<p>This paper depicted the urban digital innovation network and empirically examined the impact of network embedding on urban economic development by patent cooperation data in the digital economy from 2012 to 2022. Results finds that Embedding in the digital innovation network significantly promoted urban economic development and mainly operates through enhancing cities’ key digital technology innovation capacity. Besides, knowledge breadth plays a positive moderating role on urban economic development and key digital technology innovation. The “five major urban agglomerations,” regions with strong intellectual property protection, cities on the southeast side of the “Hu Huanyong Line,” and industrial cities benefit more. From a network perspective, this study underscored the importance of digital innovation networks for economic development, providing both theoretical and empirical evidence for cities to actively integrate into digital innovation networks and overcome geographical and administrative barriers between them.</p>