Against the backdrop of a new round of global technological revolution and industrial transformation, next-generation information technology is becoming deeply integrated with the manufacturing industry. As a synthesis of advanced manufacturing and digital technologies, intelligent manufacturing has emerged as a key engine for generating new quality productive forces. In this context, this study takes A-share listed private intelligent manufacturing enterprises from 2011 to 2024 as research samples and empirically examines the impact of reverse mixed-ownership reform on new quality productive forces in intelligent manufacturing enterprises, along with its mechanisms and heterogeneous characteristics, using econometric methods including two-way fixed effects model, instrumental variable method, and system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM). The study first constructs a measurement system for new quality productive forces comprising 13 tertiary indicators under three primary dimensions: new quality laborers, new quality labor objects, and new quality labor means. The degree of reverse mixed-ownership reform is measured by the ratio of the sum of state-owned shareholder holdings among the top ten shareholders to the total shareholding ratio of the top ten shareholders. The baseline regression results indicate that reverse mixed-ownership reform has a significant positive impact on new quality productive forces in intelligent manufacturing enterprises, and this conclusion remains robust after conducting robustness tests such as replacing variable measurements, changing model specifications, and winsorizing outliers, as well as endogeneity tests including the instrumental variable method and SYS-GMM. In terms of mechanism testing, this study verifies the existence of two mediating paths—corporate governance optimization and digital-intelligent transformation—based on principal-agent theory, dynamic capability theory, and task-technology fit model. The findings reveal that reverse mixed-ownership reform enhances enterprise new quality productive forces by optimizing corporate governance structure and reducing agency costs on one hand, while on the other hand, it accelerates the process of enterprise digital-intelligent transformation, thereby promoting production efficiency and management effectiveness. Furthermore, this study finds that a favorable business operating environment plays a significant positive moderating role, where the promoting effect of reverse mixed-ownership reform on new quality productive forces is more pronounced in regions with a higher marketization degree, less government intervention, and a better legal environment. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the enhancement effect of reverse mixed-ownership reform on new quality productive forces varies significantly across geographic locations, industry attributes, and enterprise ages, with more pronounced effects in eastern regions, non-heavy pollution industries, and enterprises with longer establishment histories. The innovation of this study lies in focusing the research context on intelligent manufacturing, a key strategic field for cultivating new quality productive forces, and proposing and empirically testing the digital-intelligent transformation as a mediating mechanism with distinctive contemporary characteristics, thereby providing new theoretical perspectives and empirical evidence for revealing the internal mechanism through which reverse mixed-ownership reform affects new quality productive forces. The research findings offer important policy implications for China to implement differentiated and precise mixed-ownership reform and optimize the state-owned capital enabling mechanism.