(Yicai) June 30 -- Wuhan East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, also known as the Optics Valley of China, plans to invest over CNY1 billion (USD147 million) over the next three years to turn the world’s largest fiber optic cable manufacturing base into an ‘artificial intelligence agent city,’ positioning it as a leading hub for AI agent development.

Optics Valley aims to cultivate 100 AI agent firms with significant industry influence, launch 1,000 innovative AI agent products and attract 10,000 AI agent developers by 2029 to transform the zone into ‘an AI agent city,’ the administration of the high-tech zone located in Wuhan, central Hubei province said yesterday.

To achieve these goals, Optics Valley will significantly expand its AI computing infrastructure, said Sheng Yue, one of the Wuhan city officials overseeing the high-tech zone. Optics Valley aims to double its intelligent computing capacity to 10,000 PetaFlops this year. Companies leasing AI computing resources will also be eligible for subsidies covering up to 50 percent of their costs.

Optics Valley will offer a wide range of real-world application scenarios to AI agent developers, including government administration, cultural and tourism services as well as smart city applications, Sheng said. Each year, outstanding benchmark projects will be selected and awarded grants of up to CNY3 million (USD441,700).

The key factors driving AI agent development are computing power, data and talent, and Optics Valley has competitive advantages in all three areas, Wu Zhiqiang, executive director of the PKU-Wuhan Institute of Artificial Intelligence, told Yicai.

Optics Valley is home to the Wuhan Artificial Intelligence Computing Center, the Wuhan Supercomputing Center, and intelligent computing centers operated by the country’s Big Three carriers China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, which give the high-tech zone one of the biggest computing capacities in central China, Wu said. It also boasts a rich talent pool, abundant industrial application scenarios and extensive data resources, he added.

The size of Optics Valley’s AI industry surged 45 percent in the first five months from a year earlier to CNY40 billion (USD5.9 billion), and the full-year total is expected to reach CNY100 billion, placing Wuhan among China’s top tier of AI cities, according to official data.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Kim Taylor