CITIC Securities: Recommend focusing on cloud industry chain and computing power leasing-related targets

CITIC Securities points out that with the explosive growth of Agent applications and the multi-modal ecosystem, there is a mismatch between capital expenditures and computing power demand. The global Token usage is about to enter a new round of accelerated growth. Over the next two years, the cloud industry chain is expected to enter a “year of both volume and price rising” (i.e., volume growth and price increases together). In the cloud industry chain, demand drives up the price level, and the cloud industry chain moves into a period where both volume and price rise. In the computing power leasing segment, the supply of high-quality computing power chips is in relatively tight supply, and the leading computing power leasing companies have prominent positioning advantages. Higher leverage increases the certainty of high growth. It is recommended to focus on companies related to the cloud industry chain and computing power leasing.

Full text as follows

Computer｜Computing Power Inflation Sustains; We Favor Cloud and Computing Power Leasing

With the explosive growth of Agent applications and the multi-modal ecosystem, there is a mismatch between capital expenditures and computing power demand. Global Token usage is entering a new round of accelerated growth, and over the next two years the cloud industry chain is expected to enter a “year of both volume and price rising.” In the cloud industry chain, demand drives up the price level, and the cloud industry chain enters a cycle in which both volume and price rise. In the computing power leasing segment, the supply of high-quality computing power chips is tight, leading computing power leasing companies have standout positioning advantages, and higher leverage improves the certainty of high growth. It is recommended to focus on companies related to the cloud industry chain and computing power leasing.

▍Token Demand Is Strong; The Cloud Industry Chain May Enter a “Development Year” in the Next Two Years.

With the explosive growth of Agent applications and the multi-modal ecosystem, global Token usage is entering a new round of accelerated growth. According to OpenRouter data, in the past year the number of Tokens consumed per week increased from 2.1T to 24.5T, and weekly Token consumption has increased by 280% since 2026. Domestic model companies and cloud platforms have cut the quotas and discounts on Coding Plan. Vendors such as Zhipu have shown limited-purchase (rationing) behavior for their Coding Plan products. From the perspective of core producers, according to each company’s announcements, ByteDance (Doubao) in China’s daily average Token consumption in December 2025 reached 6.3 trillion, which is basically in the same order of magnitude as overseas leaders OpenAI (5.2 trillion) and Google (6.5 trillion). Meanwhile, Doubao’s daily average Token consumption in March 2026 exceeded 12 trillion, achieving roughly a doubling in growth within three months. From the supply side, according to company announcements, the combined capital expenditures of the U.S. four major CSPs (Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta) for 2025/26 were $66.97B/$650.0B, while China’s BBAT’s capital expenditures for 2025/26 were only $66.97B/$50.72B. In the past two years, domestic capital expenditures have been seriously insufficient. We believe that the significant mismatch between supply and demand indicates that the next two years will be a “capital expenditure boom year” for the domestic cloud industry chain.

▍ Demand Drives Up the Price Level; The Cloud Industry Chain Enters a “Volume and Price Both Rise” Cycle.

1）Demand side: According to vendors’ financial reports, domestic BBAT (Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, ByteDance) AI-related CapEx totaled $60B in 2025, up 53.8% year over year. The planned CapEx for 2026 totals $1.2M, up only 32.1% year over year. In the future, there is a relatively high possibility that CSP vendors will further increase their planned capital expenditures. In addition, facing massive Token computation demand along with compliance and short-term capital expenditure pressure, major internet CSPs and major model vendors choose to purchase from third-party cloud companies, and the demand spillover effect is significant.

2）Price side: On February 11, QuiKedu released an announcement regarding an adjustment to product and service prices. The main reason was that global supply chain fluctuations continued to intensify, and core hardware procurement and other infrastructure costs showed significant and structural increases. On March 18, according to the Aliyun official website, due to the explosive growth in global AI demand and supply chain price increases, Aliyun’s AI computing power, storage, and other products had the highest price increases of up to 34%. From QuiKedu’s price increase to Aliyun’s price increases, we believe that cloud vendors’ price hikes have shifted from being driven primarily by upstream cost increases in the earlier stage to being driven by current demand-driven inflation. We believe that with Token usage entering a new round of accelerated growth, together with the overall cloud computing price increase trend, the logic of “volume and price both rise” in the industry is being gradually realized, and it also has strong sustainability.

▍ The Supply of High-Quality Computing Power Chips Is Relatively Tight; Leading Computing Power Leasing Companies Have Standout Positioning Advantages.

SemiAnalysis data shows that computing power leasing prices are on an upward trend. As of April 2026, overseas H100 leasing prices have risen by 40% within five months. The current high level of industry optimism in the computing power leasing sector mainly stems from the mismatch between supply and demand in the domestic computing power market. Downstream large model and internet companies’ computing power demand is exploding, while certain domestically produced high-end chips are, to some extent, constrained by bottlenecks in foundry production capacity. As a result, the advantages of leading leasing companies that control high-end computing power chip resources are becoming even more prominent. From the business model perspective, the self-owned computing power cloud platform model that expands the balance sheet via heavy asset growth has standout positioning advantages:

1）Relying on top-tier supply chain channels, it has strong card/board acquisition capability. According to the announcement from XieChuang Data, its wholly owned subsidiary Aojia Software has the qualification certification as an NVIDIACloud Partner (NCP) certified partner.

2）Strong financing capability: currently industry financing interest rates have fallen to relatively low levels; the equity financing (capital allocation) ratio is high, and the leverage effect is significant. According to the HongJing Technology announcement, as of March 2026, the company’s comprehensive credit line额度 is no more than RMB 600 billion.

3）Potential revaluation of residual value when computing power equipment depreciation periods expire. Considering overall track attractiveness and the trend of the industry gradually clearing (exiting) and concentrating toward leading players, we like the growth elasticity of leading computing power leasing companies under the trend of a new round of Token usage growth.

▍ Risk Factors:

Risks that the expansion speed of the Agent ecosystem and the conversion to commercialization may not meet expectations; risks that the technology iteration pace of large models slows down or that open-source ecosystem policy experiences unfavorable changes; risks that domestic AI chip capacity expansion is constrained and that fluctuations in the underlying hardware supply chain occur; risks that the industry competitive landscape worsens.

▍ Investment Strategy:

With the explosive growth of Agent applications and the multi-modal ecosystem, global Token usage is entering a new round of accelerated growth. Over the next two years, the cloud industry chain is expected to enter a “year of both volume and price rising” in development. In the cloud industry chain, demand drives up the price level, and the cloud industry chain enters a cycle where both volume and price rise. In the computing power leasing segment, the supply of high-quality computing power chips is relatively tight, and leading computing power leasing companies have standout positioning advantages. It is recommended to focus on companies related to the cloud industry chain and computing power leasing.

（Source: Caixin Finance）