Against the backdrop of high-quality development and the deepening of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, implementing an innovation-driven strategy has become the primary force leading development. Specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative (SRDI) enterprises constitute the most dynamic and innovation-oriented group of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in China’s market economy. Their innovation development is directly related to the formation of new quality productive forces and the enhancement of manufacturing competitiveness. However, existing literature is notably scarce in understanding the impact of digital-intelligent technologies on corporate innovation from the dual-dimensional perspectives of efficiency and quality. There is a particular lack of in-depth research on how these technologies exert their influence through the three pathways of influencing enterprise innovation capability, innovation modes, and the innovation environment. This paper takes SRDI SMEs among Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2014 to 2023 as a sample to investigate how digital-intelligent technologies affect their innovation development. Empirical findings reveal that the application of digital-intelligent technologies significantly enhances both the innovation efficiency and quality of SRDI enterprises. Specifically, a higher degree of application of cloud computing and artificial intelligence technologies is more conducive to corporate innovation development. The regression results remain robust after considering the substitution of the explained variables, endogeneity concerns, and the policy shock of the national big data comprehensive pilot zones. Further analysis indicates that the promoting effect of digital-intelligent technologies on innovation development exhibits heterogeneous impacts concerning property rights nature, industry attributes, and regional location. Compared with existing literature, this study advances research in three aspects. First, it refines the conceptualization and measurement of digital-intelligent technologies by constructing a multidimensional technology lexicon and employing multi-block principal component analysis, thereby establishing a tailored and comprehensive measurement system for SRDI enterprises that overcomes prior limitations in index construction. Second, grounded in the intrinsic requirements of high-quality development, it characterizes the corporate innovation performance from both efficiency and quality perspectives, revealing the differentiated effects of digital-intelligent technologies on these two dimensions. Third, it empirically verifies three mediating mechanisms of innovation capability, innovation modes, and the innovation environment, incorporates heterogeneity tests across ownership, industry, and region to uncover the internal logic through which digital-intelligent technologies shape enterprise innovation. Overall, this study sheds light on the underlying mechanisms through which digital-intelligent technologies drive the innovation development of SRDI enterprises. The findings aid government departments in formulating more targeted policies and measures for digital-intelligent transformation in the process of developing new quality productive forces. This study also provides differentiated digital-intelligent support for enterprises with varying property rights, industry attributes, and regional locations, thereby better guiding SRDI enterprises towards achieving high-quality development.