Call Me by Your Name, 36183672, WISE 2026 is coming

Tell the whole story from the very beginning in a first-person spoken account.

By convention, this should be an official announcement for the WISE event.

Write down the date, venue, guest lineup, and agenda highlights — following this routine will keep the content safe, well-organized and error-free.

But this year, I told everyone at 36Kr that I do not want to write it in that way.

We have had far too profound experiences this year, so profound that for the first time I want to recount the whole story from scratch in my own spoken voice.

It does not mean that the standard information for the official website is unimportant — I will cover the date, venue and guests. But before that, I want to talk about one thing first.

01 A Story About a Little Green Book

Recently our content team published an article titled *The Throne Has Changed Its Keeper*.

After reading it, I was deeply struck. This feeling is not on the aesthetic level — it is on the strategic level.

I have to say one very truthful thing.

As a technology and business media platform, why has 36Kr managed to stand firm all these years? Fundamentally, it is because we have always been observing and recording the most dynamic group of companies in China as quickly and accurately as possible. In the internet era, we grew up alongside internet companies. We saw them, and they saw us. Mutual trust was built through one report after another, and year after year of observation.

But today, this situation is changing.

In the near future, the largest and best companies in China may no longer be the familiar ones we call "internet companies". They are hard technology companies, AI companies, robotics companies, brain-computer interface companies... including a large number of IT companies that have developed silently over the past decade — companies making storage products, underlying infrastructure, and basic software.

Some of these companies have not appeared on the list we most often report on.

Everything is changing at a very fast pace.

The underlying logic of capital is changing: capital following the old logic is retreating, while capital under the new logic is entering the market with larger scale and longer patience.

The underlying foundation of business is changing: the old business driven by traffic and model innovation is shifting to an efficiency revolution and creation of new species led by hard technology.

As a media, our judgment is that this momentum shift is still accelerating. If we do not change, we will at most become a second-tier media in the future.

I often tell the team that China's business giants can be roughly divided into three stages: the 1.0 stage covers brand categories including home appliances, 3C products, apparel and beverages; the 2.0 stage refers to internet businesses, which are essentially e-commerce and retail upgrading; the 3.0 stage today covers technology sectors including AI, robotics and hard technology.

36Kr's greatest advantage lies in the 2.0 stage, which is our root.

But as a media, our responsibility is — to witness the changes of 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 in every era, and even the subsequent 4.0, 5.0..., and provide positive driving force for the development of the industry.

Enterprises in the 1.0 stage are still the mainstay of the private economy. How do they pursue progress while maintaining stability in this rapidly changing era? What are the things that change and what are the things that remain unchanged?

After growing into internet giants, how can enterprises in the 2.0 stage leverage the power of their ecosystem to advance into the 3.0 stage, or even become greater companies driven by the 3.0 wave?

Can enterprises in the 3.0 stage develop rapidly and healthily, truly driving China to rise from a "manufacturing label" to a "technology label", and even produce more "Pride of China" enterprises?

What exactly are these companies doing? What do they need the most at present? Do the industry and the public truly understand their value? As a media, have we truly reached them? Can we really help them?

We have to answer these questions one by one.

02 An Incident in August

Having witnessed the rapid changes of this era, 36Kr has to change too.

In August, we held a mid-year meeting. Its theme was "Friends of AI", but to be more accurate, it should be "Friends of Technology".

Starting from collecting questions in the early stage, we formed five groups of discussion topics, established discussion mechanisms, released the discussion results of each topic at the strategic meeting, and set up a long-term special innovation mechanism for problem solving, as well as multiple small innovation units.

These include "content direction", "product innovation", "collaboration mechanism", "internal AI efficiency improvement" and "healthy growth". These are the most worthy issues for 36Kr to discuss at the moment, and I believe they are also the issues that many enterprises with a history of more than 10 years need to discuss in a rapidly changing environment.

Frankly speaking, this is the vigorous vitality I have not seen at 36Kr for many years.

At the strategic meeting, we did a somewhat romantic thing — we designed our own custom cultural T-shirt, printed with a string of numbers: "36183672". Many people did not understand what this string of numbers meant when they first saw it. Let me explain it to you —

36Kr,

In previous years, we went through business adjustments, and some people joked that 36Kr had become 18Kr.

Now, through our efforts, we have returned to being 36Kr again.

In the future, I believe we will grow into 72Kr.

This is the meaning of that string of numbers. It looks like a password, but it is actually a story — a story we want to tell ourselves. We are starting to re-understand ourselves, and to re-understand this era.

03 Look back at This Era

In this current era, there has never been a situation like this in human history.

Its feature is that — extreme speed and extreme slowness coexist at the same time.

The extreme speed means that AI is evolving from a single track into an infrastructure as large as, or even larger than the internet. Everything will change rapidly alongside this: from the change of capital trends and the impact on every industry, to the opportunities and anxiety faced by every enterprise, and even to every single individual.

The extreme slowness means that every individual and every enterprise needs to slow down and rethink the solutions for the present. We need to go deep into the industrial chain of every industry to think about where the value lies, where the breakthrough point is, and where the profit lies. Capital also needs the determination to "slow down", to know which industries that are destined to develop slowly but will generate irreplaceable value to invest in.

Speed and slowness are weighing on us at the same time, bringing different requirements to us.

Facing this era, not only 36Kr needs to change, every company and every individual needs to rethink how to iterate themselves.

This is not the business of a single company, it is the business of all people.

So, this year's theme comes out.

04 Call Me By My Name

Why this sentence?

First, it is a question about positioning. My deepest feeling at the moment is that everything is changing too fast. AI is changing, export situations are changing, capital is changing, consumption is changing, and manufacturing is changing. When all changes happen rapidly at the same time, no one has the standard answer in hand. Everyone is asking the same question: Who exactly am I, what is my name?

Enterprises in the 1.0 stage are thinking: Is going global the only solution in the stock market? When new technologies emerge, can I develop products that meet the new needs of users?

Enterprises in the 2.0 stage are thinking: For us, is this wave of hard technology offensive an "arrow" or an "east wind"? Will we become a stronger 2.0+3.0 complex as a result, or be gradually forgotten?

Enterprises in the 3.0 stage are thinking: Will there be a bubble? When the bubble deflates, who exactly am I?

Therefore, in this era where speed and slowness overlap, the business giants in the three coexisting stages, no matter you are a time-honored brand as stable as a mountain, an internet giant with a market value of hundreds of billions or trillions, or a capital favorite with a valuation of hundreds of billions, are all thinking: "Who exactly am I, what is my name?"

Second, it is a question about differentiation. When opportunities appear in popular tracks, a large number of people will definitely enter the field at the same time. Take AI and robotics as examples: thousands of enterprises enter the same industry from different entry points, and then share the same label: robotics company, large model company, AI company.

But under the labels, their true features are blurred.

Every wave will overheat, and every overheating will produce bubbles. In the bubble period, the market allocates capital by category — as long as you stand on the trend; when the bubble deflates, the market allocates capital by name — what exactly have you achieved. The tide is the diluent of labels, and also the developer of names.

The differentiation of public perception is equally cruel. This era leaves extremely limited cognitive bandwidth for enterprises, and the public's attention can only maintain a "whitelist". Everyone knows that DeepSeek is very powerful, but few people can tell where its advantages lie, what its real value is, and what it is doing. Even the most well-known names are compressed into a single label; thousands of enterprises outside the whitelist share the same blurriness.

Therefore, defining all robotics companies with the word "robotics", and judging all large model companies with the word "large model" is the most labor-saving but most distorted cognitive way in this era. What truly distinguishes enterprises is never which track they stand on, but their entry point, their development path, and the specific problem they are solving.

These things cannot be contained by a category label, only a name can hold them. Therefore, please call me by my name.

Under this grand theme of this year's WISE event, we have two more "small intentions":

First — in the era of rising new stars, please step bravely to the center of the stage.

The shift between old and new momentum is not just a digital gear shift, but a replacement of leading roles. The old momentum takes away a group of names, and the new momentum is writing a new group of names.

People who bring AI into factories. People who integrate Chinese manufacturing into the global supply chain. People who bet on controllable nuclear fusion with 15 years of patience and capital support.

These names are not "new talents", not "dark horses". They are the names that will be remembered in the next era, the Pride of China, and the prototype of great enterprises.

Among the business giants in the 1.0 and 2.0 stages, there are many representatives who have done an excellent job in innovation and solution making. They have found new growth curves in every era and implemented them successfully. Continuously achieving innovation and growth in a stable system is a difficult and remarkable thing.

We want to see them, and we want to let them come to the center of the stage. The stage is already set, please come up.

Second, calling is two-way, and you need to participate once you are here.

Technologies call for scenarios to place orders, and scenarios call for technologies to provide solutions. Capital calls for "little geniuses" to start businesses, and "little geniuses" call for capital support. The post-2000 generation calls for industry veterans to share real insights, and veterans call for young people to raise real problems. Chinese enterprises call for the world to provide a larger market, and the world calls for China to inject high-quality production capacity.

All calls are two-way. All responses require presence.

Once you are here, you need to participate. You do not come to the event just to listen to speeches, but to have dialogues. You do not come to watch as an onlooker, but to take part in the interactions.

05 The Evolution of WISE

The WISE event hosted by 36Kr has been held for 13 years. Every year, WISE is a discussion of trends and a prediction of the future. After ten years of rapid development, WISE has started to become different since 2023. The theme of 2023 was *The Sun Rises As Usual* — the day will dawn, but with a touch of helplessness. The theme of 2024 was *The Right Thing to Do* — we know what to do, and we need to find a way out. The theme of 2025 was *The Scenery Is Beautiful Right Here* — we are heading in the right direction, and we have seen new paths ahead.

In the three years starting from 2023, we were all making judgments.

In 2026, we changed our approach — we stop making judgments, and we call out the names directly.

Making judgments means pointing fingers from a distance. Calling out names means walking over, looking into the person's eyes, and calling out their name. This is what we want to do this year.

We have set three evaluation dimensions for WISE: a useful conference, a conference related to everyone, and a non-stereotypical conference.

A useful conference — it not only allows everyone to come to the venue and listen to speeches, but also enables attendees to get what they want. Therefore, we have held World Café sessions to connect key frontline personnel. We have launched the Chief Question Officer recruitment campaign to give every young person the chance to ask questions to business leaders they usually cannot meet on site. We collect entrepreneurial dreams from young people, letting them show their vitality and share their dreams at the WISE event. We set up networking walls to help people who want to meet each other find one another.

To make the conference related to everyone, we need to make the content excellent. The main forum covers the business field, the industrial field, and all tracks, so that all attendees can gain something: frontline industrial practitioners (World Café), product geeks (featured product displays), job seekers (career bonus benefits), fans and knowledge seekers (interactive experience in the on-site exhibition area, online live broadcast), and people from segmented industrial fields (Challenger Night, After Party).

A non-stereotypical conference — its visual design is youthful and artistic, and the theme is never outdated and resonates with everyone. We have used AI-generated videos, invited Luo Tianyi to host the event, held dialogues with digital humans, used drama to interpret different chapters, and set up open mic sessions in previous WISE events, all earlier than other similar events. Many innovative formats were verified by WISE first, and then became standard features of other events.

Regarding the positioning of the conference, I want to say one thing —

The conference is only the final landing venue.

It does not mean that a conference is just a forum where guests take turns to go on stage and give speeches. When all people are present, we need to figure out how to achieve full interaction. Therefore, forums and booths are standard configurations, and other special planning activities are the greater value points.

06 Who Will Attend This Year's WISE

Scale — the event lasts for 3 days, with an estimated on-site attendance of more than 15,000 person-times and an online exposure of over 1 billion views.

Composition — main forum + future industry exhibition area + World Café + Challenger Night + "Our Entrepreneurial Dreams" session + After Party + simultaneous event planning.

The audience reached by the conference and core resources are divided into five parts — more than 150 core keynote speakers on stage, more than 200 key frontline industrial figures, more than 1000 offline attendees per session, more than 500 listed enterprises in the directory, and more than 36.52 million readers and fans across all online platforms.

The three-day agenda is arranged as follows —

• DAY1 AM: