AI integration fuels manufacturing upgrade

As the host city, Shanghai has cultivated two national leading-level smart factories and 28 national excellence-level smart factories, the most among Chinese cities. Its smart manufacturing system integration industry exceeds 60 billion yuan ($8.99 billion) a year, and smart manufacturing equipment output surpasses 150 billion yuan.

This momentum has been further supported by Shanghai's newly released action plan to accelerate next-generation smart manufacturing, with four major projects and 19 key tasks aimed at deepening the integration of AI and manufacturing.

At the national level, AI is becoming a key force reshaping China's manufacturing sector, with the large-scale adoption of smart factories, industrial robots and the industrial internet helping to improve quality and efficiency.

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, by the first half of this year, China had built more than 56,000 basic-level, over 9,000 advanced-level, more than 500 excellence-level and 15 leading-level smart factories on a cumulative basis. Meanwhile, during the same period, more than 30 percent of manufacturing firms above designated size had adopted AI technologies.

The momentum sits inside a broader AI boom. In 2025, China had more than 140 humanoid robot developers and was also home to more than 6,000 AI enterprises. Humanoid robot shipments reached 14,400 units, or 84.7 percent of the global market, according to an industry research report.