At the Embodied Intelligence Innovation Lab of Inspur Group, staff members are conducting model training. Over recent years, Jinan has consistently unleashed the vitality of its software industry amidst the wave of the digital economy.
In 2025, the city's software business revenue reached 640.6 billion yuan, accounting for 4.1% of the national total and 40.2% within Shandong Province, establishing it as a crucial force supporting digital economic growth and empowering the transformation of the real economy.
That same year, Jinan designated the high-end software industrial chain as one of its 13 flagship industrial chains. The city is accelerating breakthroughs in core technologies for foundational and industrial software, actively expanding into new frontiers like artificial intelligence and agent software, and continuously refining its industrial ecosystem. This leverages the innovative strengths of the software sector to empower manufacturing upgrades and digital economic development.
"Currently, Jinan's high-end software sector has essentially formed an industrial profile characterized by 'innovative foundational software, robust industrial software support, and distinctive development of emerging software,'" said Wang Chongjun, a member of the Party Leadership Group and Deputy Director of the Jinan Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology.
Building a Solid Foundation
Foundational software serves as the "foundation" of information systems, with middleware acting as the "information hub" connecting operating systems and applications. In the 1990s, the domestic middleware market was nearly monopolized by international giants, prompting some companies to recognize early on the necessity of independent research and development. Zhongchuang Software was among these pioneers.
"In 1998, Zhongchuang Software foresaw the future trends in the foundational software market and initiated R&D for foundational middleware in collaboration with top domestic universities and research institutes," explained Gao Longlin, General Manager of Zhongchuang Software Commercial Middleware Co., Ltd. The company has since grown into a leading domestic foundational software service provider and was listed on the STAR Market in 2024. To date, it holds 168 authorized national invention patents and has led or been a primary contributor to the formulation of 19 national standards.
Unlike general application software, foundational software development involves long cycles, significant investment, and slow returns. However, as the base of information systems, it plays a fundamental and platform-like role. Once breakthroughs are achieved, its driving effect and strategic significance become particularly pronounced. Today, in Jinan's foundational software domain, companies represented by Inspur, Zhongchuang, Hangao, and Zhongfu Information continue to achieve technological innovations in areas like operating systems, middleware, databases, and information security, solidifying the foundation for information security.
As a key carrier for Jinan's software industry, the Qilu Software Park in Jinan High-tech Zone has evolved significantly since its approval for construction in 1995. After 31 years of dedicated development, it has transformed from an initial startup incubation site with just 32 companies into an area with over 10 million square meters of industrial space, hosting more than 80,000 enterprises and employing 260,000 software professionals.
Faced with the large number and diverse needs of companies within the park, Qilu Software Park has innovated by establishing a "four-party linkage" mechanism through its "Service Stewards Visit Ten Thousand Enterprises" initiative, creating a service matrix that combines "online cloud connections with offline face-to-face meetings." Since the beginning of this year, the park has conducted over 2,200 enterprise visits, addressed more than 180 requests related to financing, talent, and policy implementation, and held nearly 100 specialized service events.
Ascending to New Heights
On a computer screen, a 3D model of a heavy-duty truck pipeline rotates. At Jinan Dazhengdongzhi Automotive Pipeline Co., Ltd., the adoption of a locally developed industrial software—Hoteamsoft's CrownCAD—has reduced product development cycles to within one week. Collaborative efficiency has increased by 40%, design cycles have shortened by 30%, design error and omission rates have dropped from 15% to 3%, and costs have been reduced by approximately 60%.
Among industrial software, 3D CAD (Computer-Aided Design) software is often called the "crown jewel." It was long monopolized by foreign technology, but Shandong Hoteamsoft Co., Ltd., located in Jinan High-tech Zone, spent over a decade breaking this monopoly.
"We independently developed two core underlying technologies: the '3D Geometric Modeling Engine DGM' and the 'Geometric Constraint Solver HTGC (DCS),' making us a domestic enterprise with fully independent intellectual property rights for a 3D CAD kernel," said Yang Chaoying, founder and Chairman of Shandong Hoteamsoft Co., Ltd. Based on these core technological breakthroughs, Hoteamsoft also created the cloud-native CrownCAD platform, which supports multi-user online collaborative design, enabling 3D modeling via a web browser anytime, anywhere, and integrates AI technology to develop features like intelligent modeling and rendering. The platform now boasts over 520,000 users and is widely applied in high-end sectors such as aerospace and automotive manufacturing. In October 2025, CrownCAD won the highest honor gold award at the China International Software Expo.
Industrial software is often termed the "soul of industry." In Jinan, companies represented by Inspur and Hoteamsoft have established leading advantages in R&D design, production manufacturing, and operational management, laying the groundwork for secure and independent high-end manufacturing.
In August 2025, the Jinan Industrial Software Building, located in Jinan High-tech Zone, became operational. As the core innovation entity within the building, the Jinan Industrial Software Research Institute officially moved in that same month. Reportedly, this project aims to create a "vertical park" that builds a complete industrial ecosystem from R&D and incubation to cultivation, having already attracted nearly 40 companies.
On June 23 this year, the National Artificial Intelligence Application Pilot Base (Industrial Software) was officially launched at Inspur, aiming to bridge the pathway for industrializing technological achievements. As the construction unit for this base, Inspur leverages a nationally recognized cross-industry and cross-domain industrial internet platform to develop 15 vertical domain large language models in the industrial sector and has released industrial agent clusters for 43 industries, providing rich industrial scenarios for the intelligent upgrade and pilot verification of industrial software.
Moving forward, Jinan's industrial software sector will follow the approach of "extending the industrial chain and accelerating scenario innovation" to promote industrial synergy and ecosystem development in industrial software.
Embracing Artificial Intelligence
In an industrial visual agent production workshop supported by Inspur Yunzhou's technology, a pair of tireless "eyes" continuously inspects. It can examine 30 to 60 meters of artificial leather products per minute, accurately identifying defects as small as 0.1 millimeters, transforming quality inspection from a process reliant on manual experience into a round-the-clock, intelligent, and standardized operation.
Shang Guangyong, Deputy General Manager and Chief Technology Officer of Inspur Yunzhou, stated that if the intelligent upgrade of traditional software is characterized as "+AI," then the rise of agent software signifies the software industry is entering a genuine "AI+" era. Jinan is seizing the opportunities presented by AI development to accelerate the intelligent upgrade of its software industry.
Data shows that since 2024, the city has nurtured 326 software enterprises in the AI field and 50 provincial-level large model enterprises, resulting in 150 large model products, 82 of which have completed filing. These figures reflect the accelerating transition of Jinan's software industry from traditional software development towards integrated innovation in "software + artificial intelligence."
Confronted with new trends in software industry development, Jinan is steadfastly positioning agent software as a crucial direction for future industries, using intelligent development as a breakthrough point. On one hand, it is promoting the comprehensive integration of large model capabilities into foundational, industrial, and industry-specific application software to expedite the intelligent upgrade of traditional software products. On the other hand, it is focusing on key areas like government affairs, manufacturing, and energy, supporting companies such as Inspur Cloud, Shensi Electronics, and Yunding Technology in developing agent applications based on industry-specific large models to rapidly cultivate new tracks within the software industry.
Currently, Jinan is accelerating the formulation of its "15th Five-Year Plan" special plan for the software industry, listing the cultivation of agent software as a key task, and striving to build an efficient, product-intelligent, service-inclusive, and ecosystem-complete software industry system.
The intelligent upgrade of software relies on robust computing power support. As the infrastructure for AI development, computing power is becoming a vital foundation for software industry innovation. The Blue Ocean Leading Intelligent Computing Center in Jinan's Zhangqiu District deploys high-performance computing clusters, offering cost-effective, on-demand, and deeply customized computing services tailored to different application scenarios for manufacturing enterprises.
"We can provide high-density cabinets ranging from 10 kW to 60 kW, allowing flexible deployment of various AI servers. Whether it's lightweight inference for small and medium-sized enterprises or dedicated computing clusters for large industrial groups, we can deliver precisely tailored overall solutions," introduced Tian Qing, the head of Blue Ocean Leading. Through customized computing power and data center leasing models, enterprises can access computing resources on-demand without bearing high hardware investment or complex operation and maintenance costs, significantly lowering the barrier to AI application.
"The deep integration of artificial intelligence and industrial software is equipping the real economy with a 'new brain,'" said Li Ying, a member of the Party Leadership Group and Deputy Director of the National Information Communication International Innovation Park Service Center, and Director of the Qilu Software Park Development Center. Leveraging the National Artificial Intelligence Application Pilot Base (Industrial Software), Jinan will further bridge the "last mile" for industrial AI from being "usable in the lab" to being "deployable in the factory," accelerating the transformation and application of AI innovation achievements.
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