TLDR: China Unicom has announced a significant AI computing strategy, aiming for a 100,000-GPU cluster and 45 EFLOPS of computing power by the end of 2025, alongside major network upgrades and the launch of an AI agent development platform. This move positions the company to be a global leader in AI computing benchmarks and integrate AI deeply into its operations.
Shanghai, China – China Unicom, a leading telecommunications giant, has unveiled a groundbreaking strategy to significantly bolster its intelligent computing infrastructure, aiming to establish itself among the world’s most powerful AI computing benchmarks. The ambitious plan, announced by Chairman Chen Zhongyue at the company’s partner conference in Shanghai over the weekend, includes the exploration of a 100,000-GPU cluster deployment and a target of 45 EFLOPS of computing power by the close of 2025. An EFLOPS, or exaFLOP, represents one quintillion floating-point operations per second, underscoring the immense scale of this initiative.
This strategic pivot towards advanced AI integration is supported by robust financial performance and significant investment. China Unicom reported a 10.5 percent year-on-year increase in net profit to 9.03 billion yuan ($1.25 billion) in 2024, with revenue growing 4.6 percent to 389.6 billion yuan. The company plans to invest approximately 55 billion yuan in fixed assets in 2025, with computing-related investments climbing 19 percent, even as total capital expenditures saw a 17 percent decline in 2024. This highlights a clear focus on upgrading internet data centers into AI-optimized facilities to meet the surging demand for generative AI and large language model infrastructure. China Unicom stands as the only major Chinese telecom operator to achieve double-digit net profit growth for three consecutive years.
Chairman Chen Zhongyue emphasized the company’s commitment, stating, “China Unicom will fully embrace AI to upgrade our cloud computing business, enabling integrated operations of intelligent computing (AI-driven) and general computing. By combining AI model training, inference, and cluster scheduling capabilities, we aim to deliver flexible, one-stop AI services for customers.” He further highlighted the critical role of AI agents in commercial value realization, asserting that “AI agents are key to unlocking commercial value.”
To facilitate this vision, China Unicom is launching its proprietary Yuanjing Wanwu AI Agent Development Platform. This platform is designed to provide comprehensive tools for model management, knowledge base construction, and workflow orchestration, empowering partners to develop sophisticated AI applications through zero-code and low-code solutions. This approach is expected to dramatically reduce development barriers and accelerate time-to-market for commercially viable intelligent solutions.
Beyond raw computing power, China Unicom is also undertaking substantial network upgrades to advance its Computing Power Intelligence Network. The company is accelerating its transition to ultra-high-speed 800G and 1.2T bandwidth technologies. This evolution is crucial for enabling seamless interoperability across diverse architectures, organizational boundaries, and geographical regions, while simultaneously enhancing network autonomy. By integrating AI directly into network operations, China Unicom aims to achieve self-configuring, self-optimizing, and self-healing capabilities, fundamentally transforming network management efficiency and user experience.
This initiative aligns with broader national goals, as China aims to boost its aggregate computing power by over 30 percent by 2025, targeting 300 EFLOPS. AI computing power is projected to increase its proportion of the overall national computing power from over 25 percent to 35 percent by the same year. China Unicom has already established two clusters with over 10,000 AI accelerators in Shanghai and Hohhot, currently boasting a total computing power exceeding 17 EFLOPS, laying a strong foundation for its future expansion.
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In addition to its AI computing strategy, the conference also marked the official launch of “Tongtong Huigou,” China Unicom’s new enterprise procurement marketplace. This B2B platform connects 50,000 suppliers with millions of corporate buyers, further expanding the company’s digital ecosystem.
