Google CEO Sundar Pichai warned that customers are already seeking compute capacity for 2027, and that it would be 'extremely difficult' for Google to meet such demand. Institutions estimate that the annual market size of compute leasing could surpass 260 billion yuan.
In an interview on the Big Technology podcast released on October 20 local time, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that if customers want compute capacity for 2027 right now, it would be 'extremely difficult' for Google to meet that demand, and companies across the industry all wish they had planned for double the compute scale. He also admitted that Google even briefly rented external compute last year to meet the needs of some customers, and that the cloud business is giving up some short-term revenue at any given point to secure compute investment for frontier AI research and development.
The overseas compute shortage is not an isolated case. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy previously said that the company's compute resources being in short supply will continue through 2027, and orders for even 2028 have already piled up significantly. Financial report data shows that the combined capital expenditure guidance for the four major North American cloud providers in 2026 is approximately 720 billion to 745 billion US dollars, with Google's full-year capital expenditure raised to 195 billion to 205 billion US dollars, Amazon at about 220 billion US dollars, and Meta at about 130 billion to 145 billion US dollars.
Domestic compute supply is also accelerating its expansion. Information released at the 2026 China Computing Conference shows that as of June 2026, the number of standard racks in use nationwide reached 15.56 million, the scale of intelligent compute in use reached 2,185 EFLOPS (FP16), a year-on-year increase of 177%, and storage capacity exceeded 2,000 EB. The conference also held the launch ceremony for the national integrated compute monitoring platform of the China Computing Platform, and the development pattern of 'one network, one chessboard, one integrated system' for China's compute has basically taken shape.
The gap between compute supply and demand continues to widen. Compute leasing refers to service providers renting out server compute resources equipped with high-performance chips such as GPUs to enterprises or institutions with AI training and inference needs through cloud-based, pay-as-you-go, and flexible leasing models. It is a key bridge connecting upstream compute hardware and downstream AI applications. Currently, the explosive growth of AI inference demand combined with limited supply of high-end chips has continued to widen the domestic compute supply-demand gap, and the central price level of compute leasing has continued to rise. In the first quarter of 2026, the domestic compute leasing market reached 68 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 62%, and is expected to exceed 260 billion yuan for the full year. Kaiyuan Securities pointed out that the one-year lease contract price for H100 GPUs has risen from 1.70 US dollars per hour in October 2025 to 2.35 US dollars per hour in March 2026, a cumulative increase of nearly 40%, while the verbally quoted spot price for top-spec domestic B300 has reached 14.5 million yuan, as high-quality compute enters a scramble-for-goods mode.
'The shortage of compute supply in the second half of the year is expected to remain unresolved, and compute leasing prices will stay high,' Shanxi Securities believes. AI Agents are rapidly penetrating and driving explosive growth in Token usage, while supply constraints on Nvidia's high-end GPUs have not eased and domestic compute chips still need time to scale up. The supply-demand gap is expected to widen further, and leasing prices for high-end cards such as H200 and B300 will remain elevated. Against the backdrop of continuously expanding demand, Founder Securities further pointed out that as of the end of June 2026, China's intelligent compute scale reached 2,185 EFLOPS, a year-on-year increase of 177%, and estimated that the domestic compute leasing market size could approach one trillion yuan by 2030. This judgment echoes the view of Northeast Securities, which believes that with the continued iteration of domestic compute software and hardware, the overall balance of domestic compute chip supply and demand is expected to be achieved in 2028, and Ascend is expected to capture 50% of the domestic chip market share in 2026.
Several concept stocks are expected to double their performance this year. East Money concept sector data shows that currently 249 A-share stocks are involved in the compute concept, with a combined total market value of about 10.38 trillion yuan. China Mobile ranks first with a size of 2,095.606 billion yuan, Industrial富联 ranks second with 986.251 billion yuan, and Zhongji Innolight follows closely with 761.837 billion yuan, while China Telecom, Cambricon, Hygon Information, and Eoptolink all have market values exceeding 400 billion yuan. Over the past month, the compute concept sector as a whole has shown weak performance, with 36 stocks rising and 213 falling. Nanwei Software surged 34% to top the gainers, Decai Shares rose 29% to rank second, Haitian Ruisheng gained 27%, and Bohui Shares, Huace Film & TV, and Huichen Shares all rose more than 19%. On the decline side, Eoptolink, Weice Technology, and Xinjie Energy and others fell more than 31%. From a capital perspective, East Money Choice data shows that over the past month, a total of 30 compute concept stocks received contrarian bets from margin traders, among which Xingyun Technology received 84 million yuan in leveraged fund additions, while Leiao Planning and Shensangda A each attracted 59 million yuan and 51 million yuan respectively, and Dongyangguang, Runjian Shares, and Art each received more than 34 million yuan in net margin buying. In terms of future growth potential, according to consensus institutional forecasts, a total of 55 compute concept stocks are expected to achieve doubled performance this year. Among them, institutions expect Yushun Electronics' net profit to surge 31.7 times year-on-year, Kaler Shares' net profit to grow more than 28.7 times, and Hongjing Technology and Zhongke Xingtu are both forecast to see net profit increases of more than 14 times, while Jiechuang Intelligent and Runjian Shares are also expected to double their performance. Zhongji Innolight achieved operating revenue of 41.778 billion yuan and net profit attributable to shareholders of 13.651 billion yuan in the first half of the year, leading the industry in shipping 1.6T DR8 OSFP224 products, with 1.6T
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