Foreign guests discuss at a themed forum of the International Investment Forum 2024. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Artificial intelligence will bring enormous investment opportunities as this fast-growing technology is reshaping business models and industrial structures in related fields, according to insiders.

Focusing on "Integrating Innovation, Initiating the Future with Intelligence", a themed subforum of the International Investment Forum 2024 at the 24th China International Fair for Investment and Trade, officials and executives gathered to share insights into AI's role in investment and financing.

"AI is an important driving force behind the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation," Ling Ji, vice-minister of commerce and deputy China international trade representative, said at the forum.

China has a large market size, a variety of application scenarios, and a fast-paced industrial development, providing broad prospects for the development of AI. The Chinese government is continuously advancing high-level opening-up by gradually removing foreign ownership restrictions in areas like telecommunication services and easing foreign investment access in manufacturing, optimizing the investment environment and expanding opportunities for foreign investors, according to Ling.

"Currently, global technological innovation has entered into a period of intense activity, constantly generating new products, industries and business forms," said Liu Haoling, president of China Investment Corporation. "China's vast consumer market, rich and high-quality human resources and comprehensive industrial system provide ample opportunities for investment and technological innovation in the field of artificial intelligence."

Chen Liang, chairman of China International Capital Corporation, said: "In recent years, driven by the success of ChatGPT, AI has swept across the globe, deeply influencing and reconstructing various industries and sectors at an unprecedented speed."

According to a report by CICC, market demand for China's AI industry will reach 5.6 trillion yuan ($786.66 billion) by 2030, and the total investment scale in China's AI industry between 2024 and 2030 will exceed 10 trillion yuan.

"The development of technology cannot be achieved without the support of finance, especially direct financing based on the capital market," said Chen. "Through the formation of a virtuous cycle of 'technology-industry-finance', original and disruptive technological innovations can be commercialized and industrialized, creating new value that benefits economic and social development as well as human civilization progress."

Kevin Sneader, Asia Pacific ex-Japan president of Goldman Sachs, said the release of ChatGPT in late 2020 was an inflection point with generative AI technology gaining public attention and investor interest.

"Generative AI is not a bubble. We are in the very early stages of seeing how it truly affects business productivity," Sneader said. He noted that generative AI offers better automation and decision-making processes, along with tools to process natural language more effectively. The technology could drive a 7 percent — an almost $7 trillion — increase in global GDP, and lift productivity growth by 1.5 percentage points over the next decade.