(Yicai) March 30 -- A group of major Chinese state-owned enterprises has launched an artificial intelligence competition in Shanghai, opening up 50 real-world uses for AI agents to innovative companies, research institutions, and solo entrepreneurs, in a push to accelerate the adoption of the technology in business.

The eight SOEs -- Shanghai Electric Group, Shanghai International Port Group, Arcplus Group, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Bank of Shanghai, Guotai Haitong Securities, Shanghai Airport Group, and Shanghai Shentong Metro Group -- launched the contest at the Global Developer Pioneers Summit on March 28.

The 50 real-world uses are designed around bottlenecks in SOE digital transformation and span finance, manufacturing, transportation, and construction, covering core operating processes such as design, quality inspection, scheduling, maintenance, and dispatching, Yicai learned at the event.

In finance, the competition targets more accurate risk detection, smarter investment strategy, and better credit assessment. In manufacturing, it focuses on equipment maintenance, drawing interpretation, and production scheduling to hasten the shift from traditional production to intelligent operations.

The SOEs will provide the competitors with test environments, data sets, computing support, and clear delivery requirements, and will also allow teams to work on-site, helping AI move from model development to actual implementation.

Set up in 2023, the Global Developer Pioneers Summit aims to bring together the world’s top developers to explore the integration of cutting-edge technologies and industry, and to help Shanghai build itself into an AI innovation center. This year’s summit ran from March 27 to 29 and drew 200 developer communities and 45,000 in-person attendees.

Shanghai intends to speed up the construction of an open-source AI ecosystem. By 2027, the city aims to set up one to two open-source communities with international influence, cultivate 100 open-source commercial firms, incubate more than 200 high-quality open-source projects, and attract over 3 million developers, according to a local government plan released in December.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Martin Kadiev