【VG Research Team】Token "New Oil" Paradigm, Token Economy Launch!

Core Judgment: Token economy is a paradigm shift in the AI industry from “selling shovels” to “selling hydroelectric power.” Token commercialization is still in its early stages, and the shift from paying for computing power to token-based billing has just begun. Currently, it is a window for strategic deployment. [Taogu Ba]

Recently, several major catalysts have been rapidly implemented, and the main theme of the AI industry is undergoing a substantial transition:

1. NVIDIA GTC 2026 (March 16): Jensen Huang officially proposed the “Token Factory” paradigm, defining data centers as the central hub for generating and reconstructing tokens. AI is moving from “one-time generation” to “continuous reasoning + resident agents.”

2. Alibaba establishes ATH Business Group (March 16): Alibaba Token Hub is directly led by CEO Wu Yongming, integrating five major sectors, clarifying the three missions of “creating tokens, delivering tokens, applying tokens,” and elevating tokens to a core group-level strategy for the first time.

3. JPMorgan predicts that China’s token consumption will have a compound annual growth rate of 330% from 2025 to 2030, a 400-fold increase over five years. The proliferation of agents will increase individual user token consumption by 10-50 times.

4. Daily Interaction is building a “Controllable Intelligent Computing Platform,” which offers a fee model based on model token usage, a business model that charges enterprises for software licenses and model token usage fees.

Jensen Huang only discussed one thing at GTC: the era of疯狂 selling tokens has arrived. Huang redefines computers as “Token Generators,” while Alibaba has taken the lead in integrating tokens into organizational structures. This marks the industry has moved from model capability competitions to a new stage driven by token economy.

Industry chain investment mainline upgrade: “Computing Power — Token — Agent” three-layer system

**Upstream: Core computing infrastructure assets:

Focus: Dawei Technology (ByteDance’s core provider of computing power), Oriental Guoxin, Aofei Data (Alibaba/Baidu’s core contractors), Data Port (Alibaba’s wholesale IDC leader), Runze Technology, Quxing Toys

**Midstream: Token distribution and commercialization (α source, largest expectation gap):

ATH is essentially a clearing and circulation hub for tokens. If AI is compared to a digital economy system, models are responsible for “producing tokens,” and ATH handles “circulation and settlement.” ByteDance’s Volcano Engine’s daily token usage has reached 50 trillion, with domestic model token consumption accounting for 61% of the top ten globally. Token commercialization is still in its early stages, and the shift from paying for computing power to token-based business models has just begun.

Focus: Daily Interaction (core target of ByteDance, DeepSeek, Huawei, Baidu data cooperation), Century Heng Tong (Tencent, DeepSeek), Oriental Guoxin, UCloud (cloud computing + MaaS platform), Dawei Technology, Hongjing Technology (pioneers in computing power leasing), Xiechuang Data.

**Downstream: Agent ecosystem release (application space): Wu Yongming believes we are on the “eve of AGI explosion,” with hundreds of billions of AI agents participating in digital labor. Alibaba plans to launch enterprise-level agent applications (surpassing OpenClaw) as early as this week, integrating services like Taobao, Alipay, Alibaba Cloud.

Focus: Daily Interaction, Kunlun Wanwei, 360, iFlytek

Key point: After NVIDIA GTC 2026 and Alibaba ATH Business Group catalysts, the market consensus is “whoever controls the hub, controls the next phase of AI pricing power.”

Token/distribution side (distribution + partial generation): Daily Interaction, Century Heng Tong, Dawei Technology, Oriental Guoxin, UCloud, Hongjing Technology, Xiechuang Data, etc.

1. Daily Interaction: C-end distribution hub + B-end generation end

Core role: Data cooperation partner for models like DeepSeek, providing high-quality annotation/scenario data (raw materials for token generation);

Positioning: Leading domestic data intelligent service provider. In the AI era, high-quality corpora are the raw fuel for token generation.

Core logic: Daily Interaction has massive mobile reach, giving it a natural advantage in “data tokenization” (transforming raw data into AI-understandable structured corpora) and “token distribution and application” (delivering AI-generated instructions to terminals via message push). It is building a “Controllable Intelligent Computing Platform” that charges model token usage fees.

2. Dawei Technology: Clearly controls some hubs (edge generation + circulation end)

Core role: Edge computing token production nodes + distributed inference infrastructure, key customer of Kingsoft Cloud, involved in Xiaomi AI ecosystem data services/automation tasks.

Positioning: Token commercialization/MaaS platform circulation end (aligned with Oriental Guoxin, UCloud, Hongjing Technology), and edge-side token generation (distributed, lightweight inference, suitable for resident agents).

Core logic: Local agents like OpenClaw directly boost edge token consumption; their deployment creates a “production + distribution” closed loop. When the concept of computing power leasing warms up, multiple collaborations occur, making them hub targets.

3. Oriental Guoxin: Controls C-end distribution hub + B-end generation end

Core role: Holding company of Visitu Cloud (AutoDLC AI computing cloud platform) + Inner Mongolia Intelligent Computing Center.

Positioning: Retail distribution hub for computing power (retail outlet of the token factory) + B-end generation end (the intelligent computing center directly produces tokens).

Core logic: In the era of OpenClaw/Agents, retail on the C-end becomes a “mass demand” entry point (similar to traffic entry in the mobile internet era). AutoDL has scheduling capabilities, directly distributing computing power for users to generate/consume tokens. Market views it as a full-chain player of the token factory.

In the morning trend, Century Heng Tong (large cap), Oriental Guoxin surged against the market for two days (morning up 20%, opened wide after selling off), while Daily Interaction, Dawei Technology, etc., experienced sufficient pullback.

(Risk warning: All logical analyses are personal opinions or personal trading records, not market advice. Do not base your trading decisions solely on these. Risks are to be managed and borne by oneself!)

(Author’s disclosure: This logical analysis is not a securities recommendation or investment advice. As of the time of writing, the author holds some related stocks and may sell them at an opportune moment within the next trading day. Personal holdings are very small, generally not exceeding a fraction of the daily trading volume, and have minimal impact on stock trading.)

$Daily Interaction (sz300766)$
$Dawei Technology (sh600589)$
$Century Heng Tong (sz301428)$
$Oriental Guoxin (sz300166)$