Computing services revenue exceeds 80 bln yuan in SW China's Guizhou

Photo shows a data center of Huawei Cloud in Gui'an New Area, Guiyang, southwest China's Guizhou province. (People's Daily Online/Jia Zhi)

Today, an increasing number of smart applications are becoming part of everyday life. Behind their growing sophistication and practical use is a steady supply of computing power. Southwest China's Guizhou Province has been one place that has built up a strong foundation for computing resources.

Guizhou is taking an application-driven approach, accelerating its shift from a data warehouse to a computing workshop.

At Guizhou Information Park of China Telecom Cloud Computing in Gui'an New Area, the main structures of two newly built intelligent computing centers have been topped out. A new batch of servers will soon be installed to provide computing power for artificial intelligence (AI), the low-altitude economy and other fields.

As Guizhou's first data center to enter operation, the park has undergone multiple expansions over the past decade. What began as two buildings has grown into 15 main buildings and supporting facilities, with 135,000 servers — more than 700 times the initial capacity.

Leveraging its cool climate, abundant energy resources and stable geology, Guizhou began planning the development of data center clusters as early as 2013. Within just a few years, Gui'an New Area emerged as a major hub, attracting large-scale data centers operated by China's three major telecom carriers, as well as tech giants including Tencent, Huawei and Apple.

At the Southern Energy Big Data Center, cabinet indicator lights blink in an orderly fashion, yet it emits no discernible heat.

"The liquid cooling system works in tandem with natural air cooling to quickly dissipate the heat generated by servers, making this a green data center," said Xiao Fusheng, deputy general manager of the Digital and Intelligent Operations Center of the Guizhou branch of China Southern Power Grid Co., Ltd. Another 300 high-density intelligent computing cabinets are expected to come online by the end of this year.

So far, Guizhou has 50 major data centers either under construction or in operation. Its total computing capacity has surpassed 176 EFLOPS, placing it among the country's leading regions in overall computing capacity. Intelligent computing accounts for more than 90 percent of the total, making Guizhou one of the regions with the strongest domestic intelligent computing capabilities and richest resources in China.

In Banqiao Art Village, Huaxi district of Guiyang, Guizhou Suanjia Computing Services Co., Ltd. operates without its own server room. Instead, it uses self-developed intelligent scheduling algorithms to build a digital bridge between computing-power providers and users.

"Small and medium-sized enterprises and individual users need flexible, on-demand and cost-effective computing power, rather than long-term leases of entire server racks," said Xia Hai, deputy general manager of the company. The company has so far provided more than 40 million GPU-hours of computing services to over 50,000 users, 90 percent of whom are based outside Guizhou.

The company's growth is a microcosm of Guizhou's efforts to bring its computing power to the wider market. Guizhou has developed diverse service models, allowing computing demand from eastern regions to be met by resources from the west.

At the same time, large AI models are increasingly being brought to Guizhou. Projects such as Huawei Cloud's Pangu AI models have been launched in the province, helping bring AI from laboratories to production lines, fields and intangible cultural heritage workshops.

At the Miao embroidery cultural and creative industrial park in Shibing county, Qiandongnan Miao and Dong Autonomous Prefecture, Long Luying is hard at work. A representative inheritor of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), Long uses a wax knife to draw intricate patterns. On a computer screen, an AI agent identifies traditional motifs in real time and generates dozens of innovative designs with a modern aesthetic. Basic patterns are then embroidered by machine, while the finer details are still completed by hand. The approach has increased production efficiency by more than 80 percent.

In 2025, Guizhou's computing services revenue reached 82.4 billion yuan (about $12.26 billion), with market-based services accounting for more than 90 percent.