Wuxi has been officially approved to establish a National Artificial Intelligence Industry Innovation Application Pilot Zone, becoming the first prefecture-level city in China (excluding provincial capitals and cities with independent planning status) to receive this designation.
Wuxi leverages its unique advantages as the only National Sensor Network Innovation Demonstration Zone, possessing a complete integrated circuit industry chain and a deep foundation in manufacturing digitalization. These three industrial strengths form the distinct basis for Wuxi's development of artificial intelligence. The city has strengthened the "One Sensor, Two Networks" (smart sensors, connected vehicles, and industrial internet), linking the entire perception, communication, and application value chain. It has consistently hosted the World Internet of Things Expo, where the 2025 edition facilitated over 32 billion yuan in project collaborations, providing a technological foundation of perception and connectivity for AI to enter the real physical world. Wuxi has also bolstered its integrated circuit hardware support, with the industry's scale reaching 285.8 billion yuan in 2025, ranking among the top three nationally, thereby strengthening the hardware base for AI computing power. Furthermore, the city has deepened the digital transformation of manufacturing, with the number of national-level intelligent factories and excellent smart manufacturing scenarios ranking first in Jiangsu Province, offering a rich supply of physical scenarios for the deployment of AI technology.
In recent years, Wuxi has built a systematic promotion system for the AI industry based on its strengths. In 2025, Wuxi released the "Action Plan for Building a Benchmark City of 'AI+'", along with supporting policy opinions and a series of action plans for talent and industry, establishing the "four beams and eight pillars" of its policy framework. This year, Wuxi further explicitly proposed "building a benchmark city for the digital economy and 'AI+'" in its "15th Five-Year Plan" outline. The effectiveness of the AI industry's development continues to show. In the first half of 2026, Wuxi's core AI industry scale reached 43.838 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 33.4%, with the three characteristic tracks of intelligent robots, intelligent computing chips, and AI terminals showing a clear agglomeration effect. The foundational elements continue to be strengthened, with total intelligent computing power reaching 15,619 P. Wuxi's city-level intelligent computing cloud platform was selected as a national pilot. The city has cultivated 44 vertical industry models and 70 high-quality industry datasets. Breakthroughs have been made in multiple application scenarios. In the "AI+Manufacturing" field, 18 typical scenarios for SME AI applications were selected by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2025. In the "AI+Urban Transportation" field, based on the "vehicle-road-cloud integration" pilot, large model technology has been applied to achieve second-level adaptive optimization of traffic signals, improving mainline traffic efficiency by 20% and increasing peak-hour speeds by nearly 10%. In the "AI+Government Services" field, the Wuxi Government Affairs Large Model Public Service Platform has been launched, offering 100 intelligent agents across four major areas.
This recognition as a national AI industry innovation application pilot zone not only affirms Wuxi's model of integrating AI with the real economy but will also further amplify the industrial agglomeration effect, attracting innovation resources in computing power, algorithms, and terminals to accelerate their convergence in Wuxi, thereby supporting the collaborative upgrade of the AI industry in the Yangtze River Delta. According to the pilot zone construction plan, Wuxi will focus on promoting application deployment, technological innovation, industrial capability enhancement, ecosystem optimization, and governance system construction. It will introduce regulations for the promotion of AI applications and industrial development and explore new element supply models such as "computing power supermarkets" and "computing power banks". Through pioneering efforts, Wuxi aims to accumulate replicable practical experience for AI empowering new-type industrialization nationwide. By 2027, the city aims to gather over 500 AI companies above the designated size, develop 200 vertical industry models, and build 300 "AI+Manufacturing" scenarios.
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