At the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2026) held from the 6th to the 11th in July at the COEX Convention & Exhibition Center in Seoul, Chinese tech giants participated at an unprecedented scale, transforming the academic conference into a multi-dimensional recruitment ground for AI talent. JoinQuant appeared as a Diamond sponsor, while Alibaba, ByteDance, and Xiaomi secured Platinum-level sponsorship; Huawei, Tencent, and Meituan were also present. Beyond booths, companies extended the talent battle to dinners, yachts, and coffee shops, with Alibaba hosting the "AliStar Wonder Night" dinner, Kuaishou holding a "STARRY NIGHT" event on a Han River cruise, and Ant Group creating an "AGI Coffee Chat." The talent war evolved from simple resume collection to in-depth engagement with technical leaders and screening based on accepted papers. However, AI commercialization remains a challenge: ByteDance's Jimeng consumed half of the company's computing resources but recouped only about 10% of costs. While Anthropic has established a viable business model through Coding, Chinese firms are still searching for certainty between investment and return.