With the in-depth advancement of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, the digital economy has become a new driver for global economic growth. Enabling the development of new quality productive forces through foreign investment and cooperation in the digital economy is an important issue for China to achieve high-quality development. Based on the theoretical connotation and practical requirements of new quality productive forces, this paper reconstructs the measurement system of firms’ total factor productivity (TFP) using a varying coefficient production function model to evaluate their new quality productive forces scientifically. On this basis, this paper uses panel data from China’s A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2022 and employs a multi-period difference-in-differences (DID) model to empirically investigate the impact of digital-type outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on firms’ new quality productive forces. This paper finds that firms’ digital-type OFDI significantly promotes the development of their new quality productive forces, and this conclusion still holds after dealing with endogeneity problems and conducting robustness tests. Moreover, this effect has no obvious difference in digital-type OFDI under different investment motivations, and is more significant in firms with high digital transformation and those in high-tech industries. Mechanism tests show that firms’ digital-type OFDI enables the development of new quality productive forces by improving innovation capability and optimizing supply chain management. Specifically, innovation capability improvement is reflected in the increase of innovation quantity, enhancement of innovation quality, and breakthroughs in key core technologies; and supply chain management optimization is manifested in improved efficiency and increased resilience of supply chains. Further analysis indicates that digital-type OFDI develops firms’ new quality productive forces mainly through technology and efficiency improvement paths. Additionally, the increase in the depth and breadth of digital-type OFDI significantly promotes the development of firms’ new quality productive forces.