36Kr Research | 2026 China AI Agent Industry Development Research Report
At present, China's artificial intelligence industry is at a critical node where the capability of large models is leaping to the large-scale implementation of agents. As foundational models continue to mature in capabilities such as multi-modal understanding, long-context reasoning and tool invocation, the value focus of AI is shifting from "understanding and dialogue" to "decision-making and execution". For enterprises, digital transformation is advancing in depth, and they are no longer satisfied with improving efficiency through single-point tools. Instead, they require AI to open up cross-system business links, replace humans to complete standardized multi-step work, and truly embed into production processes. For individuals, digital life scenarios are increasingly enriched, and users are no longer satisfied with information-retrieval-style Q&A, but expect AI to arrange schedules, integrate information, handle affairs, and become an on-call intelligent assistant. The two demands point to the same new intelligent form — AI Agent: it takes the large model as the decision-making brain, integrates capabilities of environmental perception, long-term memory, planning reasoning and tool invocation, can independently understand goals, disassemble tasks, invoke tools and deliver results with little human intervention, marking the key leap of AI from responding to information to autonomous execution.
01.AI Agent Enters the Early Stage of Productivity Verification and Commercialization Expansion
China's AI Agent market has moved from proof of concept to productivity verification. General-purpose enterprise Agents have taken the lead in entering the commercial implementation stage, industry-specific vertical Agents are accelerating from pilot projects to large-scale deployment, personal consumer Agents are being rapidly explored, and end-side and embodied Agents are in the stage of ecological layout and early verification. According to CIDC data, the scale of China's enterprise-level AI Agent market reached 21.2 billion yuan in 2025, and is expected to reach 332 billion yuan in 2029. The whole industry is still in the early stage, but the speed of commercial expansion is significantly accelerating.
02.The Industrial Value of Agent Shifts from Model Capability to Task Execution and Result Delivery
With the continuous improvement of foundational model capabilities and the decline of reasoning costs, large models are gradually transforming from relatively scarce intelligent resources to invocable and combinable general capabilities. The focus of industrial competition is also gradually shifting from parameter scale and model performance to task completion capability, business adaptation capability and unit task cost. The real value created by Agent is no longer providing better answers, but continuously invoking tools, connecting systems, and finally completing tasks and delivering results.
03.Enterprise-level Agents are Upgrading from Application Construction Tools to Intelligent Infrastructure
As Agent enters the real business environment, enterprise demands have shifted from quickly building an Agent to full-lifecycle management covering development, evaluation, deployment, operation, monitoring and continuous optimization. Agent platforms are being upgraded from simple application development tools to enterprise-level intelligent infrastructure. At the same time, Agent and Workflow begin to form a collaborative architecture, and connection, observability, permission and security governance have gradually become the core capabilities for large-scale implementation.
Key research issues of this report are as follows:
- What are the core driving forces that promote the development of the AI Agent industry?
- What is the current development status of the AI Agent industry? Which development stage is it in?
- What links make up the upstream, midstream and downstream of the AI Agent industrial chain? What are the latest development trends of each link?
- What are the main participants in the AI Agent market? What are the competitive advantages of each type of participant?
- What are the representative enterprises in the AI Agent industry? What reference significance do their development paths have for similar enterprises in the industry?
- What development trends in technology, product, ecology and governance will the AI Agent industry present in the next three to five years?
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