On January 12, 2026, the Hong Kong stock market witnessed a collective surge in the AI application sector. Amid this market rally, QINIU (02567) disclosed a key metric: its MaaS-related user base has recently exceeded 180,000. This figure is not merely a milestone for a single company; it serves as a pivotal signal of the global tech industry's transition from the "model training era" to the "inference dividend era." This analysis will delve into the commercial logic behind the AI application explosion, incorporating key variables such as the imminent release of DeepSeek V4 in early 2026 and the reverse export of Chinese AI applications.
This week's surge in Hong Kong's AI stocks is not coincidental; its underlying logic is supported by two core expectations: an efficiency revolution and the vanguard role of AI applications. The impending release of DeepSeek V4 is reshaping developers' perceptions of inference costs. During 2024-2025, market anxiety centered on "expensive computing power"; by 2026, architectural optimizations exemplified by DeepSeek have drastically reduced the cost per token. As the barrier to accessing high-quality models lowers, enterprise application scenarios that were previously观望 are being activated instantaneously.
A landmark reality is that Chinese AI applications have begun to lead their American counterparts in specific niche sectors. Taking the healthcare field as an example, Ant Group's health assistant "A Fu" has surpassed the subsequent health assistant features of ChatGPT in user experience, thanks to its deep vertical industry data and integrated payment channels. This phenomenon of "applications leading models" benefits from China's mature mobile internet ecosystem and its well-developed foundation of industrial digitalization across segments. As Agent AI enters the implementation phase, Chinese companies are realizing application-layer dividends ahead of Silicon Valley.
The fact that QINIU's MaaS users have surpassed 180,000 needs to be re-examined from three dimensions: cloud computing, Agent AI, and edge AI. With AI Agents officially achieving "operating system-level" integration in 2026, completing a single task is no longer a simple Q&A but a series of inference loops. One user request leads to N Agents decomposing tasks, which in turn generates M sub-model calls. This "multiplicative" surge in inference demand positions MaaS providers like QINIU, which offer underlying cloud computing support and model distribution, as the crucial estuaries for this data flow.
By integrating various open-source and proprietary models (such as DeepSeek, MiniMax, etc.), QINIU delivers value-added services through its MaaS platform. The explosion in MaaS user numbers signifies a transformation in QINIU's revenue structure from "bandwidth + storage" towards "high-value-added inference API calls." A user base of 180,000 indicates exceptionally high customer stickiness and significant scale effects. The collective surge on January 12, 2026, is not a fleeting event but rather the capital market pricing in the logic of "inference-driven growth."
The milestone of QINIU (02567) surpassing 180,000 MaaS users reveals that the decisive factor in the AI application race is no longer "whose model is smarter," but rather "who can enable models to be invoked in real-world scenarios most smoothly, stably, and cost-effectively."