Artificial intelligence investment and corporate capital structure: a financing perspective

ABSTRACT Artificial intelligence investment holds significant importance for enterprises achieving high-quality development. Existing research predominantly focuses on AI's impact on corporate innovation and production. This paper examines how AI investment influences corporate capital structure from a financing perspective. Employing text analysis, we examined annual reports of Chinese manufacturing listed companies from 2008 to 2023 to construct an AI investment indicator. The results of the study show that AI investment significantly improves the gearing ratio of enterprises. This conclusion still holds after a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. Regarding the underlying mechanism, AI investment enhances corporate indebtedness by optimizing credit resource allocation and reducing debt financing costs. Moderation effects indicate that regional business environment quality positively moderates the impact of AI investment on capital structure, while equity concentration negatively moderates this effect. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that this effect is more pronounced for enterprises located in central and eastern regions, operating in competitive industries, or classified as non-heavily polluting enterprises. This study deepens the understanding of the role AI investment plays in debt financing at the micro-firm level and provides guidance for corporate managers selecting financing methods when investing in emerging technologies.

• Publication year

  2026

• Venue

  Total Quality Management & Business Excellence

• Publication date

  2026-01-20

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1080/14783363.2026.2618507
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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