The Zhitong Finance App learned that Guoxin Securities released a research report saying that previously, China Mobile and China Telecom had already carried out separate headquarters collection for AI servers. This purchase was the first time that China Unicom headquarters purchased AI servers. Referring to China Telecom's previous AI server collection offer, the estimated purchase amount reached 4 billion yuan. In terms of capital expenditure, the three major operators are actively promoting investment in computing networks. China Mobile plans to invest 47.5 billion yuan in computing power plans in 2024; China Unicom plans to invest a total of 65 billion yuan in 2024. The investment focus is shifting from a stable network communication business to a high-growth digital intelligence business. Driven by operators' investment in computing power, all aspects related to domestic computing power are expected to benefit.

Incident: On March 23, China Unicom issued the “2024 China Unicom Artificial Intelligence Server Centralized Procurement Project Pre-Qualification Notice”. According to the pre-trial announcement issued by China Unicom, a total of 2503 artificial intelligence servers and 688 RoCE switches, key networking equipment, will be purchased for this China Unicom AI server collection.

Guoxin Securities's views are as follows:

The three major operators are actively deploying computing power. Telecom and Mobile have successively launched AI server collection:

Previously, China Telecom's AI server procurement tender was launched, and a total of 4,175 training servers were purchased. The purchase was divided into 4 packages, namely training air-cooled servers (I series), training liquid-cooled servers (I series), training air-cooled servers (G series), and training liquid-cooled servers (G series). The I series is equipped with 1182 InfiniBand switches. According to the bid quotation of the winning bidder, it is estimated that the corresponding purchase amount for this collection is about 8.4 billion yuan.

In January 2024, China Mobile announced the new intelligent computing center (test network) procurement (standard package 12) project from 2023 to 2024. The procurement content is 1,250 artificial intelligence servers and supporting products. Among them, there are 106 air-cooled AI training servers for specific scenarios; 1,144 liquid-cooled AI training servers for specific scenarios.

China Unicom's first headquarters collected AI servers. On March 23, 2024, China Unicom issued the “2024 China Unicom Artificial Intelligence Server Centralized Procurement Project Pre-Qualification Notice”. According to the pre-trial announcement issued by China Unicom, a total of 2503 artificial intelligence servers and 688 RoCE switches, key networking equipment, will be purchased for this China Unicom AI server collection. This purchase is the first time that China Unicom headquarters has purchased an AI server. Referring to China Telecom's previous AI server collection offer, the estimated purchase amount is 4 billion yuan.

In terms of capital expenditure, operators are actively strengthening network-side investments:

China Mobile plans to invest 47.5 billion yuan in computing power in 2024, an increase of 21.5% over the previous year, accounting for 54.4% of capital expenditure. The company plans to achieve cumulative total (FP32) computing power of 9 EFLOPS (1 EFLOPS increase year over year) and intelligent computing (FP16) computing power of >17 EFLOPS (increase of about 7 EFLOPS year over year) by the end of 2023.

China Unicom plans to invest a total of 65 billion yuan in 2024. The investment focus will shift from a stable network communication business to a high-growth network digital intelligence business.

Investment suggestions: The domestic computing power industry chain is expected to benefit from operators' computing power investment. It is recommended to focus on domestic computing power infrastructure such as ICT equipment such as Shengteng Industrial Chain and ZTE (000063.SZ), Ziguang (000938.SZ), Ruijie Network (301165.SZ), FeilingKSS (301191.SZ), etc.; optical modules such as Guangxun Technology (002281.SZ), etc.; AIDC such as Runze Technology (300442.SZ), etc.; liquid cooling such as Invek (002837.SZ) RYOSHI ENVIRONMENT (301018.SZ) etc.; At the same time, focus on the three major operators that are increasing the layout of computing networks and benefiting from AI development.

Risk warning: AI development falls short of expectations, operators' capital expenditure falls short of expectations, and domestic computing power supply falls short of expectations.