AIDC十字路口：下南洋搞基建 去西北玩绿电｜爱分析访谈

This article outlines the current challenges and future development directions of China's domestic AIDC (Artificial Intelligence Data Center) industry. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. The industry landscape is shifting. Starting from 2025, China's three major telecom operators will enter the market deeply, capturing half of the orders from large internet companies thanks to their cost and subsidy advantages. They directly leverage the mature supply chain cultivated by third-party service providers, forcing traditional third-party players to either exit the market or become subcontractors exposed to secondary settlement risks.

2. Domestic AIDC infrastructure construction faces intense overcompetition with almost no profit margin, pushing the industry to seek new opportunities by expanding into Southeast Asia. Chinese players use a model of shipping prefabricated components overseas; while local construction costs are 3 to 4 times higher than in China, they still deliver double-digit profit margins after accounting for shipping costs.

3. Future industry competition will center on green electricity costs. After the liberalization of direct green electricity access policies, electricity price differentials can directly double net profits. Two fast-growing sectors—AI short dramas and private programming deployment—are driving exponential growth in computing power demand, creating entrepreneurial and growth opportunities across the entire industrial chain.

This article reveals the latest development trends of the AIDC industry and AI application sectors, offering high-value insights for brands with AI-related business布局. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. On consumption and demand trends: Two major sectors, AI short dramas and private programming deployment, are already experiencing explosive growth. AI short dramas can generate highly realistic content without human actors, driving massive demand for computing power and becoming the core growth engine for AI applications. In the programming sector, domestic large enterprise and financial institution clients generally require private deployment to meet compliance requirements, creating rigid demand for local computing power and chip servers. Brands can布局 AI-related products around these two high-growth scenarios.

2. On industry competition: While computing power demand is gradually concentrating at large leading tech firms, large language models, autonomous driving and other emerging sectors still leave substantial gaps in segmented demand that brands can tap into for differentiated opportunities. Brands with AI布局 should prioritize partnering with service providers that hold access to low-cost, stable green electricity to effectively control computing costs and expand profit margins.

This article sorts out the current status of the AIDC industry, clarifying industry opportunities, risks and replicable business models. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Market opportunities: Domestic AIDC infrastructure faces cutthroat competition with thin profit margins, while Southeast Asia offers a new growth window. China's mature prefabricated infrastructure model delivers double-digit profit margins when deployed overseas. After the liberalization of the "one-to-many" direct green electricity access policy, electricity price differentials have become a core source of profit, and布局 green electricity-related businesses can generate excess returns. Segmented tracks including liquid cooling, prefabricated components and new power supplies see strong demand, and are expected to spawn numerous companies with $14 billion market capitalization.

2. Risk warnings: Telecom operators' deep market entry has squeezed the living space of third-party service providers, and becoming a subcontractor carries secondary settlement risks. Profit margins for pure data center leasing are tightly capped by large tech firms, and players without green electricity cost advantages can hardly survive.

3. Replicable business models: Aggressive listed companies use financial leasing leverage to operate 10,000-GPU computing pools, enabling them to launch billions of dollars in projects with limited equity capital, quickly grow revenue and beautify financial statements, which is a model worth learning.

The latest shifts in the AIDC industry bring new business opportunities and transformation insights for related manufacturing factories. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Product demand: AIDC has far higher power density than traditional data centers, creating strong demand for supporting products including prefabricated components, liquid cooling equipment and new power supplies. Meanwhile, AIDC service providers expanding to Southeast Asia need standardized prefabricated data center products. Relevant factories can adjust their capacity布局 to match these new market demands.

2. Business opportunities: The overall AIDC market is large in scale. Annual infrastructure investment alone exceeds 100 billion yuan in China, and when combined with server procurement, the total market size surpasses 1 trillion yuan. This strong, sustained demand can bring long-term stable orders to upstream manufacturing factories.

3. Transformation insights: Faced with intense overcompetition in domestic infrastructure, factories can follow AIDC service providers to expand into Southeast Asia, and capture higher profits by leveraging China's manufacturing cost advantage. Since the long-term industry competition will hinge on green electricity costs, factories can explore partnerships with green electricity operators to reduce their own production energy costs and improve overall market competitiveness.

The AIDC industry landscape is undergoing dramatic shifts, which clarifies development directions for all relevant service providers. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Industry trends: The original business logic of AIDC has been rewritten by telecom operators, and the value of third-party service providers is being continuously squeezed. The endgame of future industry competition will be a battle over green electricity costs; only players with access to the cheapest and most stable green electricity will survive in the long run. The two sectors of AI short dramas and private programming deployment are driving exponential growth in token consumption, continuously expanding the overall industry market size rapidly.

2. Core customer pain points: Large internet companies need low-cost, fast-delivered computing infrastructure, and demand for low-cost green electricity is becoming increasingly urgent.

3. Feasible transformation paths: Third-party service providers without cost advantages can expand to Southeast Asia, and generate stable double-digit profits by leveraging China's mature prefabricated infrastructure model. They can also seize the opportunity brought by the liberalization of direct green electricity access policies,布局 green electricity businesses to boost net profits via electricity price differentials, or focus on segmented tracks such as liquid cooling, prefabricated components and computing-electricity coordination software to achieve growth through technological change.

The latest shifts in the AIDC industry offer multiple insights for platform-based enterprises including computing power platforms and industrial service platforms. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. Core industry demand for platforms: 10,000-GPU computing pools have become a necessity for cutting-edge sectors such as large language models and autonomous driving. The market needs platforms to provide low-cost computing power supply and stable green electricity supporting services, and a large number of small and medium-sized clients also demand flexible computing power leasing services.

2. Actionable strategies for platforms: Platforms can on-board cross-sector players with new energy backgrounds and leading third-party service providers to attract B-end clients by leveraging their green electricity resource advantages. They can open direct connections to green power plants, implement the "one-to-many" direct green electricity access policy to help on-board merchants reduce energy costs and expand profit margins. They can also build an overseas expansion service segment to help domestic service providers connect with Southeast Asian infrastructure projects and tap into incremental overseas markets.

3. Risk mitigation: Platforms need to guard against customer churn risk brought by telecom operators' large-scale order capture, maintain supplier diversity and balance the interests of different market players. They also need to control the capital pressure brought by server equity holding, and avoid financial risks caused by excessive leverage.

This interview reveals the latest development trends of the AIDC industry and proposes multiple new directions worthy of academic and industry research. Key takeaways are as follows:

1. New industry developments: Starting from 2025, telecom operators have entered the market deeply, leveraging their cost and subsidy advantages to directly reuse the mature supply chain cultivated by third-party service providers, completely reshaping the original industry landscape dominated by third-party players. Overcompetition in domestic infrastructure has pushed the AIDC industry to expand into Southeast Asia, forming a new model of standardized prefabricated component export. After the liberalization of direct green electricity access policies, the industry's profit center has shifted from computing power to electricity, forming a new integrated computing-electricity industry logic.

2. New research questions: The transformation paths of squeezed third-party service providers, how large internet companies can avoid being bound by a single supplier, and the sustainability of "downward competition" from cross-sector new energy entrants are all new industry problems with high research value.

3. Policy and business model insights: The liberalization of direct green electricity access has brought new profit space to the industry. Further liberalization of green electricity trading and improvement of green electricity infrastructure will better promote industry development in the future. Currently, a large number of new business models are built around green electricity and capital leverage, which puts forward new requirements for industrial regulation.