Beijing's economy is expected to exceed 5 trillion yuan ($701.9 billion) in 2025, according to the city's top planning official, a milestone officials say that will cement its role as China's innovation hub and bolster jobs and investment.

Yang Xiuling, director of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Development and Reform, told a news briefing on Monday that the capital's GDP reached 4.98 trillion yuan in 2024 and is projected to climb above the 5 trillion yuan mark this year, an increase of 1.4 trillion yuan over five years.

The capital's economy grew at an average annual rate of 5.2 percent between 2021 and 2024, she said.

Lin Jianhua, the commission's deputy director, said Beijing now registers more than 300 new tech companies every day, giving it a higher density than Silicon Valley. Powered by advances such as artificial intelligence, the information services sector has become the city's largest industry. Together with scientific services and advanced manufacturing, its share of GDP rose from 32.7 percent in 2020 to 38.8 percent in 2024.

"Robots running marathons and taking part in athletic events are made possible by breakthroughs in core technologies such as whole-body coordinated motion control, multimodal perception, and complex task planning with autonomous execution," Lin said. "These advances are aimed at broad applications across settings, including factories, hospitals, commercial supermarkets and households."

He added that Beijing's robotics industry, comprising humanoid robots, specialized robots, logistics robots, among others, now accounts for 15 percent of the national total.

By the end of 2024, the city hosted 115 unicorn companies and 1,035 national-level "little giant" small and medium-sized enterprises, ranking first nationwide, Lin said, adding that it is home to more than 2,400 artificial intelligence firms, about half of the national total. Other advances include billion-pixel aerial cameras and China's first vertical take-off and landing rocket recovery test over a 10-kilometer range.

Yang added that the municipal government had completed its relocation to Tongzhou district, part of a wider plan to balance development across the capital.