Chengdu is advancing its artificial intelligence strategy with a proposed subsidy of up to 50% and an annual total pool of 100 million yuan. On September 11, the Chengdu Municipal Economic and Information Technology Bureau opened a public consultation on the "Chengdu Token Voucher Implementation Plan (Trial) (Draft for Comments)".

The plan intends to use municipal fiscal funds to support market entities in utilizing tokens for large model invocation, intelligent agent development, multimodal reasoning, and model fine-tuning. Under the proposal, a single entity can receive a maximum cumulative annual token voucher of 2 million yuan, with the city's total annual issuance capped at 100 million yuan. As noted, a "token" is a professionally standardized term formally named by the National Data Administration and the National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies, referring to the smallest computable unit for processing multimodal information such as text, code, and images in large models. It serves as a core value anchor in the intelligent era and a unified billing and metering unit for large model services.

Precision Support with Tiered Subsidies to Cut Costs and Boost Efficiency

According to the draft for comments, the token voucher will support legally registered and operating enterprises, institutions, OPCs (one-person companies), OPC community operators, universities, and research institutes that use tokens, provided they have a good credit record over the past three years and no major safety incidents. The subsidy amount for a single entity shall not exceed 30% of the actual purchase cost (50% for small and micro enterprises), with a maximum of 2 million yuan. The specific voucher amount will be determined based on the year's budget scale, application status, and verification results of business authenticity.

The scope of use covers the entire chain of AI innovation applications, including scientific research, technology development, content creation, industrial innovation, intelligent transformation, intelligent agent development and application, and model fine-tuning and training services. Chengdu's token voucher is planned to adopt two models: "automatic access with no application required" and "immediate access upon application." Applicants can either choose A-type institutions to receive additional token consumption rights based on their token service spending without applying, or opt for B-type institutions to offset token service expenses directly upon application, fully accommodating the differentiated needs of enterprises of varying scales and types in terms of capital turnover and expanded token application.

Coordinated Voucher Linkage for Synergistic Computing Power and Model Development

Chengdu was the first city in China to introduce a computing power voucher policy. The proposed token voucher will complement and work in tandem with the computing power voucher: the latter focuses on securing underlying computing resources like GPUs and intelligent computing, reducing rental costs for computing power, while the former targets application stages such as large model inference invocation and intelligent agent development. Market entities can combine both policies as needed based on their project's development stage, forming a complete support chain from underlying computing power supply to model business applications.

Earlier, the Chengdu Municipal Economic and Information Technology Bureau, in collaboration with the Municipal New Economy Commission and Bank of Chengdu, launched a dedicated pure credit loan product called "Computing Power Loan," which opens a special approval fast track for enterprises applying for computing power vouchers. Companies are not required to provide additional collateral or guarantees, with a maximum credit line of up to 5 million yuan per enterprise. The first loan of 1.14 million yuan has already been successfully disbursed. Subsequently, Chengdu will continue to explore combined services such as "token voucher plus token loan" and "computing power voucher plus computing power loan," achieving a two-way empowerment of "policy tools plus financial tools" to broaden financing channels for asset-light AI innovation entities.

In line with the national "AI Plus" action and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's initiative to cultivate AI application service providers, Chengdu plans to set up two categories of token voucher service institutions, A-type and B-type, building a service provider echelon of "head leadership plus token supermarket."

With the precise support of a series of policies, Chengdu's AI industry is experiencing rapid growth. In 2025, the city's core AI industry scale surpassed 150 billion yuan. In the first half of 2026, the core AI industry scale reached 104.14 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 38.3%.