(ECNS) — China's artificial intelligence (AI) sector continued to gain momentum in 2025, with more than 6,000 related enterprises and the core industry expected to exceed 1.2 trillion yuan (about $168 billion), an official said Wednesday.

Zhang Yunming, vice minister of industry and information technology, made the remarks at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office. He said 2025 was a year marked by robust vitality and notable highlights for China's AI industry.

Domestic companies rolled out multiple AI chip products, while the country's intelligent computing power reached 1,590 exaflops, Zhang said. High-quality industry datasets also emerged at a faster pace, and domestically developed large models took a leading role in the global open-source ecosystem.

AI-powered terminal products such as AI-enabled smartphones, computers and smart glasses are now increasingly entering everyday life, Zhang noted. In the first three quarters of 2025, shipments of smart glasses exceeded 1.78 million units, with nearly 80% comprising AI glasses, adding greater technological and futuristic elements to production and daily life.

AI applications have continued to expand across key industries including steel, non-ferrous metals, power generation and telecommunications, gradually penetrating critical links such as product research and development, quality inspection and customer services, Zhang said. At one home appliance company, the use of a self-developed "5G+AI" industrial visual inspection system raised detection accuracy to 99.98% and boosted per-capita productivity by 275%.

The industry ecosystem also saw accelerated growth, Zhang added. A national AI industry investment fund with a total size of 60 billion yuan was launched, while a special initiative on AI standardization was advanced. In 2025, more than 40 key national and industry standards were formulated and released, and a number of critical open-source projects — including intelligent agent protocols and operator libraries — were incubated and put into application.

(By Evelyn)