- The three state-owned telecom giants—China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom—are viewing AI tokens as a new growth engine amidst surging demand for AI and computing power.
- AI tokens, the fundamental data units processed by AI models, have become a critical business metric alongside computing capacity and data.
- China Telecom recorded a 95% increase in AI computing revenue in the first half of 2026, helping drive “smart business” revenue up 7.1% to 31.1 billion yuan (approx. $4.34 billion).
- The company has deployed AI token packages for mobile users nationwide and upgraded its Xingchen TokenHub platform to include 142 large language models and over 420 specialized AI applications.
- China Telecom Cloud revenue rose 7.8% to 61.8 billion yuan (approx. $8.62 billion).
- China Unicom achieved 41.9 billion yuan in revenue from computing power services, a 13% increase, while introducing a “token supermarket” and the UniAI platform connecting over 200 large language models with over 500 terabytes of high-quality data.
- Capital expenditure for computing infrastructure at China Unicom increased by over 80% year-on-year, accounting for more than one-third of the company’s total investment.
- China Mobile recorded computing service revenue of 52.9 billion yuan, up 14%, while AI service revenue reached 49.3 billion yuan. Revenue from high-performance computing for AI model training and operation alone surged over 130%.
- China Mobile is pursuing a “token factory” strategy, combining AI models, computing infrastructure, and data centers to provide services to enterprises.
- According to the National Data Bureau of China, the average daily number of AI token calls exceeded 140 trillion in March 2026, a massive jump from about 100 billion just two years ago, reflecting the rapidly expanding scale of AI usage.
📌 Chinese carriers are shifting from traditional telecom infrastructure to commercializing AI via the “token economy” model. Instead of just selling bandwidth or cloud computing, they have begun selling AI processing power, model platforms, and AI tokens to businesses and users. The increase from approximately 100 billion to over 140 trillion daily AI token calls in two years shows that AI is becoming a vital digital infrastructure and opening new revenue streams for China’s telecommunications industry.
