BEIJING -- China is seeing a surge in the number of enterprises related to artificial intelligence (AI) as entrepreneurs flock to capture growth in the area, data showed.

As of Thursday, the country saw more than 210,000 newly registered AI-related enterprises this year, surging by 45.27 percent year on year, according to data from database query platform Tianyancha.com.

Nearly 950,000 companies in China have business in the areas of artificial intelligence, robots, data processing, cloud computing, voice and image recognition, and natural language processing, showed the data.

The size of China's AI software and application market is expected to reach $12.75 billion by 2024, according to global market intelligence firm International Data Corporation.