For China’s manufacturing enterprises, digital transformation has become a critical strategy for maintaining competitive advantages and achieving sustainable development. Thus, how manufacturing enterprises cultivate “new quality productive forces” (NQPFs) suited to digital transformation becomes paramount.

　　This paper takes A-share listed manufacturing enterprises from 2010 to 2020 as the sample and explores the relationship between the venture capital for NQPFs (NVC) and their digital transformation from an external learning perspective. The results indicate that NVC by manufacturing enterprises significantly promote their digital transformation. This demonstrates that NVC, as a typical external learning strategy, plays a crucial role in digital transformation. On the one hand, manufacturing enterprises can establish equity links with invested enterprises through NVC activities, enabling them to acquire tacit knowledge beyond their organizational boundaries. On the other hand, NVC activities exhibit characteristics of real options, solidifying the foundation for continuous and dynamic exploration of external NQPFs by manufacturing enterprises in the future. Furthermore, the diversity and overlap of manufacturing enterprises’ technological niche, as significant contextual factors, both enhance the positive effect of NVC on digital transformation. In addition, heterogeneity analysis shows that the promotion effect of NVC on digital transformation is more pronounced in private manufacturing enterprises, those located in regions with good business environments, and those in the growth and maturity stages.

　　This paper makes the following contributions: First, it introduces the concept of NVC for the first time, providing new empirical evidence for the literature on how enterprises cultivate NQPFs. Second, it investigates the impact of NVC activities on the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises, uncovering the mechanisms of external learning in this context. Third, it reveals that technological niche is a critical boundary condition affecting the impact of NVC on the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises, further enriching the study on the relationship between enterprise knowledge attributes and inter-organizational learning effectiveness.