Chongqing — ChangXin Memory (CXMT) closed August 17 at 4.13 trillion yuan (about 590 billion U.S. dollars), overtaking Tencent as China’s most valuable listed company weeks after its IPO. The DRAM maker’s rally signals growing interest beyond AI models in the hardware, R&D, energy and supply chains behind them.

Chongqing, while still known as a maker of cars and electronics, is building a position across the AI stack. Its manufacturing base supplies the applications that turn AI into products: intelligent connected vehicles, embodied robots, and the low-altitude economy, all of which are included in the city's 15th Five-Year Plan.

Looking more closely, applications demand computing and computing demands energy. Chongqing taps Xinjiang's supply of cheaper green power and new data centers, bridged by high-voltage lines and a dedicated optical cable that spans western China. Thanks to that, Chongqing's dispatchable intelligent computing is set to reach 100,000 PFlops by 2027.

And Chongqing may have found a niche entry into AI hardware: power semiconductors. They are the components converting and fine-tuning electricity from grids down to GPUs. Fortunately, Chongqing has built this industry for years; as early as 2023, its power semiconductor production capacity ranked among the top three in China. Automotive-grade expertise, developed over years of meeting demand from the new energy vehicle industry, is now being applied to AI infrastructure.

As for the future, four major laboratories anchor the city's research base: Jinfeng Laboratory works on integrating AI with life sciences, Jialing River Laboratory focuses on intelligent robots and computing systems, Mingyue Lake Laboratory develops energy storage and advanced materials, and Three Gorges Laboratory studies ecosystems, carbon cycles, and resource utilization, with all four actively pushing tech transfer into industry.