Video | Why Did the Morphological Economy Suddenly Go Viral? What Signals Are Being Sent?

What will the rise in computing power prices drive in the wave of domestic chip substitution?

Currently, a new value system around token invocation, distribution, and settlement is rapidly evolving and becoming an important pathway for the commercialization of the artificial intelligence industry. So why has the token economy suddenly “gone viral”? What signals has it released?

Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics shows: In early 2024, China’s average daily token invocation volume was 100 billion; by the end of 2025, it is expected to soar to 100 trillion; in March of this year, it had already exceeded 140 trillion, growing over a thousand times in two years.

Hu Yanping, Distinguished Professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics: The explosion of intelligent agents, especially last year and this year, particularly in recent months, involves significant token (word element) consumption by agents like “Lobster.” The deployment and use of intelligent agents on the user side have also led to a very noticeable increase in token (word element) consumption.

The surge in token invocation has increased demand for the underlying computing power and directly driven up the prices of related services. In March, Tencent Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, and Baidu Smart Cloud, the three major cloud providers in China, consecutively raised the prices of AI computing power products, with price increases of about 30% within ten days.

Ruan Qingsong, Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Tongji University: From the industry chain perspective, the first beneficiaries of price increases are upstream hardware manufacturers like chip and server producers, while downstream AI application and terminal users will face increased cost pressures, which will be passed on to consumers. This also compels companies to either optimize efficiency or replace with domestic computing power to reduce costs. Therefore, this round of price hikes may accelerate the substitution of domestic computing power and further promote technological innovation across the industry.

Hu Yanping, Distinguished Professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics: The consumption of tokens drives computing power, storage, and domestic computing cards, which in turn promote the entire IC (integrated circuit) industry, leading to breakthroughs in core technologies. Conversely, breakthroughs in our core technologies will empower the development of our entire artificial intelligence industry.

Demand has suddenly exploded, but supply has not kept pace, which is the most direct reason for this round of rising computing power prices. Experts believe that computing power is shifting from a “cost item” for enterprises to a “strategic resource” that determines competitiveness. Price increases are only superficial; the real change is that the industry is beginning to redefine the value of computing power.

Ruan Qingsong, Professor at the School of Economics and Management, Tongji University: To address this supply-demand imbalance, in the short term, rising prices will naturally attract more companies to increase supply; in the long term, we need to expand the domestic computing card ecosystem and improve model efficiency to do the most work with the least tokens. Only when supply outpaces demand can computing power truly transition from a “scarce commodity” to an infrastructure as accessible as water and electricity.