Visitors are attracted by coordination and precise docking of two robotic arms at a robot summit in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province, on July 15, 2021. [Photo/IC]

China's artificial intelligence sector is home to a total of 220 stock-market listed companies, and 28.6 percent of them, or 63 listed companies, are based in the Yangtze River Delta region, which encompasses Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces, as well as Shanghai municipality.

The YRD region topped all Chinese economic circles in the recently-published 2021 China Regional Competitiveness Evaluation Index for New-Generation AI Tech Industry.

Zhejiang is home to 27 AI-related listed companies, more than any other region in the YRD. More strikingly, it boasts five of the top 10 AI-related listed firms in terms of market valuation in the YRD.

The leading AI enterprise in the YRD is Chinese internet giant Alibaba Group. Its R&D expenditures in 2020 stood at 57.24 billion yuan ($8.84 billion), the highest among all AI-related companies in China, far eclipsing runner-up Tencent, which spent 38.97 billion yuan in R&D last year.