SHANGHAI, July 25 (Reuters) - Tech firms huge and small will converge in Shanghai this weekend to showcase their artificial intelligence innovations and support China's booming AI sector as it faces U.S. sanctions.

Chinese companies from heavy hitters Huawei and Alibaba to ambitious startups will dominate the two-day World AI Conference, but Western names like Tesla TSLA.O, Alphabet GOOGL.O and Amazon AMZN.O will also participate.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang will address the opening of the conference, highlighting the sector's importance to the leaders of the world's second-largest economy. Beijing has made AI and self-sufficiency in other cutting-edge technologies a pillar of its national development plan, saying it aims to make China the global leader in AI by 2030.

These ambitions have set China on a collision course with the U.S. as the superpowers compete for technological dominance.

President Donald Trump's administration has imposed export restrictions on advanced technology to China, including AI chips and chipmaking equipment, citing concerns that it could enhance Beijing's military capabilities.

Still, China has continued making AI breakthroughs that have drawn close scrutiny from U.S. officials.

Chinese AI startup DeepSeek unsettled the global AI industry this year with a low-cost model that rivals the performance of leading U.S. systems from companies like OpenAI - but was developed at a fraction of the cost.

Jensen Huang, CEO of AI chip titan Nvidia, described AI models from Chinese firms DeepSeek, Alibaba 9988.HK and Tencent 0700.HK as "world class" during a visit to Beijing this month.

More than 800 companies are set to participate in this year's AI forum, showcasing over 3,000 high-tech products, 40 large language models, 50 AI-powered devices and 60 intelligent robots, organisers say.

In addition to the industry behemoths, the show will feature startups such as humanoid robot maker Unitree.

(Reporting by Casey Hall; Editing by William Mallard)

((Casey.Hall@thomsonreuters.com;))