China Galaxy Securities has released a research report stating that inference computing power resources require urgent expansion, and the computing power industry remains in a high-growth cycle. During the Spring Festival period, the domestic communications industry saw comprehensive development. In the first year of the "16th Five-Year Plan" period, 5G-Advanced empowered the Year of the Horse Spring Festival Gala. The three core capabilities of 5G-A (UCBC, RTBC, HCS) were fully activated, supporting ultra-high-definition material backhaul, interactive "on-stage" performances by actors across different venues, and security protection for the low-altitude airspace of sub-venues. Combined with the development of computing power applications during the Spring Festival, as well as pre-holiday announcements from overseas cloud providers regarding their 2026 capital expenditure plans and orders within the optical communication industry chain, the computing power sector continues to experience a high-growth cycle. China's optical communication industry chain actively resumed work and production during the holiday, and the short-term impact of the holiday on order fulfillment is expected to be minimal. The collaboration between Meta and NVIDIA is anticipated to accelerate the adoption of Co-Packaged Optics (CPO).

During the Spring Festival, both technological development and application progressed in the domestic and international communications industries. Key events were primarily concentrated on industrial chains related to new quality productive forces. Domestically, in the inaugural year of the "16th Five-Year Plan," 5G-A empowered the Spring Festival Gala. China Satcom, in partnership with Sichuan Airlines and CCTV News, successfully achieved a real-time live broadcast of the Gala from 10,000 meters high for the first time using Ka-band high-throughput broadband satellite technology. Efforts to reduce costs and increase efficiency in low-earth orbit satellite internet continued. Regarding 6G, Peking University, in collaboration with the Pengcheng Laboratory and other institutions, pioneered the seamless integration between fiber-optic and wireless communication systems internationally, laying the groundwork for scenarios like 6G base stations and wireless data centers. Core Chinese optical communication enterprises operated near full capacity during the holiday, driven by strong demand, and held robust order books.

Internationally, STMicroelectronics announced a collaboration with AWS to launch a new photonic chip targeting AI data centers. This chip is designed to increase the speed of optical transceivers and can reduce power consumption by up to 60%. Meta and NVIDIA signed a multi-year cooperation agreement to enable large-scale deployment of NVIDIA CPUs and millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs, and to integrate NVIDIA Spectrum-X Ethernet switches into the Facebook Open Switch System platform. Data center construction in the United States continued to advance, with OpenAI and SoftBank jointly investing $1 billion in SB Energy for large-scale US data center construction. xAI announced the construction of a massive data center in Mississippi, with a total investment of approximately $2 billion.

The urgent need for inference computing power expansion indicates the computing power industry remains in a high-growth cycle. The domestic development in 5G-A, satellite internet, 6G, and the optical communication industry was relatively unaffected by the holiday. However, instances such as Zhipu seeking computing power partners and Doubao pausing its video call function on February 16 highlight current computing power shortages among AI application companies. The ongoing development of AI applications continues to drive the expansion of computing power scale. Overseas news primarily focused on data center construction and the GPU-XPU technology roadmap. NVIDIA maintains a solid leading position in the industry, and its acquisition of a technology license from Groq further strengthens its position in the inference hardware market. Pre-holiday market concerns regarding the communications sector centered on the pace of work resumption for Chinese optical communication companies in the first quarter, capital expenditure plans for the computing power industry in 2027, and the rollout schedule for CPO. Considering the developments during the Spring Festival and the pre-holiday information on overseas cloud providers' 2026 capital expenditure and optical communication industry orders, the computing power sector remains in a high-growth cycle.

Risks include uncertainties in the international situation, intensifying competition within the computing power industry, and the risk of order overflow due to persistently tight supply.