【Market Trend Report】Zhipu API's "Simultaneous Growth in Quantity and Price" Validates High Prosperity Domestic Computing Power Industry Expected to Enter a New Stage

China’s A-share market welcomed a strong start for April today. By the close, the Shanghai Composite Index rose 1.46%, the Shenzhen Component Index rose 1.70%, and the ChiNext Index rose 1.96%. The combined trading value of the three exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen exceeded 2 trillion yuan, representing a modest increase in turnover from the previous day. Sector performance showed a broad-based uptrend, with medical services, biological products, chemical pharmaceuticals, medical cosmetology, games, components, hotels and catering, medical devices, semiconductors, glass fiber, and airports and airlines leading on gains. On the stock level, the number of advancing stocks was close to 4,500, with more than 60 stocks hitting their daily price limits.

At the evening of the 31st, Zhipu released its first annual report after going public. Its 2025 performance came in above expectations. The Zhipu MaaS API platform achieved an ARR of 1.7 billion yuan (about $250 million), up 60x year over year. At the same time, the MaaS API platform’s gross margin increased nearly 5x year over year to 18.9%, with a substantial improvement in profitability. In 2025, the company recorded total revenue of 724 million yuan (RMB, same below), up 131.9% year over year; adjusted net loss during the year was 3.18 billion yuan, versus 2.46 billion yuan in 2024; full-year consolidated gross margin was 41%, far above industry benchmarks.

Notably, in Q1 2026, the API call pricing for Zhipu increased by 83%. Even so, the market still showed a situation of supply not meeting demand, with call volume up 400%. The annual report released by Zhipu highlights strong user activity and willingness to pay, showing that its business model has initially gained market recognition, and also underscoring the market competitiveness of domestic large models and the high-trajectory optimism of the entire domestic compute-power supply chain. As a result, MINIMAX-W surged more than 17% intraday, returning above 1,000 Hong Kong dollars. Zhipu once jumped more than 35%, reaching 938 Hong Kong dollars and setting a new all-time high, with its market cap briefly surpassing 400 billion Hong Kong dollars.

Guotou Securities said that China’s domestic compute-power industry has entered a new stage. Driven by both external pressure and internal demand, the domestic compute-power industry has moved from early-stage breakthroughs at individual points to a new stage characterized by an “independent technology system, full-stack ecosystem capabilities, and commercial closed-loop verification.” Jinguo Securities noted that the entire domestic compute-power industry chain is accelerating in terms of business cycle momentum, and is expected to see both volume and price rise together. Under the squeeze from strong logic on both the supply and demand sides, it is expected that in 2026 the compute-power industry chain will enter a “full-chain inflation” cycle.

Guotou Securities: China’s domestic compute-power industry enters a new stage

China’s domestic compute-power industry enters a new stage. Under the dual drivers of external pressure and internal demand, the domestic compute-power industry has moved from early single-point breakthroughs to a new stage featuring “an independent technology system, full-stack ecosystem capabilities, and commercial closed-loop verification.” Looking ahead to 2026, domestic compute-power infrastructure is expected to achieve large-scale deployment and value realization in key industries such as government affairs, finance, internet, and intelligent manufacturing, bringing a strategic window of opportunity from technological self-reliance to industrial leadership.

Jinguo Securities: Momentum accelerates across the full domestic compute-power industry chain

Momentum accelerates across the full domestic compute-power industry chain, with expectations of a rise in both volume and price. Under the squeeze from strong logic on both the supply and demand sides, it is expected that in 2026 the compute-power industry chain will enter a “full-chain inflation” cycle, and industry business momentum will fully spill over from core chips to segments including AIDC, cloud and compute-power services, supporting power equipment, and servers.

Postal Savings Securities: Bottom-layer support systems such as compute power, networks, and data scheduling will fully benefit

Token call volume grows at an exponential rate, indicating that data factors achieve a closed loop from supply to value through a value-quotable model. Competition among large models is shifting from capability comparisons to usage comparisons. And AIInfra, as the core link supporting the expansion of call scale, means that bottom-layer support systems such as compute power, networks, and data scheduling must expand synchronously, or even ahead of schedule, which will allow them to fully benefit from the continuous rise in Token demand.

Bohai Securities: The compute-power industry chain has relatively clear investment opportunities

In 2026, the artificial intelligence industry is expected to officially enter the first year of agent development. At present, AI application-side offerings are continuing to receive multiple catalysts, and a commercial inflection point for the industry may arrive earlier. Under the dual drivers of faster model iteration and increased application promotion by internet giants, the compute-power industry chain has relatively clear investment opportunities.

Open-source Securities: Surging AI applications drive compute-power demand

Surging AI applications drive compute-power demand, as a wave of rental price increases sweeps across the entire market. According to industry monitoring, at the start of 2026, a spike in AI compute-power demand is driving the compute-power leasing market into a price-hike cycle. As of the end of February, rentals for high-end GPUs such as NVIDIA H200 and H100 rose 15%-30% quarter over quarter. For the H200, hourly rent reached 7.5-8.0 yuan per card-hour, with monthly rent of 60,000-66,000 yuan, a gain of 25%-30%; for the H100, monthly rent rose to 55,000-60,000 yuan, a gain of 15%-20%. Delivery cycles extended to 2027 Q2 (H200) and 2027 Q1 (H100). Top vendors including Ukel Technology and Senhua Yiteng have already announced across-the-board price increases of 20%-30% in March. With the spread of AI applications and the OpenClaw framework sparking inference demand, combined with constraints on NVIDIA’s production capacity, rising hardware costs, and gaps in domestic substitution, the market is entering a “seller’s market.” We believe that in the short term, price increases may persist; it is essential to pay attention to investment opportunities in AI cloud IAAS.

West China Securities: Domestic compute power is the right time

Domestic compute power is the right time. The institution believes that with domestic large models improving and catching up to overseas large models in recent times, their high cost-performance advantages are expected to fill the current demand gap, allowing them to ride the trend to enable Token export overseas and further drive demand related to domestic compute power.

(This article does not constitute any investment advice. Investors act on it at their own risk, and bear all consequences. The market has risks; investing requires caution.)

(Source: East Money Research Center)