China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently released the AI Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Entrepreneurship Support Plan (2026-2028), aiming to nurture a large number of innovative AI startups in industry applications, data services and intelligent computing.
The plan sets targets including cultivating more than 10,000 technology-based and innovative SMEs, more than 2,000 "Little Giants" specialized SMEs, and a group of gazelle and unicorn companies over the three-year period.
It also calls for building 10 high-standard technology business incubators in the AI field, 10 national SME public service demonstration platforms, and 10 national-level SME characteristic industrial clusters. The plan explicitly encourages local governments to support "one-person companies" and "super individuals" leveraging intelligent tools for agile entrepreneurship, and to foster "AI-native" enterprises.
It also supports the development of a national AI open-source community (AtomGit) and explores providing settlement, housing and medical security policies based on enterprise self-assessment.
Source: MIIT / Xinhua News Agency
