Concerning strategic industries, the top-level conference has set the guiding tone, and this region has taken the lead to take action.
The 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, which just concluded in Shanghai, has drawn worldwide attention and become a critical window to observe the trend of the global AI industry.
Around the same period, the APEC Digital Week was held in Chengdu. This high-level exchange event on the digital economy under the APEC framework forms a synergistic east-west echo with the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai.
The two high-standard conferences overlap in time and align in development direction, sending a clear signal: Artificial intelligence has risen to a global issue, and is also the strategic core of China's emerging industry development.
The signal is strong enough, and actions should be taken even faster.
When the World Artificial Intelligence Conference concluded and the APEC Digital Week was still underway, Chengdu High-Tech Zone held an artificial intelligence industry investment promotion conference themed "Link the Globe with Digital Intelligence, Ignite the Future with AI".
As one of the four parallel events of the 2026 Asia-Pacific Digital Partnership Dialogue & "Invest in Chengdu" Global Investment Promotion Conference, the promotion conference focuses on cutting-edge tracks such as chips, large models, embodied intelligence, medical AI, and autonomous driving, and actively builds a docking platform for "Artificial Intelligence + Capital + Physical Scenarios".
The country has its strategies, Chengdu has its platforms, and Chengdu High-Tech Zone has put them into action. Behind the pioneering move of Chengdu High-Tech Zone lies the ambition and sense of urgency of a national high-tech zone to focus on the AI track.
01
The No.1 AI Industry Zone in Sichuan
Against the backdrop of the new round of global scientific and technological and industrial transformation, artificial intelligence has become the most eye-catching track.
Back in May this year, the Implementation Plan for Accelerating the Promotion of "Artificial Intelligence +" No.1 Innovation Project of Sichuan Province was released, making it clear to promote "Artificial Intelligence +" as the top innovation project at a high level.
A few days ago, the Action Plan for In-depth Implementation of "Artificial Intelligence +" in Chengdu was issued, proposing that the core industry scale will exceed 260 billion yuan with a growth rate of over 30% by 2027, and Chengdu will be built into a globally influential benchmark city for full-scenario AI applications by 2030.
Chengdu High-Tech Zone is exactly the main carrier of the artificial intelligence industry in Chengdu and even the whole Sichuan Province.
In 2025, the core industry scale of artificial intelligence and robotics in this zone reached 90.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 44%, accounting for more than 60% of the city's total and nearly 50% of the province's total. It can be described as the well-deserved No.1 AI Industry Zone across the province.
The establishment of this status is inseparable from the forward-looking layout of Chengdu High-Tech Zone in the three core elements of artificial intelligence.
In terms of computing power, the total computing power of the zone has reached 10750P, accounting for 35% of the city's total; the provincial computing power scheduling platform has been put into operation to support more than 300 scenarios; three enterprise cases were selected into the 2025 typical application cases of advanced computing empowering new quality productive forces released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, accounting for three quarters of the province's total.
In terms of algorithms, 13 large models have passed the national generative AI service filing, 154 deep synthesis algorithms have completed the filing, and 34 institutions have been selected into the Artificial Intelligence Standardization Technical Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. All three indicators rank first in western China.
In terms of data, it has been approved as the core area of the first batch of national data labeling pilot bases and the first batch of national data industry clusters.
Thanks to the advanced layout of core elements, Chengdu High-Tech Zone has now gathered more than 700 key industry enterprises, including over 60 key enterprises in the embodied intelligence field, building a complete industrial chain covering computing chips, algorithm models and artificial intelligence applications.
Among them, 6 enterprises in the zone were selected as the leading enterprises of Sichuan's artificial intelligence industrial chain, and 3 enterprises were listed in the TOP100 list of comprehensive strength of artificial intelligence enterprises released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The agglomeration of elements gives rise to the agglomeration of enterprises, which in turn feeds back the industrial ecosystem. The realization of this positive cycle is the biggest source of confidence for Chengdu High-Tech Zone to respond quickly at key nodes.
02
Vibrant Youthful Vigor and International Orientation
With the above logic understood, it is not difficult to see why Chengdu High-Tech Zone can launch the promotion conference so quickly at the key node of APEC Digital Week.
As is known to all, the essence of the promotion conference is to realize the precise matching between investment opportunities and industrial strength. So where does the attractiveness of Chengdu High-Tech Zone come from?
The answer can be viewed from three dimensions.
The first dimension is talent.
Chengdu High-Tech Zone has become one of the regions with the highest density of young talents in central and western China. Up to now, the total number of young people in the zone is nearly 800,000. With only 0.91% of the city's land area, it gathers 8.2% of the city's young population.
Obviously, a younger population structure and higher density of knowledge reserve represent a natural affinity for new things. This means that AI products can not only easily find development talents participating in iteration here, but also easily obtain users who are willing to try new things.
The second dimension is the inherent attribute of international opening-up.
Take the China-Europe Center, an important window for Chengdu's opening-up to the outside world, as an example. It not only regularly holds high-standard and diversified activities in science and technology, culture, art, services and other fields, but also focuses on multiple fields such as law, science and technology, and finance, building a convenient platform for the efficient flow of technology, talents and information from all countries.
In 2025 alone, the center held more than 210 international conferences, cultural exchange and economic and trade activities, attracting over 40 international institutions and projects including the Consulate General of Spain in Chengdu to settle in.
The spatial agglomeration density of international enterprises and institutions essentially represents the degree of interconnection of industrial development elements in the global network.
An AI enterprise based in Chengdu High-Tech Zone will not limit its vision to the local market. Instead, it can efficiently connect with internationally aligned technical standards and application demands through international institutions and open platforms, and also enter the global AI industrial chain through the local innovation centers of multinational enterprises such as Takeda Pharmaceutical...
In short, the more international partners there are and the more frequent cross-border exchanges are, the more diverse verification environments and cooperation opportunities enterprises can find.
03
Turn the Whole City into an Open Test Field
The third and most critical step is to convert the above endowments into implementable open scenarios.
In the process of artificial intelligence products moving from the laboratory to the market, there is an unavoidable link, that is, a large number of real scenario tests.
For example, autonomous driving needs to travel enough mileage on open roads, service robots need to complete end-to-end delivery in real communities, and medical AI needs to be repeatedly verified in clinical environments...
Many cities actually have sufficient policies and funds, but they often get stuck at the step of "making products actually run".
In response to this, one of the solutions of Chengdu High-Tech Zone is to turn the city itself into the largest test field.
In March this year, Chengdu High-Tech Zone released the first batch of 20 scientific and technological innovation application scenarios, covering four categories: low-altitude economy, artificial intelligence, intelligent robots, and autonomous driving.
Later, it successively released more than 100 scenario demand lists, clearly promoting the construction of more than 20 demonstration application scenarios of artificial intelligence and robots.
In fact, in the field of smart governance, more than 20 "Chengdu High-Tech" robots deployed on a large scale at the World Games have created a precedent for the large-scale application of China's self-developed robot clusters in top international events.
At the level of industrial ecosystem, Chengdu High-Tech Zone took the lead in releasing the construction plan of "robot trading index + ecological platform" nationwide, promoting the settlement of the first robot trading center in western China and completing the construction of the first robot park in western China, which centrally presents the scenarios of "commercial, operational and industrial" robots.
Up to now, 7 typical "Artificial Intelligence +" scenarios of enterprises have been selected into the TOP100 of 2025 National Enterprise "Artificial Intelligence +" Action Innovation Cases; 10 enterprise cases have been selected into the 2025 typical artificial intelligence application cases of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, accounting for about 60% of the city's total and over 50% of the province's total.
It can be said that from community delivery to medical assistance, from smart governance to industrial ecosystem, the scenario opening of Chengdu High-Tech Zone has woven a multi-level, cross-field real verification network. What enterprises get here is the real polishing and testing of products by scenarios.
Of course, behind the efficient operation of all this, there is a business environment service system branded as "Chengdu High-Tech, Your Ideal Home".
For example, at the level of government services, this system emphasizes "respond to every demand, do not disturb when there is no demand", respond efficiently when enterprises need help, and do not appear unnecessarily when they do not need help.
At the capital level, it is reflected in the continuous increase of patient capital. At present, Chengdu High-Tech Zone has built a 100-billion-yuan mother fund cluster for the artificial intelligence industry, which can accompany technologies through the long cycle from R&D to commercialization.
It can be said that the integration of policy, scenario and capital, the efficiency of government services solves the problem of "speed", the determination of patient capital solves the problem of "long-term persistence", and the opening of scenarios solves the problem of "authenticity".
The joint efforts of the three mark the ecological advantage of Chengdu High-Tech Zone for the development of emerging industries including the artificial intelligence industry.
04
March into the "Light"
A large number of cases show that emerging industries represented by artificial intelligence are rewriting the traditional industrial gradient development law of "coastal regions take the lead, inland regions follow up".
Inland regions represented by Chengdu High-Tech Zone are becoming the innovation source of these emerging industries and the first launch place of innovative products.
At the global exhibition booth of this World Artificial Intelligence Conference, many enterprises and products from Chengdu High-Tech Zone appeared, covering multiple cutting-edge tracks such as embodied intelligence, smart education, medical robots, AI trendy toys, and multilingual large models.
For example, the world's first emotional interactive humanoid robot "Aiqiu" was born here. The fact that this level of innovative products go from western China to the world is itself a signal.
This kind of acumen and speed of courage to "stand on the global stage" is reflected in many aspects of Chengdu High-Tech Zone.
For example, on the eve of the promotion conference, the nation's first WorkBuddy OPC Cooperation Community was officially established in Tianfu Long Island Digital Cultural and Creative Park.
Previously, the nation's first exclusive community for One Person Company (OPC) focusing on the "AI + Digital Cultural and Creative" field has been settled, providing high-quality conditions for entrepreneurs to "start with zero cost".
Taking the lead in establishing the nation's first OPC cooperation community, taking the lead in holding the first parallel sub-event of APEC Digital Week, taking the lead in promoting local AI products to top international exhibitions, this series of "first moves" reflects Chengdu High-Tech Zone's keen sense of industrial trends and resolute execution.
Behind this, it is actually a conditioned reflex after long-term deep cultivation.
At present, the whole world is at the forefront of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation. Whether we can seize the opportunity in time and dare to be the first often determines the first-mover advantage of industrial development.
Correspondingly, if a city or a region can step into the "light" one step earlier, it also means that it is more likely to obtain strong momentum for a new round of development.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Western City Stories", Author: Xibu Jun, published with authorization from 36Kr.