Promoting innovation in state-owned enterprises is important in building an innovative country. Taking A-share local state-owned listed companies from 2007 to 2022 as samples and taking the establishment of departments for IT application in national audit offices as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper empirically tests the impact of national audit informatization construction on the innovation level of state-owned enterprises. It is found that audit informatization construction can significantly promote innovation in state-owned enterprises, and the mechanisms underlying this promoting effect are the alleviation of agency problems and the improvement of risk-taking capacity. The above effects are more prominent in enterprises with political connections, low internal control quality, high-tech industries, high industry competition degree and high marketization degree. While promoting the innovation level of stateowned enterprises, national audit informatization construction can further improve the total factor productivity of enterprises. The findings of this paper are conducive to in-depth understanding of China’s national audit informatization process and its consequences, and provide new evidence for the research on the influencing factors of innovation in stateowned enterprises.