Artificial Intelligence Adoption and Supply Chain Finance: Evidence from China's A-Share Listed Firms

In recent years companies have used artificial intelligence (AI) to raise efficiency, to support decisions and to process data. This paper uses Chinese A-share listed companies to test whether firm-level AI adoption helps supply chain finance to grow. The AI index comes from text analysis of annual reports, and a panel over 2011 to 2023 is estimated; AI adoption is positively related to supply chain finance, and its coefficient stays stable after the model controls firm size, leverage, profitability and market value. The data come from the CSMAR database and annual reports; the sample drops financial and special treatment (ST) firms, keeps firm-years with more than 300 employees, and adds firm and year fixed effects to absorb unobserved firm features and macro shocks. The subsample results show that the positive relation is mainly in medium and large firms; there AI raises financing demand, information transparency and credit access, and this supports supply chain finance. Formal coefficient-difference tests show that this relation is significantly weaker in relatively small firms, and medium-sized and large firms show no statistical difference.