AI Photo: VCG

The estimated output value of China's artificial intelligence (AI) industry last year exceeds 1.2 trillion yuan ($172 billion), and the number of AI-related companies in China has outpaced 6,000, Zhang Yunming, Vice Minister of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said at a press briefing of the State Council Information Office on Wednesday.

Zhang noted that, last year, Chinese high-tech companies have rolled out various AI chip products, elevating China's intelligent computing power reach 1,590 exa floating-point operations per second (EFLOPS). And, high-quality industry datasets have been emerging rapidly, and domestic large AI models were leading the global open-source ecosystem.

The AI-related products have also been diversifying last year. Zhang exemplified by the popularity of AI terminal products including AI phones, AI personal computers and AI eye-glasses, which have been rapidly making ways into millions of Chinese households last year. In the first three quarters of 2025, shipments of smart eye-glasses exceeded 1.78 million units, of which nearly 80 percent were AI eye-glasses, infusing more sense of technology and futurism into production and daily life.

The AI applications have also been widening, covering key industries such as steel, non-ferrous metals, electric power, and telecommunications, and gradually penetrating into critical areas including product research and development, quality inspection, and customer service, Zhang said.

For example, an unnamed home appliance enterprise in China adopted its self-developed "5G+AI" industrial visual inspection system, raising the inspection accuracy rate to 99.98 percent and increasing per capita production efficiency by 275 percent.

The AI relevant ecosystem also boomed last year. China has launched the national AI industry investment fund and put it into operation, with a total fund size of 60 billion yuan. 

Meanwhile, the special action on AI standardization has been deeply implemented, resulting in the cumulative release of more than 40 key national and industry standards in 2025. A number of critical open-source projects, such as agent protocols and operator libraries, have been incubated and successfully launched, Zhang said.


Global Times