A coffee-making robot works at the Twenty-four Solar Terms Fireworks Robot Restaurant in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on Jan 20. [Photo/IC]

Zhejiang's artificial intelligence industry reported strong production and sales growth in the first quarter, with service robot output up 2.9 times from a year earlier and industrial robot output up 44 percent year-on-year.

From January to February, operating revenue at companies in Zhejiang's core AI industry grew 27.2 percent, 7.2 percentage points faster than the growth rate for all of last year.

The gains were supported by the rise of technology companies, including Hangzhou's "six little dragons" — DeepSeek, Game Science, Unitree Robotics, Deep Robotics, BrainCo, and ManyCore Tech.

Unitree Robotics has developed more than 90 percent of its core components in-house and ranked first globally in shipments in 2025. Manycore Tech has worked with Zhejiang University and the Zhejiang Humanoid Robot Innovation Center on multimodal virtual simulation and data generation technologies.

In the first quarter, value added in Zhejiang's digital economy core manufacturing sector, high-tech manufacturing sector, and equipment manufacturing sector rose 15.4 percent, 15.4 percent, and 12.7 percent, respectively.