Digital economy has become a new economic form to create social wealth, and ESG (environmental, social and governance) as an enterprise evaluation standard highly consistent with the concept of sustainable development has also been widely concerned at home and abroad. In order to meet the needs of green high-quality development of enterprises under the new normal, the relevant data of listed companies of China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share intelligent manufacturing equipment enterprises from 2009 to 2021was selected, and the impact and mechanism of digital level on enterprise ESG performance was verified through regression analysis. The empirical results show that the digital level of intelligent manufacturing equipment enterprises can significantly and positively affect the ESG performance of enterprises, and its impact path is to improve the quality of internal control and reduce financing constraints. The digital level of non-state-owned enterprises and non-heavily polluting enterprises has a stronger positive impact on ESG performance. From the perspective of enterprise digitalization, theoretical support is provided for improving the performance of ESG in Chinese enterprises and promoting the development path of ESG in China.