Computing Power Stocks Surge! Brokers Mine Token "Word Element Economy" Investment Thesis

Why is AI and computing power collaboration a key investment focus in the Token economy?

Reporter Liu Xiafei, 21st Century Business Herald

On March 25th, all three major A-share indices closed higher. The computing power sector experienced a collective surge, with the Wind East-Data West-Computing and IDC (computing power leasing) concept indices rising by 4.98% and 4.25%, respectively. Several stocks such as Tianji Technology, TrueView, 263, Eurotech, and Wavetech hit the daily limit.

News-wise, the token officially received its Chinese name “词元” (word element). During the recent China Development Forum 2026 Annual Meeting, Liu Liehong, Director of the National Data Bureau, used “词元” as the Chinese translation for Token.

According to Liu Liehong, at the beginning of 2024, China’s daily token calls reached 100 billion; by the end of 2025, it soared to 100 trillion; in March this year, it surpassed 140 trillion, representing over a thousand-fold growth in two years.

Liu Liehong stated that “词元” (word element) is not only a value anchor in the intelligent era but also a “settlement unit” connecting technological supply and commercial demand, providing quantifiable possibilities for business model implementation.

The industry also sent strong signals. Just last week, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang proposed the concept of “Token Factory Economics” at GTC, indicating that tokens will become a new commodity in the AI era. Future data centers will serve as factories producing tokens, with performance per watt becoming the core competitive advantage for commercial monetization.

Why is the “词元” (word element) capturing the capital market’s attention? Under the “word element economy” wave, how should investors seize this opportunity? Several brokerages have recently published research reports exploring “word element economy,” with key themes including computing infrastructure, model export, and AI and power collaboration.

From Technical Concept to Market Focus

Why is the “词元” (word element) so popular?

What exactly is the token “word element” that has sparked intense discussion in the capital markets?

A token is the smallest information unit processed by large models. Technically, it segments natural language text into units that AI can understand, facilitating model computation; commercially, it measures the cost of AI computing power, significantly impacting AI service pricing.

This concept, combining technical and economic attributes, has recently been “going viral,” reflecting a profound shift in the business logic of the AI industry.

The most direct demand-side explosion is evident. Recently, the phenomenal popularity of AI agent frameworks like OpenClaw is seen as a direct driver of rapid token demand expansion.

Data from third-party AI model aggregation platform OpenRouter shows that during the week of March 9-15, 2026, OpenClaw contributed 20% of the platform’s token consumption, with weekly consumption equivalent to 60% of the platform’s total token usage in Q4 2025.

Price changes have also quietly begun. Since the start of 2026, the market for computing power leasing has entered a price increase cycle.

By the end of February, high-end GPUs like NVIDIA H200 and H100 saw rental prices rise by 15%-30% month-on-month. Meanwhile, domestically, the expanding demand for tokens has driven collective price hikes among vendors from model layers to cloud services. Major model companies like Zhipu, as well as cloud providers such as Alibaba Cloud and Baidu Cloud, have recently announced price increases for AI computing products.

Zhou Cheng, a computer industry analyst at Xiangcai Securities, summarized this trend as “volume and price rising together,” further noting that the nonlinear growth in token demand during the AI Agent era has disrupted the supply-demand balance of computing power, directly affecting the procurement costs of upstream hardware like GPUs, enterprise storage, and CPUs. Under the dual pressures of rigid downstream demand and upstream hardware cost inflation, the pricing logic in the cloud computing industry is shifting toward premium monetization.

Regarding whether this price hike trend can continue, many institutions believe that the supporting factors are unlikely to reverse in the short term.

CITIC Securities’ computer team led by Ying Ying predicts that with higher-frequency inference requests and longer context requirements brought by OpenClaw, cloud resource utilization will further increase, and demand surges along with upstream cost transmission are expected to continue pushing cloud service prices upward.

Jiang Ying, Chief Analyst of Communications at Open Source Securities, also suggests that the proliferation of AI applications and the OpenClaw framework could trigger a surge in inference demand. Coupled with NVIDIA’s limited capacity, rising hardware costs, and the gap in domestic independence, the market is entering a “seller’s market,” and the price increase trend may persist.

Looking at the longer term, industry insiders and institutions generally believe that the enthusiasm for the token market is not a short-term pulse but a broader trend driven by AI application proliferation.

At GTC, Jensen Huang proclaimed “Token is king.” He envisions future data centers as factories producing tokens, with performance per watt becoming the core competitive advantage for commercial monetization. Traditional architectures centered on server counts and storage capacity will gradually give way to new architectures focused on token generation rate and energy efficiency.

In terms of business implementation, Huang believes that tokens will become a new commodity, with tiered pricing based on speed and intelligence once mature—ranging from free to ultra-high-speed tiers (around $150 per million tokens), opening broader commercial space for inference scenarios.

Brokerages explore “word element economy” as a main investment theme:

Computing infrastructure, model export, and AI-power collaboration

From an investment perspective, Lu Wei, Chief Analyst of the Computer Industry at Guolian Minsheng Securities, points out that token demand “inflation” is likely to become a core AI investment theme this year, with related opportunities focusing on rapid growth in inference token demand.

How to grasp the “word element economy” investment opportunities amid token demand “inflation”? Several brokerages have recently outlined relevant beneficiary sectors and targets in their research reports.

Specifically, the most directly benefiting sectors from surging token calls are the infrastructure and hardware segments, which currently enjoy high consensus among institutions.

Jiang Ying summarizes the “Token Factory” into three core themes: AIDC (AI Data Centers), computing power leasing, and CDN (Content Delivery Network). She sees “Token = AI chips (domestic computing + leasing) = AIDC.” Additionally, as token demand continues to grow, CDN demand is also expected to increase significantly.

Based on these three main themes, Jiang Ying further highlights five sub-sectors worth attention: AIDC data centers, liquid cooling for AIDC, power supply for AIDC, CDN, and computing/networking for AIDC.

Yen Guicheng’s team at CITIC Securities also states that “short-term fluctuations in the computing power sector do not change the long-term growth logic,” and continues to recommend stocks related to the AI computing industry chain, including GPUs/CPUs, optical modules, optical chips, liquid cooling, and fiber optic cables.

Beyond underlying infrastructure, leading large model vendors as application entities of computing resources are also expected to see new investment opportunities.

Lu Wei notes that large model vendors are shifting toward “selling tokens as fuel + selling results.” When inference becomes a production input, model vendors can convert “scarcity of computing power” into profits and cash flow through tiered pricing and subscription products.

It’s worth noting that under this logic, domestically developed models are showing strong competitiveness, and “token export” has been frequently mentioned in recent brokerage reports.

Shenwan Hongyuan Securities’ computer team led by Huang Zhonghuang estimates that domestic models are highly cost-effective compared to overseas counterparts, with overall costs about 1/6 to 1/10 of foreign models. This cost advantage stems from architecture improvements brought by DeepSeek and especially MLA and sparse architectures, which significantly reduce inference costs.

Lu Wei suggests continuing to monitor high-quality large model vendors. He believes that those capable of maintaining subscription retention and expanding enterprise market share in high-ROI scenarios like programming, agents, and enterprise workflows can convert “token usage” into tangible value—saving labor, time, and rework—thus gaining resilience against open-source and price wars.

He also mentions that “AI firewall” targets are worth attention. As enterprises embed AI into workflows, risks like data leaks and proxy overreach could drive demand for “AI security platforms/governance platforms.”

Additionally, “AI and power collaboration” is seen as a key industry advantage supporting “token export.”

Dongwu Securities’ computer team believes that green power hubs effectively reduce electricity costs, making low-cost electricity a core competitive advantage for token export. The new digital trade model of “electricity not leaving the country, cross-border value of computing power” is becoming a critical barrier for China’s AI to participate in global competition.

The team further points out that four types of targets in the “power and computing collaboration” track hold core value: traditional power transformation companies leveraging energy endowments to build data centers (highest valuation uplift); green power operators providing long-term green power supply for computing clusters; dispatch software service providers enabling real-time load and price matching to improve operations; and power engineering leaders with experience in UHV and source-grid-storage projects, solidifying the physical infrastructure of collaboration. These four together form a “energy—computing” closed loop.