Soochow Securities released a research report stating that Counterpoint Research forecasts memory prices will rise by an additional 40% to 50% in Q1 2026, followed by a further approximate 20% increase in Q2. From a supply-demand perspective, hardware costs are rising on the supply side, while on the demand side, hit AI Agents are continuously emerging as global tech giants enter the fray. Cloud, as the infrastructure for AI, has already seen price increases from overseas giants like Alphabet (GOOGL.US) and Amazon (AMZN.US), marking the first such hikes in years. With the Spring Festival approaching, domestic demand for AI applications is gradually increasing, and domestic cloud providers are also expected to raise prices, suggesting potential investment opportunities in the AI cloud industry chain. The main views of Soochow Securities are as follows:

Overseas tech giants have already begun increasing cloud prices. Google Cloud has officially announced price hikes. On January 27th, Google Cloud formally announced price adjustments effective May 1, 2026, for Google Cloud, CDN Interconnect, Peering, and AI & Compute Infrastructure services. The specific increases are as follows: North America: Data transfer prices rose from $0.04/GB to $0.08/GB, a 100% increase. Europe: Prices increased from $0.05/GB to $0.08/GB, a 60% rise. Asia: Prices went from $0.06/GB to $0.085/GB, an approximate 42% hike.

Amazon Web Services has raised prices. On January 23rd, Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently increased the price of its EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML by approximately 15%, with the hourly cost for a p5e.48xlarge instance rising from $34.61 to $39.80.

On the demand side, the implementation speed of AI Agents has accelerated significantly. Moltclaw has gone viral. On Moltbook, 1.5 million Clawdbot (now OpenClaw) units are proliferating at an "exponential" rate. On February 1st, Google announced the official integration of Gemini 3 into all desktop Chrome browsers. This means that the browsers used by 3.8 billion global users have overnight evolved from simple webpage viewers into comprehensive AGI portals. On January 25th, Tencent officially released a "Notice on Distributing 1 Billion CNY in Cash for Spring Festival." By February 1st, the Tencent Yuanbao App had climbed to the top spot among free apps on the Apple App Store. On January 25th, Baidu issued a notice regarding a Spring Festival cash red packet activity for its Wenxin Assistant.

On the supply side, memory price increases continue. Counterpoint Research expects memory prices to rise by another 40% to 50% in Q1 2026, with a further ~20% increase in Q2. CPU price hikes have begun. According to KeyBanc data, due to procurement by hyperscale cloud providers, Intel and AMD's server CPU capacity for the full year 2026 is nearly sold out, and both companies plan to increase server CPU prices by 10-15%. Fiber optic prices are rising continuously. In the Chinese market, prices for G.652.D fiber optic cable have surged by approximately 80% compared to November 2025. In January 2026, prices for this type of single-mode fiber hit a seven-year high, with the average price exceeding 40 CNY per core kilometer, and some manufacturers quoting as high as 50 CNY per core kilometer, representing a jump of over 75% in just one month.

Related investment targets include computing power leasing providers: Hongjing Technology (301396.SZ), Xiechuang Data (300857.SZ), etc. Cloud providers: Wangsu Technology (300017.SZ), UCloud-W (688158.SH), QingCloud Technology (688316.SH), Alibaba-W (09988), etc. CPU-related: Langu Technology (688008.SH), Haiguang Information (688041.SH), Guanghe Technology (001382.SZ), Loongson Zhongke (688047.SH), China Great Wall (000066.SZ), etc. IDC and supporting infrastructure: Runze Technology (300442.SZ), Dawei Technology (600589.SH), Aofei Data (300738.SZ), Data港 (603881.SH), Zhongheng Electric (002364.SZ), etc.

Risk warnings: Progress in Agent implementation may fall short of expectations; issues with capacity supply may ease.