Enterprise AI innovation has become the core engine empowering industrial upgrading and enhancing national competitiveness. As the external ecosystem for corporate innovation, the business environment’s multidimensional elements synergistically form configurations that increasingly amplify the enabling effects on AI innovation. Using A-share listed ICT companies in China from 2017-2022 as the sample, this paper combines fsQCA and complex mediation model to explore how distinct business-environment configurations influence AI innovation through firms’ R&D enthusiasm. The findings reveal that no single business environment factor alone constitutes a necessary condition for high R&D enthusiasm; instead, configural effects must be formed through the synergy of multiple attributes. Four configurational paths are identified: 〖JP2〗(1)market-talent dual-core driven, (2)market-finance collaborative empowerment, (3)talent-governance collaborative regulation, and (4)multi-factor complementary synergy amid legal-system evolution. Each configuration ultimately triggers breakthroughs in AI〖JP〗 innovation capacity by stimulating corporate R&D enthusiasm. By uncovering the configurational effects and transmission mechanisms via a complex mediation model, this study not only deepens the understanding of how the business environment affects enterprise AI innovation, but also provides local governments with differentiated road-maps for optimizing the business environment and precisely energizing firms’ AI-innovation vitality.