The future of the AI computing power industry

Inference Priority: Restructuring Computing Power Demand

In the medium to long term, the AI computing power industry is set to evolve towards prioritizing inference. As AI model training matures, inference computing power is becoming the central focus. Low-latency, edge-side, and high-density infrastructure are becoming key construction priorities.

A core shift at NVIDIA's GTC 2026 conference was the evolution of product form from standalone GPUs to integrated "chip-rack-data center" systems, signaling that the focus of competition in computing power is shifting from the chip level to the data center platform level. The conference explicitly identified inference performance and AI factories as core topics, reflecting the structural shift in AI demand from training-led to inference-driven.

Full-Stack Competition: Rising Barriers for Vendors
Full-stack technology synergy is emerging as a core competitive barrier for vendors. At GTC, NVIDIA unveiled a full-stack AI system covering computing power, inference, and applications, while also bolstering its agent infrastructure, driving AI from model capability towards system capability. This type of full-stack deployment, spanning from chip to application, allows leading vendors to offer more optimized total solutions, further widening the gap with competitors.

Green and Intensive: Synergy Between Computing Power and Electricity
Infrastructure is increasingly evolving towards green and intensive models. With the surging energy consumption of global AI data centers and tightening carbon emission policies, green computing power is becoming an industry imperative.

Tech giants like Google and Microsoft have committed to achieving carbon-neutral operations by 2030. This means they must control energy consumption growth while expanding computing power capacity. Solutions like liquid cooling, renewable energy procurement, and "computing-power-electricity" synergy are being accelerated. In 2026, the U.S. government included "computing infrastructure energy efficiency" in its regulatory framework for the first time, and the European Union is advancing similar legislation, making green computing power a necessity rather than an option.

Geopolitical Landscape: Trend Towards Supply Chain Diversification
Amidst increasing geopolitical uncertainties, the global AI chip supply chain is showing a trend towards diversification. Governments worldwide are treating AI computing power as a strategic resource and are promoting the development of their domestic chip industries.

The European Union has launched a "Chips Act 2.0," planning to invest tens of billions of euros in building domestic advanced process capacity. Japan and South Korea are also increasing support for their domestic chip industries. While this trend will gradually reshape the global AI chip supply landscape, it is unlikely to significantly disrupt the existing oligopolistic structure in the short term.

The global surge in AI computing power prices signifies a shift in the cloud computing industry from "burning cash for market share" towards a value-realization phase of "monetizing computing power." Amidst high industry prosperity and a global price increase trend, AI has evolved from a "novelty application" into a core enterprise infrastructure, with customer demand for stability far outweighing price sensitivity.

From an economic impact perspective, the value of AI is primarily transmitted to the production sector through downstream applications, manifesting as enhanced efficiency and innovation capabilities. While rising computing power costs may suppress some application innovation in the short term, in the long run, healthy industry profitability is a prerequisite for sustained innovation.

It is foreseeable that the high-price cycle for AI computing power will be sustained. Global chip capacity expansion requires years, while demand for AI applications continues to grow rapidly. In this context, computing power will truly become the strategic resource of the digital age—those capable of providing stable, efficient, and scalable computing power services will occupy a core position in the global digital economy competition.