China Unicom can be increasing its AI infrastructure, with greater than 1.1 million knowledge middle cupboards and computing capability reaching 45 EFLOPS
In sum – what to know:
AI spending rises – Over 35% of 2026 capex allotted to computing infrastructure as AI demand will increase.
AI income development – AI-related income rose 147%, with computing energy reaching 15.4% of service income.
Steady operations – Income and revenue grew modestly, whereas subscribers surpassed 1.2 billion and 5G expanded additional.
Chinese language service China Unicom has introduced plans to cut back capital expenditure by almost 8% in 2026 whereas it expects to allocate greater than one-third of its finances to computing infrastructure, reflecting a shift towards synthetic intelligence.
The operator expects capex to fall to about CNY 50 billion ($7.2 billion) in 2026 from CNY 54.2 billion in 2025, with greater than 35% directed towards computing energy. This comes as AI-related income elevated 147% year-on-year, with computing energy companies accounting for 15.4% of the service’s service income.
China Unicom can be increasing its AI infrastructure, with greater than 1.1 million knowledge middle cupboards and computing capability reaching 45 EFLOPS.
Monetary efficiency remained steady, with service income at CNY 347.7 billion and web revenue rising 1% to CNY 20.8 billion. Free money stream elevated 28.5% to RMB 36 billion. In the meantime, knowledge middle income was CNY 28.1 billion for 2025, up by 8.5% year-on-year.
The telco’s complete subscriber base exceeded 1.2 billion on the finish of 2025, together with greater than 700 million IoT connections, whereas 5G-Superior networks had been deployed in over 330 cities throughout China.
Its cloud-related income grew 5.2%, supported by deployments throughout authorities and enterprise clients, the telco mentioned.
China Unicom additionally mentioned it has promoted the capability growth of gigabit broadband and the improve of 10-gigabit broadband, and launched pre-commercial trial of 10-gigabit optical fiber networks in additional than 100 cities. It made deployments in frontier fields equivalent to 6G and quantum communications, and launched quantum-secure leased traces.
“The corporate supported the development of presidency clouds for over 180 provinces and municipalities in addition to the digital and clever transformation of almost 400,000 company clients,” China Unicom mentioned.
China Unicom isn’t the one service in China shifting to AI. Throughout MWC 2026, Liu Guiqing, president of China Telecom, mentioned the operator is accelerating its transition from a conventional telecom supplier right into a technology-oriented firm constructed round synthetic intelligence, cloud infrastructure, and computing energy providers.
China Telecom has already deployed AI throughout inner operations, together with community administration and software program growth. The corporate mentioned AI-based methods have diminished the variety of on-site restore visits by area technicians by 35%, whereas AI-generated code now accounts for 40% of software program growth, enhancing R&D effectivity by 20%.
Wanting forward, Liu mentioned telecom operators should adapt their methods to the rising affect of AI applied sciences. He outlined 5 proposals for the business, together with aligning 6G commonplace growth with AI evolution, strengthening cloud-network integration, enhancing AI safety governance, coordinating computing energy and vitality sources, and increasing world cooperation on AI fashions and functions.
Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia, advised RCR Wi-fi Information: “The transfer by China Unicom symbolizes telcos’ plan to repositioning themselves because the AI infrastructure suppliers within the GenAI period. Historically telcos’ capex are likely to focus closely on community gear, however the income from conventional client market has slowed down previously few years. The adoption of cloud and AI providers generates excessive development for China Unicom, thereby justifying the rise in funding in AI compute, storage, and networking.”
The analyst sees an identical development throughout all most important operators in China. “It is a transfer that aligns not solely with the rise in AI and cloud income by all most important Chinese language telcos, but in addition with the nationwide AI coverage and the fast digitalization and AI transformation embraced by Chinese language enterprise for the reason that emergence of DeepSeek. Chinese language telcos are on the forefront of converged AI and connectivity infrastructure and repair suppliers,” he mentioned.
