The artificial intelligence industry in Tianjin has strongly benefited from the World Intelligence Congress over the past few years, with a series of projects implemented.

Launched in 2017, the WIC has facilitated a total of 200 cooperation agreements in its last three sessions, with 19 of them inked by municipal departments, and 181 signed by its district or related departments, according to Xu Yuchun, director of the cooperation and exchange office at the Tianjin Industry and Information Technology Bureau.

These agreements have an accumulative value of 261 billion yuan ($36.89 billion), Xu said.

Due to the WIC, Tianjin has seen continued development in its intelligent industry over the past three years, Xu said.

Unicloud, a subsidiary of Chinese semiconductor giant Tsinghua Unigroup, announced it will establish its headquarters in Tianjin during the second WIC in 2018.

With an investment of 12 billion yuan, the subsidiary focuses on providing cloud services covering big data, AI and the internet of things.

Unicloud said it has taken part in the construction of Tianjin's cloud platform in its Binhai New Area.

Thanks to the WIC, companies such as TCL Technology Group, iFlytek and Haier Group have brought cooperative projects to Tianjin.

"The growing development of these projects in Tianjin is strong proof demonstrating the congress' influence on increasing the city's industrial competitiveness," said Zhou Shengxi, the chief economist of the Tianjin Industry and Information Technology Bureau.

In addition to the projects, the congress has given Tianjin an edge in mobilizing global resources.

Tianjin's Binhai New Area is home to a raft of high-tech companies.[Photo/China Daily]

In 2017, Tianjin cooperated with the Chinese Academy of Engineering to establish the Chinese Institute of New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Strategies, in a bid to mobilize top resources to boost Tianjin's AI development and to attract talents from around the world.

As of 2019, the city had a total of 63 national technology centers and 20 national technological innovation demonstration companies.

Last year, the number of patent applications by industrial enterprises in the city reached 75,000, accounting for more than 75 percent of the total.

According to a report on the development trend of intelligent manufacturing released by an independent research institute of city big data, Tianjin ranked 10th among the potential cities developing into the world's intelligent manufacturing centers.

Along with the congress, Tianjin has rolled out policies and a special 10-billion-yuan fund to support the city's intelligent manufacturers as well as to promote its industrial transformation and upgrading.

The city plans to invest 2 billion yuan a year and 10 billion yuan in five years to support companies with intelligent upgrading in Tianjin, Zhou said.

"It is the best policy in the country in terms of the wide range of the strong support," Zhou said.