Against the backdrop of high-quality development, fostering and expanding patient capital as well as stimulating enterprises’ innovation vitality has become a crucial issue. Taking A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2023 as the research sample, this paper empirically examines the impact of patient capital on enterprise performance and its underlying mechanism. The results show that patient capital can significantly improve enterprise performance. Mechanism analysis indicates that easing financing constraints and elevating the level of new quality productive forces are two critical paths through which patient capital promotes the improvement of enterprise performance. This paper expands the research scope of the economic consequences of patient capital, reveals the functional channels through which patient capital affects enterprise performance, and provides empirical evidence and policy implications for fostering and expanding patient capital, accelerating the development of new quality productive forces, and promoting the high-quality development of enterprises.