The "Number One City for Artificial Intelligence" vows to reach a trillion-yuan economy within two years.

On January 5th, Beijing held the "2026 Beijing Artificial Intelligence Innovation High - ground Construction Promotion Conference". Yang Xiuling, Director of the Beijing Development and Reform Commission, introduced that in 2025, the scale of Beijing's core artificial intelligence industry is expected to reach 450 billion yuan, with over 2,500 enterprises clustered, accounting for about half of the national total respectively.

According to the "Beijing Artificial Intelligence Innovation High - ground Construction Action Plan" released at the conference, Beijing will implement the following actions: the technological innovation origin - driving action, the self - reliant intelligent computing ecosystem strengthening action, the high - quality data energy - gathering action, the full - domain application enabling action, the scientific intelligence paradigm innovation action, the full - chain breakthrough action of embodied intelligence, the innovation ecosystem leading action, the open - source and open - cooperation action, and the security governance escort action. It aims to achieve a breakthrough of over one trillion yuan in the scale of the core artificial intelligence industry in about two years and become a global artificial intelligence innovation high - ground with technological origin - driving force and industrial competitiveness.

How strong is Beijing's strength in the field of artificial intelligence?

As the city with the richest artificial intelligence innovation resources in China, the latest data shows that 148 scholars from Beijing are on the AI 2000 Global Most Influential Scholars List, accounting for over 40% of the national total. The total number of AI scholars in Beijing reaches 15,000, accounting for 30% of the national total. Among the world's most innovative cities in artificial intelligence, Beijing ranks second.

The agglomeration of innovation resources has also promoted the industrial clustering effect. Currently, Beijing has nearly 60 listed enterprises and about 40 unicorn enterprises in the field of artificial intelligence. The domestic artificial intelligence unicorn with the highest market value, the embodied intelligence enterprise and scientific intelligence enterprise with the largest single - round financing amount, the first listed domestic artificial intelligence chip enterprise and large - model enterprise all emerged in Beijing.

It can be said that Beijing has truly become the "Number One City in Artificial Intelligence". Against this background, in July 2024, Beijing released the "Beijing Action Plan for Promoting 'Artificial Intelligence +' (2024 - 2025)", clearly proposing to "take the lead in building an AI - native city and promote the city to become a global - influential artificial intelligence innovation origin and application high - ground".

Now, Beijing's development layout for artificial intelligence has taken a further step and gradually become clear -

On January 5th, Beijing released the first batch of four artificial intelligence innovation blocks, creating a "one - core, multi - point" layout centered on Haidian. It aims to build each innovation block into the "core engine of Beijing's artificial intelligence and a national artificial intelligence innovation landmark" in the next two years.

It is worth noting that the scale of Beijing's core artificial intelligence industry was nearly 350 billion yuan in 2024 and reached nearly 450 billion yuan in 2025, showing strong growth momentum. According to Beijing's newly proposed trillion - level industrial goal, the scale of its core industry needs to double on the current basis, and there is only about two years left for this leap, which self - evidently shows its determination for development.

Looking across the country, apart from Beijing, many cities are currently competing to become the "Artificial Intelligence City". For example, Shanghai has long listed becoming the "Model Capital" as an important goal for urban development. Shenzhen proposes to build an artificial intelligence pioneer city, and Hangzhou has put on the agenda the construction of the "Number One City for National Artificial Intelligence Innovation and Development". In the fierce global competition and industrial race, Beijing must speed up its pace.

However, from the perspective of urban competition and cooperation, some industry insiders have previously analyzed that cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen each have their own characteristics in the field of artificial intelligence. "Beijing focuses on the process from 0 to 1, Shanghai from 1 to 10, and Shenzhen from 10 to 100." They should build artificial intelligence industrial high - grounds according to their respective resource endowments and industrial advantages.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Urban Evolution Theory", author: Liu Yanmei. Republished by 36Kr with permission.