Token, known as 'ciyuan' in Chinese, represents the most fundamental and smallest unit of measurement within the large model industry. In the era of artificial intelligence, every character input by a user and every passage generated by a large model consumes tokens. In the first quarter of this year, China's average daily token usage exceeded 140 trillion, a figure that stood at only 100 billion in 2024, marking growth exceeding a thousandfold over two years. As artificial intelligence transitions from a technological testing ground to a field of large-scale application, how are Guiyang and Gui'an positioning themselves within this new trading paradigm? Let's examine the findings.
Historically, finding a unified unit of measurement for intellectual services was challenging, but the advent of tokens has resolved this issue. AI has thus become quantifiable, priceable, and tradable. As one of the earliest enterprises in Guizhou to develop big data, Data Bao was among the first to sense the pulse of this new wave. At the beginning of this year, the company initiated its strategy to "sell tokens," resulting in a fourfold increase in usage volume within four months. Daily token usage has surpassed the billion-level, business orders have reached hundreds of thousands, and platform registered users have entered the hundreds of thousands.
Tang Hanlin, Chairman of Guizhou Data Bao Network Technology Co., Ltd., stated: "Data is the core foundation for token generation. Different types of data correspond to significantly different token pricing. Our company's core advantage lies in possessing a leading-scale data resource network domestically. While the current market primarily offers generic tokens, leveraging our long-accumulated industry data resource system, we can develop and output high-value vertical industry tokens. These customized tokens, tailored to specific application scenarios, possess higher market value and pricing potential."
AI short dramas represent a primary consumption scenario for tokens, with the generation of each minute of 720p AI video consuming millions of tokens. Recently, Data Bao launched a new toolkit that significantly reduces the content production costs for short dramas.
Qin Hai, AI System Architect for the AI Token Line at Guizhou Data Bao Network Technology Co., Ltd., said: "This toolkit can effectively reduce the waste rate in content creation, offering particularly pronounced advantages in the field of comic drama creation. In traditional comic drama production, ensuring consistency in character appearance and visual style consumes a vast amount of prompt words and token resources. Relying on our mature, high-quality data system, we have optimized and improved the entire comic creation technical process, greatly enhancing the accuracy of prompts and effectively lowering the overall cost of comic drama production."
The explosive growth in token usage imposes higher demands on both computing power and data supply, areas where Guizhou's advantages are clearly evident.
Zhang Xuerong, Party Committee Secretary and Director of the Guiyang Big Data Development Administration, stated: "In the development race of the token economy, Guiyang and Gui'an possess three core advantages. First is computing power advantage. We have currently gathered 27 large and above-scale data centers, with total computing power exceeding 170 EFLOPS, making it one of the regions in China with the most concentrated domestic intelligent computing power layout and the most abundant resource reserves. Second is data advantage. We persistently promote the compliant circulation of public data to empower industrial development, having cumulatively aggregated 4,975 various data resources and provided 372 million data services, continuously unleashing the value of data elements. Third is industrial advantage. By focusing on extending, supplementing, and strengthening the core chains in big data software and hardware, we have cultivated a digital intelligence industrial cluster with a scale exceeding 140 billion yuan, providing solid industrial support capabilities."
Liu Youyuan, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Shanghai Institute of Technology, commented: "The computing power foundation is the core support for the development of the token economy. As a national computing power hub node, Guizhou, relying on its substantial intelligent computing power scale and low-cost green electricity, provides stable, low-cost foundational support for large-scale token production and AI agent inference operations, serving as the core infrastructure for the token economy's practical development. The value of the token economy ultimately needs to be released through diverse application scenarios. Guizhou's rich industrial application scenarios can propel tokens from being a mere unit of computing power measurement into a core value carrier that empowers industrial development. Simultaneously, the high-level attention from local policies and the rapid formation of the industrial ecosystem have positioned Guizhou as one of the first provinces in China to lay out and advance the industrial development of the token economy."
The challenge lies in rapidly transforming the technical advantages of tokens into industrial advantages. Facing the current trend where many enterprises are converting manual processes into automatically executable intelligent agents—where tokens are a key production factor embeddable into various intelligent systems—a business opportunity has been identified. Baishan Cloud has launched a large model aggregation platform, inviting different large model suppliers to 'set up stalls,' standardizing and aggregating dispersed resources. Enterprises can now shop for tokens as needed, akin to browsing a supermarket.
Yang Peng, Government Affairs Director of Guizhou Baishan Cloud Technology Co., Ltd., explained: "After registering on the platform, users can intuitively view the pricing standards for various large models and token services, selecting the most cost-effective service resources based on their own needs. Purchased tokens can be widely applied in various scenarios such as technology R&D, text creation, and video rendering. Currently, the platform has cumulatively attracted over 50,000 registered users, with market recognition continuously rising."
Ru Yingqing, Partner and Vice President of Guizhou Baishan Cloud Technology Co., Ltd., added: "We have deployed over 30,000 servers across more than 200 cities globally, fully capable of adapting to the current explosive growth in token market demand. At this stage, token business growth is exceptionally strong. Our token business revenue reached over one million US dollars last month, with this month's revenue showing a month-on-month increase of 30% to 50%, and the growth trend continues. In terms of business data, overseas token usage peaked at 70 billion calls last month, while domestic token usage peaked at 20 billion calls, indicating a continuously expanding market scale."
If selling electricity in the past earned 'raw material money,' and building data centers to output computing power was akin to 'grinding wheat into flour,' then outputting tokens today is like 'baking the flour into bread'—multiplying the value of a kilowatt-hour of electricity several-fold or even dozens-fold, propelling the energy economy into the high-value-added track of the digital economy. Precisely eyeing this track, since the beginning of this year, from convening special meetings to hosting the Token Economy Development Promotion Conference, and initiating the formulation of a three-year action plan and supporting measures for the token economy, Guiyang and Gui'an have been intensively deploying the development of the token economy.
Zhou Aoying, Professor at East China Normal University and Chair of the CCF Database Technical Committee, stated: "2026 is a pivotal year for the large-scale release of data element value. The token economy is deeply intertwined and inseparable from artificial intelligence technology, data elements, and algorithm applications. Guizhou possesses significant inherent advantages for developing the token economy. Leveraging the token economy to empower digital transformation can effectively boost the high-quality development of local tourism industrialization, new industrialization, agricultural modernization, and new urbanization, comprehensively enhancing production and operational efficiency across all sectors."
As artificial intelligence moves from a technological testing ground to a field of large-scale application, whoever can generate tokens at lower cost and higher efficiency will hold the discourse power in the AI era. For the future, Guiyang and Gui'an have a clear plan: to push computing power scale towards 190 EFLOPS, construct over five high-quality datasets in fields like transportation, minerals, culture & tourism, meteorology, and agriculture, add more than four new large model and algorithm filings, and cumulatively create over 60 typical application scenarios. Guiyang and Gui'an are transforming the digital intelligence assets accumulated over the past decade into new momentum for the development of the token economy.
Zhang Xuerong, Party Committee Secretary and Director of the Guiyang Big Data Development Administration, concluded: "In the next step, we will focus on introducing special support policies to facilitate the high-quality development of the token economy and construct a provincial-level digital intelligence industrial park to high standards. In the data field, we will prioritize building the Guizhou Provincial Artificial Intelligence Data Factory. In the intelligent agent field, we will deepen the construction of the 'Model-Data Workshop' to accelerate the agglomeration development of the token economy industry. We will thoroughly implement the 'AI+' initiative, focusing on government affairs, public services, and commercial applications to create a batch of industry-specific model and intelligent agent application benchmark scenarios. We will actively cultivate new digital formats and business models like AI animation and OPC, vigorously introduce and nurture backbone enterprises and innovative talent teams in the token economy industrial chain, and comprehensively build a complete and mature token economy industrial ecosystem."
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