Shenzhen ranks first in investment vitality among Chinese cities, a report released Tuesday by an enterprise database website www.tianyancha.com showed.

According to the data between 2011 and 2020 from over 28 emerging industries and 36 key cities, the report showed the number of enterprises in the 36 cities increased by an average of 259 percent.

By 2020, 26 cities each had more than 1 million enterprises.

Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing were the top four in terms of the number of enterprises. The 36 cities include four municipalities directly under the Central Government, 27 provincial capital cities and five cities with independent planning status regarding social and economic development.

The report showed Shenzhen has taken the lead in artificial intelligence and hardware. The number of enterprises engaged in artificial intelligence has increased from 2,000 in 2011 to 67,000 in 2020, or 6,000 enterprises a year.

The emerging industries also attracted young people. At the end of 2019, the number of permanent residents was 13.43 million, 412,200 more than the previous year.

The balances of Shenzhen banks reached 10.19 trillion yuan (US$1.56 trillion) by the end of 2020, making Shenzhen the third city following Beijing and Shanghai whose deposit scale reached over 10 trillion yuan.

Nanjing overtook Guangzhou to secure its fourth position because the number of registered companies in Nanjing kept an annual growth rate of 12 percent between 2016 and 2020.

The report also studied five city clusters, namely the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei city cluster, the Yangtze River Delta city cluster, the Pearl River Delta city cluster, the Chengdu-Chongqing city cluster and the city cluster of Yangtze River Middle Reaches that has Wuhan, Changsha, Nanchang and Hefei as the central cities.

The report showed 60 percent of the enterprises moved to the city clusters where there are more opportunities and 50 percent of the investments came from these city clusters.