Artificial intelligence (AI) are widely applied in businesses, big or small, in Wenzhou City, east China's Zhejiang Province, improving their production efficiency and helping them lower production costs.
Wang Bo, an AI translator, said the concept of "AI translators" was introduced at the beginning of this year. Wenzhou has traditionally been driven by traditional manufacturing, particularly the footwear and apparel industry.
As these industries move toward intelligent transformation, many businesses lacked the talent they needed in this area. So, they started to bring professionals from universities and research institutes, who have been working in this field, into their businesses and have them serve as a kind of "bridge".
"Translator" is a good way of putting it. He doesn't know how to run a factory. He stands between the veteran craftsman and the machine -- turning decades of experience into something a machine can understand.
For decades, identifying leather and checking its quality has relied on the eyes of experienced craftsmen.
And that's exactly where his team decided to start. What Wang's team is trying to do is to turn the craftsman's experience into data.
"We collect the original inspection images [from the quality-control workers]. They're magnified under a microscope and then saved. We turn them into a dataset. We train the model on it. After training, we record these features. When a new leather sample comes in, we take a picture. The system identifies it. It compares it with the dataset. Then the model identifies the leather - [whether it's] sheep, cow or pig [leather]," he said.
In the past, testing a batch of products took at least two days, from sampling to reporting. Now, AI can identify leather materials within seconds. The team is now developing AI-powered defect detection.
Maitian Energy is a Wenzhou company making solar inverters and energy-storage systems. Most of its products are sold overseas.
The company has consumed about 300,000-yuan worth of Token since June 2026.
"The new energy industry faces many changes and opportunities. So, we want to respond quickly to market changes. This year, large language models have become much more capable, both in China and abroad. So, we started developing AI-based applications. Some production-line workers built their own tools. They track production efficiency. The research and development team built other tools. They manage patents and project progress. These applications went beyond our expectations," said Liu Lianbo, director of the Information Technology (IT) Department of Maitian Energy.
But once AI enters the factory, another question follows: can it reach the small businesses that don't even have an IT department?
Wenzhou is known as the birthplace of China's private economy. "Small commodities, big markets" put this city on the map.
And behind that economy are thousands upon thousands of small businesses.
Pan Linglong, owner of KH Ajie Collection Store, is a post-95s entrepreneur, and now she's the person in the shop who knows the most about AI.
"We've been using AI since last year. It saves the cost of hiring real models. That used to cost tens of thousands of yuan a year. Now, we just take photos of the clothes. AI put them on a model. It can take just a few minutes. We can produce several outfits in a day," she said.
But she didn't know that the "points" and "membership" credits she uses every day have another name in the industry: Token.
To help small and medium-sized businesses use AI without breaking the bank - and without worrying about how it works - the Southeast Token Operations Center opened in Wenzhou in July.
It is the first officially designated Token factory in Zhejiang Province. The center is trying to help small businesses with no tech team to use AI.
According to Wenzhou government data, Token consumption by the city's manufacturing sector jumped by 2,261 percent quarter on quarter in the first quarter of 2026.
AI helps businesses improve production efficiency in Wenzhou City
