Huawei has unveiled a strategic roadmap projecting that autonomous AI agents will command the vast majority of global data traffic by 2035. The "Intelligent World 2035: Turning Vision into Action" report anticipates a massive surge in computing requirements to support this transition.
The 90% surge in global AI token traffic
Huawei's latest forecast suggests that autonomous AI agents will account for more than 90 percent of all global AI token traffic by the year 2035. According to the "Intelligent World 2035" report, this shift represents a fundamental change in how machine learning models interact with the world. As these agents move from simple chatbots to self-directed entities that can sense, reason, and use tools, the volume of data—measured in tokens—is expected to explode.
The scale of this transition is staggering. huawei projects that approximately 900 billion autonomous AI agents could be active worldwide by the end of this decade. This figure represents roughly 100 times the current human population, creating a digital ecoysstem that operates at a speed and scale far beyond human capability.
A divergence between U.S. caution and Huawei’s AGI push
The report highlights a growing geopolitical divide in how the world approaches artificial intelligence. While many leading U.S. researchers and executives have advocated for a slowdown or a pause in frontier AI development to mitigate risks, Huawei is positioning itself for an era of accelerated adoption. The Chinese multinational views the proliferation of autonomous agents not as a risk to be managed through deceleration, but as an essential step toward achieeving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
Huawei argues that true AGI requires AI to move beyond digital screens and into the physical world. by enabling agents to control hardware and manage resources, the company believes it can bridge the gap between software reasoning and real-world action. this strategy aligns with broader Chinese economic goals to integrate AI deeply into the nation's industrial and digital infrastructure.
Deploying AI firewalls and the April security platform
To manage the risks inherent in a world of 900 billion agents, Huawei is prioritizing the development of specialized security technologies. As reported by the company,the rapid growth of these agents will magnify existing privacy and security vulnerabilities, necessitating a new layer of defense.. Huawei has already begun implementing these solutions, having launched an autonomous security-operations platform in April to detect and respond to cyber threats in real time.
The company’s roadmap also emphasizes the need for "AI firewalls" and robust identity verification systems. These tools are designed to protect enterprise environments from both internal and external attacks launched by rogue or compromised autonomous agents. Huawei suggests that secure agent architectures will be the only way to maintain control over a self-directed software ecosystem.
Guo Ping’s ambition to rival Nvidia’s compute dominance
Beyond security and software, Huawei is making a massive play for the hardware that will power this agent-driven future. Guo Ping, the chairman of Huawei's supervisory board, recently stated that AI represents the company's "biggest opportunity." His stated goal is to transform Huawei's computing infrastructure into a Chinese equivalent to the American chipmaker Nvidia.
This ambition requires a massive scaling of computing power to handle the projected token traffic. Huawei's roadmap serves as a call to action for the Chinese tech industry to invest heavily in the hardware necessary to support a ubiquitous agent ecosystem.
Who will govern the 900 billion agent ecosystem?
Despite the technical roadmap, several critical questions remain unanswered by Huawei's report. It is unclear how international regulatory bodies will manage a world where autonomous software handles more daily decision-making than humans. Furthermore, the report does not address how the massive energy and resource requirements for such a scale of compute will be met. Finally, while Huawei proposes technical solutions like AI firewalls, the report does not provide a perspective from the U.S. or European regulators who may view this rapid expansion as a global security threat.
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