Chinese innovation brands made a strong showing at Global Connect Show Shenzhen 2026

Global Connect Show returned to Shenzhen on June 1 for its third year running, pulling together more than 80 international tech editors, KOLs, and channel partners alongside over 100 Chinese companies with global ambitions. The theme — “Where Global Innovation Meets Market Opportunity” — set the tone for a day built around three pillars: Chinese brands going global, global channel connection, and the “Into the Enterprise” series.

The keynote came from Andrew Miles, Executive Chairman of Metro China and former President of Sam’s Club China, who highlighted that a real window is opening for Chinese innovation brands in global retail. His point was simple enough: good hardware isn’t enough on its own. The brands that break through internationally are the ones that can build a narrative and back it up with local operational muscle.

That kind of thinking is baked into how GCS runs. There’s no traditional trade floor here; instead, the day mixes a roundtable on China innovation and global retail distribution, one-on-one business matchmaking, and a closed-door media exchange that’s designed to put brands in actual conversation with journalists rather than just in front of them. It’s a format that takes the press-kit-and-hope approach off the table.

GCS founder and CEO Chris Pereira put it plainly: being heard and trusted matters more than being seen. The closed-door format keeps things focused, and the quality of international media present — spanning North America, the UK, Europe, and Southeast Asia — reflects a genuine appetite for this kind of direct access to Chinese innovation.

Beyond Shenzhen, the show feeds into GCS’s China Innovation Tour, which takes overseas media and channel partners into headquarters, factory floors, and live product environments across the country, stretching as far as the Yangtze River Delta. It treats international press coverage as a long-term relationship rather than a one-day transaction.

Several brands used the Shenzhen platform to put their latest products in front of a global audience. Here’s a look at just a few of them:

• Tripo AI: Tripo announced nearly $200 million in Series A+ and A++ funding alongside Project Eden, a world model research initiative aimed at building persistent, reusable, multiplayer interactive environments. The company also showed its latest 3D generation models — Tripo H3.1 and Tripo P1.0 — and introduced native 8K AI texture support and an upgraded intelligent part segmentation system for professional workflows.
• Dreame: Smart home giant Dreame brought two headline products covering outdoor and home cleaning. Its burgeoning robotic pool cleaner lineup has grown to include the Zircon 2 Pro with B2 Pro Automatic Charging Station, making fully hands-free operation a genuine reality. It also brought its window cleaning robot, extending the autonomous cleaning ecosystem beyond the pool.
• PANDAG: PANDAG introduced the G1, billed as the world’s first commercial modular robotic mower, built for golf courses, solar farms, and municipal green spaces rather than back gardens. Up to 12 acres of daily coverage, a 48-inch cutting deck, LiDAR obstacle detection, and a 38° slope rating make the pitch to an industry dealing with chronic labor shortages. Mass production of the M1500 variant was set to begin in early June.
• KNKA: Two home environment products were added to KNKA’s RainbowSense line — the PD30MA-20 dehumidifier, rated at 80 pints per day with flexible drainage and R290 refrigerant, and the APH4000 air purifier, which uses dual-intake airflow and dual side outlets with a three-stage filtration system the company claims removes 99.97% of particles. Both targeting North America.
• Navee: Navee introduced a full golf ecosystem, from the entry-level PAR series electric trolleys up through the flagship Eagle F1X — AI Vision, UWB auto-follow, gesture and voice control, 5.5-inch touchscreen. Alongside it, the 116g Mini rangefinder with triangular measurement capability, and the GT 2 golf watch with a 1.43-inch AMOLED display and 40,000-plus course maps, no subscription required.