WAICO: World AI Cooperation Organization

Echoing our previous input to international declarations on AI governance (Bletchley, Seoul, Paris, New Delhi, UN-related), twenty-nine countries on Thursday (July 16, 2026) signed an agreement to establish the World AI Cooperation Organization (WAICO), an intergovernmental body aimed to promote international cooperation and global governance in artificial intelligence. The organization, headquartered in Shanghai, brings together founding members spanning Eurasia, Africa, Latin America, and Asia, including Brazil, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and Pakistan.

Related

• The Bletchley Declaration And AI Safety

• The Seoul Declaration And Frontier AI Safety Commitments

• The Paris AI Safety and Action Declaration

• The New Delhi Declaration And AI Impact Summit

• UN: Global Dialogue On AI Governance

WAICO

The World AI Cooperation Organization was signed into existence in Shanghai on 16 July 2026, on the eve of the annual World Artificial Intelligence Conference, with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi signing on behalf of the Chinese government and UN Secretary-General António Guterres attending the ceremony. The idea was first floated by Beijing at the 2025 edition of the same conference and reiterated by President Xi Jinping at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit that October, before formally converting into a 29-member founding bloc a year later. Under the agreement, WAICO is structured as an independent intergovernmental organization committed to the purposes of the UN Charter, extensive consultation, joint contribution, and a people-centered approach to AI, with the stated aim of ensuring AI development remains beneficial, safe, fair, and orderly for all humanity.

Where Bletchley, Seoul, Paris, and New Delhi were each convened or co-convened by Western or Western-aligned governments, and largely drew participation from advanced-economy AI developers and their close partners, WAICO's founding membership runs in the opposite direction: alongside China, it includes Belarus, Serbia, Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, plus ten African and twelve Asian states, none of which are major frontier AI developers. Speaking at the conference's opening, Xi framed China as an AI partner to the Global South, pledging 5,000 AI training and seminar opportunities for developing countries over five years and pursuing cooperation with ASEAN, the African Union, and BRICS, while cautioning against AI security concepts being used to override the interests of other states. In that sense, WAICO reads less as a rival standard-setting body to the Bletchley-to-Delhi track and more as a parallel capacity-building and alignment structure aimed at countries the existing declarations have engaged only peripherally, a gap our own contributions on resilient public infrastructure and capacity-building have repeatedly flagged as a structural weak point in the current governance landscape.

References

¹ Xinhua News Agency. "29 Countries Sign Agreement on Establishing World AI Cooperation Organization." Xinhua. Shanghai. July 16, 2026.

² Reuters. "Twenty-Nine Countries Sign Agreement to Establish Global AI Cooperation Body." Reuters. Beijing. July 16, 2026.

³ Anadolu Agency. "29 Countries Sign Agreement on Establishing World AI Cooperation Organization in Shanghai." Anadolu Agency. Istanbul. July 16, 2026.

⁴ CNBC. "Xi Pitches China as AI Partner to Developing World, Warns Against Risks and Security Overreach." CNBC. Shanghai. July 17, 2026.

⁵ Gibney, Elizabeth. "China Wants to Lead the World on AI Regulation — Will the Plan Work?" Nature 648 (8094): 503–505. December 1, 2025.

⁶ Guey, W., Bougault, P., Zhang, W., Moura, V. D. de, Gomes, J. O. "World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization (WAICO): Mapping an Emerging Institution in the Global AI Governance Regime Complex." arXiv:2606.23860. June 22, 2026.