is of great significance to fields such as new energy and quantum computing. This transportation breakthrough will accelerate the process of antimatter moving from the "laboratory" to "practical application."

Conclusion: Shedding Impetuosity, the Tech Industry Returns to the Essence of Value

In late March, the tech circle witnessed both the rational reflection after the cooling - down of AI agents and the exciting breakthroughs of domestic hard - core technologies; both NVIDIA's dominance in setting the industry pattern and the difficult exploration of generative AI implementation. Behind this interweaving of hotspots is a profound transformation of the tech industry from "concept hype" to "value implementation." Whether it is the cooling - down of AI agents or the breakthrough of domestic hard - core technologies, it shows that what can truly promote industry progress is never the temporary popularity but the down - to - earth technological innovation and scenario implementation.

Next, with the continuous iteration of AI agents, the accelerated commercialization of domestic hard - core technologies, and the implementation of NVIDIA's new architecture, the tech industry will enter a more intense competition cycle. For enterprises, only by avoiding the "hotspot trap" and focusing on their own business pain points can they seize opportunities in the wave of technological change. For the entire industry, only by shedding impetuosity and returning to value can technology truly become the core force driving social progress.

This article is from the WeChat official account "IPO Assistant". Author: Tang Yipao. Republished by 36Kr with permission.