Digital technology innovation is driving industries toward networking, digitalization, and intelligent development, creating favorable conditions for enhancing the network status of industrial chains. This paper empirically investigates the impact of digital technology innovation on the enhancement of industrial chain network status at the city level in China from a complex network perspective. The findings reveal that digital technology innovation significantly promotes the network status of China’s industrial chains, with a stronger effect on the demand side. Mechanism analysis indicates that digital technology innovation improves industrial chain network status through dual pathways: the “leading-goose” effect and the optimization of factor resource allocation. Heterogeneity analysis shows that: in the city dimension, the impact of digital innovation is stronger for ordinary prefecture-level cities; in the industry dimension, the innovation dividend is more substantial for technology-intensive and labor-intensive industries; in the digital technology innovation dimension, utility model patents play a relatively more significant role in enhancing industrial chain network status. The study holds practical value and profound significance for seizing the opportunities presented by the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation and for accelerating the modernization of industrial chains.