On April 8th afternoon, the China Merchants SZSE ChiNext Artificial Intelligence ETF (159243) further expanded its gains, rising over 8% as of the time of writing. The performance of constituent stocks was strong, with BlueFocus hitting the daily limit, and Dongfang Guoxin, ECLICKTECH, and Wangsu Technology seeing multiple stocks rise over 12%. Zhongwen Online, Eoptolink, Zhongji Innolight, and Tianfu Communication also surged.

On the news front, substantial capital expenditures from global tech giants in the AI infrastructure sector are reportedly coming to fruition.

Media reports indicate that Google has officially placed an order for 12 million NPO optical modules, specifically for the construction of the next-generation TPU v7/v8 supercomputing clusters, with the order corresponding to a market scale of approximately 12 to 15 billion yuan. The two leading optical module companies heavily invested in the ChiNext AI sector have secured all the shares, with Zhongji Innolight capturing 60% of the share (7.2 million units) and Eoptolink obtaining 40% (4.8 million units), both becoming core suppliers in this round of Google's AI infrastructure expansion.

Driven by AIDC and cloud computing, the development of high-speed optical modules, especially those of 800G and above, is progressing rapidly. According to Founder Securities, the global optical module market is expected to reach approximately $17.8 billion (about 124.6 billion yuan) in 2024, with an anticipated growth to $23.5 billion (about 164.5 billion yuan) in 2025, and a projected market size of $41.5 billion (about 290.5 billion yuan) by 2029, with a CAGR of about 18% from 2024 to 2029.

Additionally, according to The Information, the new generation model V4 of DeepSeek will run on Huawei's latest chips, excluding American chip manufacturers from early access, which is expected to directly benefit the domestic computing power industry chain. Data shows that by March 2026, the daily Token call volume of China's AI large models has exceeded 140 trillion, growing more than a thousand times compared to early 2024.

Datong Securities pointed out that the explosive growth of domestic Token call volume has substantially propelled the commercialization of domestic large models to achieve breakthroughs in global competitiveness, further driving domestic computing power hardware from "usable" to "scale commercial use."

Huatai Securities believes that with the increasing reliability requirements for optical modules in data centers during the AI era and the shortening of iteration cycles, the market position of leading manufacturers in the optical module industry remains solid. The scale of GPU clusters is still rapidly expanding, and there may be a million-card cluster in the future, leading to further release of demand for high-speed optical modules such as 800G and 1.6T; the trend of scaling up side light and retreating from copper is clear, and NPO/CPO is expected to bring new development opportunities for leading optical module manufacturers.

The China Merchants SZSE ChiNext Artificial Intelligence ETF (159243) has nearly 50% of its index weight in leading optical module companies, with the top three constituent stocks being Eoptolink (15.29%), Zhongji Innolight (13.95%), and Tianfu Communication (9.74%), which are expected to fully benefit from the explosive demand for computing power and optical modules

From the perspective of industry distribution, the ChiNext Artificial Intelligence Index covers the entire AI industry chain, including AI hardware, AI applications, and AI software. The net profit growth rate attributable to the parent company is expected to reach 128% by 2025, significantly higher than that of the ChiNext Index, indicating an upward trend in industry prosperity.

Risk warning: Funds carry risks, and investment should be cautious