In the context of the rapid development of artificial intelligence, industrial robots, as an important manifestation of artificial intelligence technology application, provide enterprises with a “creative destruction” environment, and play a positive role in energy utilization and environmental governance. Therefore, academics have focused a lot of attention on the question of whether industrial robot application can successfully improve corporate green innovation (CGI), thus achieving green transformation, and upgrading the manufacturing industry. This paper builds a “Bartik instrument variable” to calculate the micro-enterprise robot penetration rate from 2007 to 2019, looks at the effect of industrial robot application on CGI using data from manufacturing listed companies, and discusses the mechanism, heterogeneity, and robustness of this effect. The research finds that industrial robot application significantly improve CGI, indicating that they can promote corporate green technology transformation. This effect not only enhances the scale of CGI but also strengthens the quality of CGI. In addition, the above conclusion still holds after a series of endogeneity and robustness tests. Mechanism research shows that industrial robot application contribute to CGI by improving production efficiency, human capital, and environmental governance levels. It has a good complementary optimization effect on CGI. Furthermore, heterogeneity research shows that industrial robot application has a more significant role in enhancing green innovation for enterprises that are labor-intensive, more intense market competitive, more serious environmental pollution, and have lower level of digital economy development. The research conclusion verifies the effect of artificial intelligence technology and explores its mechanism, which provides empirical references for improving corporate environmental performance and green transformation.