A bird's-eye view of Nantong. [Photo/Nantong Daily]

Nantong, Jiangsu province, has taken a major step toward integrating into the Yangtze River Delta region's artificial intelligence industrial chain with the signing of a four-party strategic cooperation agreement aimed at building a benchmark for embodied intelligence plus new manufacturing in the region.

The memorandum was signed on July 24 in the city during the Nantong Industrial AI Featured Application Conference. The parties involved are Hangzhou Embodied Intelligence Pilot Base Technology, Nantong Big Data Development Group, Nantong Shuchuan AI Technology, and Nantong Future Industry Development Group.

Under the agreement, the partners will collaborate on embodied intelligence data collection, the joint development of solutions, and scenario-based promotion and application. A dedicated task force will be established to build an embodied intelligence industry node in Nantong, which will coordinate computing power, data services, scenario deployment, and ecosystem expansion across the YRD region.

The cooperation is part of Nantong's broader push to integrate into the AI industrial and innovation chains in the YRD region. According to the Nantong AI plus manufacturing action plan released earlier this year, the city aims to achieve 30,000 PFLOPS of intelligent computing power by 2027, develop 30 vertical industry models, create 100 typical AI application cases, and build no fewer than 10 specialized AI industrial parks.

Since the start of the year, Nantong has held entrepreneurship competitions, industry matchmaking events, and ecosystem partner forums in Shanghai and Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province, to actively tap into scientific and technological innovation resources in the YRD region.