Under the new situation, the state vigorously supports physical education, and the cooperation between industry, academia, and research is increasingly showing an important role in physical education and students’ careers. In this paper, under the background of artificial intelligence, combined with the “government, industry, academia, research and utilization” cultivation mode, we constructed an industry-academia-research cooperative education model of physical education based on a cloud platform. Based on the edge structure model, a mediation effect test model was designed to verify the interlocking mediating roles of employability and self-efficacy in the relationship between cooperative education and physical education students’ career aspirations. Correlation analysis showed that there was a significant correlation (0.816) between physical education students’ acceptance of industry-academia-research cooperative education and career aspirations, and the correlation between cooperative education and employability and self-efficacy was strong. The mediation effect test found that both employability and self-efficacy had a significant mediating effect between cooperative education and career aspirations (P<0.05), and there was a chain mediating effect between the two. The application of the industry-university-research cooperative education model in this paper can promote the formation of good career aspirations among physical education students and provide a new direction for their future employment.