At present, the development of the intangible cultural heritage industry is stagnant. The work aims to explore a capital operation and development path of the intangible cultural heritage industry in line with China's national conditions and provide feasible solutions for the development of the intangible cultural heritage industry in the new era by transforming intangible cultural heritage resources into cultural capital that can bring economic benefits. Under the guidance of cultural capital theory, by analyzing the relationship between cultural capital theory and intangible cultural heritage, the work explores composition of intangible cultural heritage capital from the perspective of cultural capital, discusses the capital operation of the intangible cultural heritage industry and the challenges faced by it under the market economy, establishes a quality evaluation system of the intangible cultural heritage industry, and conducts a quantitative analysis on various indicators of the intangible cultural heritage industry from the perspective of cultural capital by combining the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). A multi-channel development path centering on three dimensions of cultural and creative design, digital technology and service design is proposed, which provides new vitality for the subsequent development of intangible cultural heritage.