With the rapid growth of the AI industry fueling a surge in compute demand, the IDC and compute leasing sectors have seen a wave of new cross-sector players. Among them, ENVISION GREEN (01783) stands out as one of the most efficient and fastest to implement its plans. Since announcing its intention to acquire Shanghai Youfu Cloud Computing Co., Ltd. on June 29 for a base consideration of HK$2.2 billion, ENVISION GREEN achieved a closed-loop entry into the cross-sector compute track in less than one and a half months. On July 31, ENVISION GREEN disclosed that Youfu Cloud had signed a service contract worth at least RMB 2.4 billion over five years, fulfilling the required performance target for the acquisition and securing long-term cash flow. On August 6, it announced a RMB 1.2884 billion purchase of high-performance servers. On August 11, it revealed plans to raise USD 140 million through a combination of a top-up placing and the issuance of convertible bonds by subsidiaries, to support the Youfu Cloud acquisition and server purchase. From "buying assets" to "locking in orders," "filling compute capacity," and "raising funds," ENVISION GREEN completed the entire chain deployment in just 42 days—a process that typically takes cross-sector compute players 6-8 months. This underscores the strong execution and resource integration capabilities of this cycle-tested cross-sector player, who has systematically laid out its compute infrastructure.
Notably, MINIMAX-W (00100), known as the "first Hong Kong-listed large model stock," participated in this fundraising. This marks the first benchmark case of a direct investment in a Hong Kong compute infrastructure company, reflecting MINIMAX-W's strong confidence in ENVISION GREEN's future in the compute sector. As its compute layout deepens, ENVISION GREEN aims to achieve a full life-cycle closed loop based on AIDC, spanning from EPC engineering and compute leasing to tokens, clean energy, and retired battery recycling. As a rare Hong Kong-listed sample integrating "electricity, computing, and carbon," ENVISION GREEN is deeply meshing its existing green energy and reverse supply chain capabilities with compute infrastructure, creating an innovative paradigm for full-chain AI compute infrastructure. This could reshape the valuation benchmark for Hong Kong-listed AI compute infrastructure. If the share price corrects in the short term due to the placement, it could present a good opportunity for long-term investors to capture excess returns.
From Compute Leasing to Ecosystem Ties: MiniMax Leverages ENVISION GREEN to Unlock the Full "Chip Source, Compliance, and Energy Efficiency" Chain
If the July 31 disclosure that Youfu Cloud had signed a five-year contract with a major tech firm, fulfilling a performance target of no less than RMB 2.4 billion in EBITDA, gave the market a first glimpse of ENVISION GREEN's "hard power" in cross-sector compute, then MINIMAX-W's participation in the placement is like dropping a "nuclear bomb" in the deep waters of capital. This is not just a strategic industrial investment but a top-tier endorsement from a global leading large model firm of Youfu Cloud's compute delivery capabilities, instantly shattering any remaining market doubts about ENVISION GREEN's compute transformation. While several listed companies are known to provide compute services to MINIMAX-W, the firm had previously only subscribed for a private placement in Lanyun Technology (871169.BJ) on the NEEQ. Therefore, its subscription in ENVISION GREEN represents its first direct investment in a Hong Kong compute infrastructure company, underscoring its "gold content."
The market needs to delve deeper into why ENVISION GREEN won MINIMAX-W's favor. What sets ENVISION GREEN apart from other compute service providers? For a top-tier firm like MINIMAX-W, with annual revenue of USD 300 million and serving 300 million global users and millions of enterprise developers, computing has shifted from a cost item to a core product experience carrier. The daily trillion-level token calls for inference and the high-load operation of ten-thousand-card clusters mean any underlying compute fluctuations directly trigger commercial default risks. However, supply of high-end AI accelerators and high-bandwidth memory is in an extremely tight balance. Production capacity for next-generation chips and HBM is locked by global hyperscale cloud service providers through 2027. Second-tier players, without equity-linked long-term contracts, can hardly secure stable quotas, as evidenced by the non-renewal of Hongbo Co., Ltd.'s (002229.SZ) compute contract. Coupled with regulatory pressures from GDPR and CCPA, given MINIMAX-W's over 70% overseas revenue, plus the thorough review of compute supply chain qualifications required for its STAR Market IPO, the firm's selection criteria for suppliers have effectively been raised to "carrier-grade." This means suppliers must simultaneously possess: Tier-1 partnership status and priority supply channels with leading chip manufacturers, qualified IDC operating licenses in core areas of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, low-PUE green power support, and a robust data cross-border compliance system.
ENVISION GREEN, through its acquisition of Youfu Cloud, precisely fits this rare intersection. For the "chip source" factor, Youfu Cloud is among the first batch of firms in China to hold the NCP qualification. This qualification is globally limited to only a few dozen entities, with only a handful in China, including subsidiaries of Xiechuang Data and Litong Electronics. Holding this "golden ticket" means Youfu Cloud can secure priority quotas for high-end GPUs and factory-direct pricing, with delivery cycles and quota volumes significantly better than ordinary partners. This forms the company's strongest moat in the GPU shortage cycle: dual assurance of chip source stability and compliance traceability. For the "implementation" factor, it's crucial to understand ENVISION GREEN's unique asset control logic. The over 300,000 square meters of compliant data centers, along with B11-class IDC operating licenses, Level 3 information security protection, and trusted cloud certifications, are legally owned by Youfu Cloud's registered shareholder, Shanghai Youfu Network. ENVISION GREEN uses a VIE structure to gain control rights and consolidate the economic benefits of these core assets into its financial statements. This separation structure—where operational qualifications are in the acquisition entity, heavy assets and licenses are within the system, and ENVISION GREEN holds control through agreements—perfectly aligns with MINIMAX-W's stringent requirements for data localization and cross-border compliance paths, and can easily handle the thorough review of compute partner qualifications for the STAR Market IPO. Given the extremely high barrier of combining core locations in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen with full licenses, the number of domestic IDC service providers meeting these "carrier-grade" standards is very limited, forming a core barrier for ENVISION GREEN's compute transformation.
Finally, for the "energy efficiency" factor, ENVISION GREEN's core business is already power battery recycling, energy storage system integration, and green power operations. CEO Zhan Zhihao has clearly stated plans to invest RMB 20-30 billion in capital expenditure over the next 1-2 years to build a comprehensive AIDC service chain. The two biggest pain points for ten-thousand-card clusters of next-generation accelerators are electricity costs and heat dissipation. With the surge in single-chip power consumption, the physical limits of air cooling have been broken, and liquid cooling with PUE below 1.12 is necessary for economic viability and delivery stability. Given peak-valley electricity pricing, energy storage for peak shaving and green power direct supply can significantly reduce OPEx. By using its own energy storage and green power capabilities to create an energy efficiency closed loop for Youfu Cloud's data centers, ENVISION GREEN integrates "chip source, data center, and energy efficiency" within the same entity. It transforms from a one-dimensional "card leaser" into an integrated compute asset provider offering original factory quotas, compliant implementation, and low-PUE operations. This is the fundamental logic behind why MINIMAX-W broke its usual pattern to directly participate in the secondary market placement, shifting its role from a compute leasing client to an ecosystem partner. Compared to other suppliers offering only bare compute, ENVISION GREEN precisely meets all of MINIMAX-W's stringent requirements for a compute foundation. This is not just a simple strategic investment but a critical move by MINIMAX-W to secure its survival lifeline for the coming years in the compute battlefield.
Client Acquisition Trajectory Set to Accelerate, Long-Term Valuation Potential Could Reach RMB 150 Billion
From the disclosure in late July that Youfu Cloud secured a five-year contract with a major tech firm, to the August 11 announcement of MINIMAX-W as a potential strategic participant in the placement, ENVISION GREEN has locked in two major benchmark clients in just 12 days, significantly exceeding expectations for client acquisition. This is direct evidence of the market's validation of its rare "chip source, compliance, and energy efficiency" full-chain solution, and it reflects the inevitable industry trend of top-tier firms shifting from "leasing" to "ecosystem binding" during the high-end compute shortage. With the benchmark effect taking hold, the slope of ENVISION GREEN's future compute client expansion is likely to steepen continuously. This logic is supported by an extremely sharp supply-demand imbalance. According to estimates by Huafu Securities, for mainstream scenarios like text-to-image and chatbots, a single major internet company faces a GPU shortage of 400,000 to 500,000 cards. The entire industry's inference demand is about 6-7 million cards, while actual supply is only around 4 million, creating a massive structural gap of nearly 3 million cards. This context has directly fueled the explosion of the compute leasing track, with companies like Litong Electronics and Xiechuang Data riding this wave to achieve leapfrog growth.
More critically, the shift in the competitive dimension of large models has placed new demands on compute service providers, making those with full-chain capabilities, like ENVISION GREEN, more attractive. Since 2026, the domestic large model competition has formally moved from "technological breakthrough" to the "experience and cost" phase. As the performance gap between leading players narrows to 1-2 percentage points in mainstream benchmarks, the premium from performance differences has been sharply compressed, while API call prices show huge divergences of tenfold or even a hundredfold. This scissors gap indicates a fundamental restructuring of the industry's competitive logic: simply competing on model intelligence is no longer a sufficient moat, and the stability of Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and total compute costs are becoming core barriers for commercial deployment. In this context, only "three-in-one" service providers with stable chip sources, compliant data centers, and extreme energy efficiency can meet the next-stage competitive needs of leading model companies. For ENVISION GREEN, it is highly probable that the number of future compute clients will continue to increase rapidly under these industry trends.
However, what investors should pay more attention to is the potential for ENVISION GREEN's compute business performance to explode more dramatically than that of conventional compute service providers. This is because ENVISION GREEN has achieved a full life-cycle closed loop based on AIDC, covering EPC engineering, compute leasing, tokens, clean energy, and retired battery recycling. The advantage of this closed loop lies in its ability to retain the maximum value of the entire chain within ENVISION GREEN's own system, leveraging strong resource integration and business synergies. This is the biggest difference between ENVISION GREEN and other compute service providers. Conventional compute leasers only capture the "compute price difference" in the middle of the chain. In contrast, ENVISION GREEN captures four overlapping layers: EPC engineering gross profit, compute rental income, energy arbitrage returns, and residual value from recycling. As the number of clients increases, the scale of data centers grows, which in turn scales up EPC engineering volume, green power procurement, and retired battery processing quantity. This scale effect pushes down unit costs, making compute pricing more competitive, leading to more orders, and creating a positive feedback loop. This full life-cycle business model is innovative within the industry, and how to value it is a key question for the market. Xiechuang Data (300857) is the closest comparable benchmark for ENVISION GREEN. Both hold NCP Tier-1 partnership qualifications and focus on high-end GPU compute leasing. The market currently values Xiechuang Data at a 2026 dynamic P/E ratio of about 47x, with a total market cap of around RMB 120 billion. Considering that ENVISION GREEN's compute business is based on a full life-cycle closed loop layout, which offers a significant "energy efficiency closed loop" premium compared to Xiechuang's single compute leasing model, a 50x P/E ratio could be considered a relatively reasonable valuation benchmark once its compute business is consolidated and achieves scale.
Looking at the long-term perspective, market speculation suggests that Youfu Cloud's long-term development plan targets 10 standard deployment units (5,000 cards per unit), corresponding to 50,000 Hopper-class GPUs and about 100,000 P of FP16 compute power. If Youfu Cloud's compute capacity reaches full utilization at 100,000 P, its annualized net profit could touch the RMB 3 billion level. Based on a 50x P/E ratio, the long-term market cap that the compute business could bring to ENVISION GREEN could reach the RMB 150 billion level. Currently, ENVISION GREEN has a market cap of only HK$13.9 billion. Even after accounting for the acquisition consideration and dilution from the placement, there is a high margin of safety. Although the share price has recently fallen due to the placement, this might present an opportunity with limited downside and significant upside potential for excess returns. The market expects that with the gradual progress of the acquisition, the phased delivery of Youfu Cloud's high-end compute products, and the release of strategic binding effects from top-tier clients like MINIMAX-W, ENVISION GREEN's short-term share price could potentially move towards HK$50 billion. The current price level may merely be building market consensus and energy for a subsequent value revaluation.
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