At the 7th China Internet Infrastructure Conference, the China Internet Network Information Center released the "Report on the Development of Generative AI Applications (2026)". The numbers are impressive: as of the first half of this year, the number of generative AI users in China has exceeded 700 million, with a penetration rate exceeding 50%, meaning one out of every two adults is using it.
Q&A remains essential, domestic computing power enters the 100,000-card era
How exactly is it used? According to the report, intelligent Q&A is the most popular entry point, with 76% of users relying on it to find answers; the percentages for image and video processing, text processing, writing summaries, and meeting minutes are 47.8%, 37.6%, and 32.5%, respectively. In terms of frequency, the usage of AI comprehensive assistants and efficiency office applications has more than doubled compared to last year, showing significantly increased stickiness.
Underlying capabilities are also being strengthened. As of June, the scale of smart computing power in China reached 2,185 EFLOPS, an increase of 177% year-on-year; the first domestically produced 100,000-card AI super cluster has been put into operation, with full-stack independence from chips to cooling systems, marking that computing infrastructure has officially entered the 100,000-card stage. On the model side, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and others have launched multiple trillion-parameter open-source large models, with the top six positions on the global mainstream calling list dominated by Chinese teams; over 120,000 high-quality data sets have been accumulated.
In terms of industry application, embodied intelligence is particularly active—over 400 humanoid robot models were launched in the first half of the year, and annual production is expected to exceed 100,000 units; AI adoption in manufacturing has exceeded 30%, and agriculture has also seen large models such as "Shennong", "Guyu", and "Fanli". Capital is also heating up: there were 1,255 AI investment and financing deals in the first half of the year, with disclosed amounts reaching about 250.14 billion yuan, which is 1.82 times that of the entire previous year. The report concludes that China has established a globally leading artificial intelligence industry ecosystem, and the policy focus is now shifting from "rushing to develop" to "implementation" and "governance" in balance.
