Recently, CCTV's "Economy Half-Hour" aired a special feature titled "Future Industries Converging in Pudong," which reported on an intelligent computing base in Shanghai Lingang. In the footage, liquid cooling pipes run along the racks, and high-density servers equipped with domestic chips are running under real business loads.

The base is understood to be operated by Youfu Network, with cumulative investment exceeding 2 billion yuan and computing power scale surpassing 10 EFLOPS (10 quintillion floating-point operations per second). It is planned as a 100,000-card-level cluster and carries the core operating node function of the National (Shanghai) New Internet Exchange Center.

After the computing power network was included in the "Six Networks" construction, projects like this have entered the market's view, going beyond the industry level. From the disclosure documents of issued data center securitization products and exchange review inquiries, when the market currently prices underlying assets, the factors of concern are concentrated in customer concentration, contract term, rack utilization rate, PUE, power supply and distribution margin, renovation costs, and equipment generational depreciation. After the emergence of AIDC, the importance of these factors is being reassessed.

What's Listed Is Still Racks

Data center securitization products issued or being advanced by companies such as GDS and Runze Technology mostly have high-grade wholesale IDCs as underlying assets, with revenue from rack colocation and long-term large-customer contracts, and valuation using the income approach to discount stable cash flows. Such products answer a basic question: whether colocation-type real estate can enter capital market pricing.

In March this year, Youfu Network issued the "Guojin Asset Management - CDH - Youfu Network First Phase Data Center Holding-Type Real Estate Asset-Backed Special Plan (Inter-Institutional REIT)," with a scale of 709 million yuan, and the underlying assets being the Lingang Phase I and Phase II data centers. The main customers of the two phases are leading internet companies and artificial intelligence companies, and cash flows likewise come from rack colocation. In the transaction structure, land and computer room buildings are acquired through long-term leases, and computing power servers and supporting electromechanical equipment are also included in the transaction arrangement as related movable property.

Whether public REITs or inter-institutional products, the underlying assets that can currently gain capital market recognition essentially cannot do without three things: racks, power, and long-term contracts. Pricing established wholesale IDCs is the first step the market has completed.

The New Phase Is to Be a Domestic Computing Power Validation Ground

CCTV's visit to Lingang this time did not focus on Phase I and Phase II, which have already issued ABS. Youfu's new phase plan positions the base as a public validation testing ground for domestic computing power chips, targeting local chip manufacturers, large model companies, and university laboratories, providing performance stress testing and scenario-based validation in real commercial environments.

The change in this positioning lies in that intelligent computing centers are no longer just places to house servers. Traditional IDC operators do not intervene in customers' technology selection; whatever chips customers purchase and whatever models they run, the operator is only responsible for power supply and heat dissipation. Once the operator intervenes in chip validation, model stress testing, and liquid cooling boundary testing, it begins to engage with customers' technology roadmaps. This part of the capability does not currently enter the asset pool, but will gradually affect operations: increasing customer migration costs during the leasing stage, giving customers priority renewal during expansion, and enabling the operator to judge technology roadmap trends earlier during equipment replacement.

Two types of assets coexist at Youfu: Phase I and Phase II, which have already been securitized, and the new phase, which is still in planning. This structure is not common among domestic IDC operators; pure colocation companies do not have validation businesses, while pure computing power companies lack mature real estate securitization paths. Phase I and Phase II answer how IDCs finance; the new phase is to answer how AIDC operational capabilities enter valuation.

Not Just Building Racks

This is not Youfu's choice alone. At nodes such as Lingang, the Yangtze River Delta Demonstration Zone (Qingpu-Wujiang-Jiashan), Zhangjiakou, Langfang, Shaoguan, as well as Horinger and Ulanqab, newly built intelligent computing projects are generally increasing single-rack power, increasing the proportion of liquid cooling, and enhancing green electricity consumption.

The listed Southern Runze REIT (underlying asset: Langfang International Information Port A-18) and Southern Vantone REIT (underlying asset: Kunshan Guojin Data Center)—the assets of both REITs are still wholesale IDCs, but the two companies' newly expanded computer rooms and fundraising projects have been designed according to AIDC standards; other IDC operators in the Pre-REITs stage have also begun to separately list high-power renovation and computing power service revenue in their application preparations.

This pricing framework is changing. Computing loads are shifting from general computing to AI training and inference, chip supply is shifting from imported general-purpose GPUs to domestic diversified computing power, single-rack power is rising from 6kW in the air-cooling era to 30kW, and high-density liquid cooling clusters have reached 100kW. These changes are bringing new tests to valuation assumptions that have been used for years.

In traditional air-cooled computer rooms, the depreciation cycle of electromechanical equipment can be extended to more than ten years; in AI clusters, GPUs and servers need to be replaced every three to five years. The power account cannot just calculate unit price; liquid cooling PUE, green electricity ratio, and waste heat recovery are all beginning to enter costs. The same applies to customer contracts: lease term is no longer the only variable; load type, expansion pace, and depth of technology roadmap binding all affect the stability of cash flows.

Why Validation Capability Deserves a Premium

From the investor's perspective, the question comes down to one point: whether the operator possesses technology risk management capability.

In traditional colocation computer rooms, what servers customers place, what loads they run, and when they replace equipment—the operator is only responsible for power supply and cooling and does not participate in technical judgment. Once an AIDC operator intervenes in chip validation and model stress testing, it can know earlier which generation of chips is stable under what loads, where the liquid cooling temperature boundary lies, and which customer's electricity demand will increase. This information gap is most direct during leasing: as long as customers set up their validation environment here, migration costs go up; over a longer cycle, it will also affect judgments on output per MW and asset residual value.

For listed data center REITs, the underlying asset is still rack colocation cash flow. AIDC validation capability is still difficult to enter the base scenario of the income approach in the short term: if validation services are mainly project-based, revenue volatility is naturally higher than long-term colocation; to have investors count it into stable cash flow requires more contract samples and renewal data. Moreover, the credit ratings and renewal logic of leading internet companies, AI companies, chip manufacturers, and university laboratories differ greatly, and investors' tolerance for customer concentration is not uniform.

Two Pricing Coordinates for Lingang

Lingang does not lack conditions. There is still room for expansion of land and power, the new internet exchange center node is located here, and the latency cost of multi-party interconnection is lower; the integrated circuit, artificial intelligence, and biomedicine industrial clusters in surrounding Pudong are themselves generating computing power demand, and it is not necessary to rely entirely on attracting investment from elsewhere.

Placed in the valuation framework, assets like those in Lingang may simultaneously carry two pricing coordinates. One coordinate is mature Shanghai wholesale IDC, measured by rack utilization rate and distribution rate, using the same ruler as the listed Runze and Vantone REITs. The other coordinate is still forming: computing power nodes, domestic chip validation grounds, and green electricity liquid cooling foundations superimposed together, corresponding to ecosystem premium and technology risk management capability. The special feature of Youfu's project is that the wholesale computer rooms that have issued ABS and the validation ground in planning fall within the same park.

What the camera shows is liquid cooling pipes and high-density servers; on the investor's side, another set of numbers is being reviewed: customer structure, contract term, output per MW, equipment residual value, green electricity ratio, and the feasibility of inter-institutional ABS and public REIT expansion.

The sample value of Youfu Lingang lies not in that it today defines a new valuation model, but in placing the already securitized wholesale computer rooms and the still-planned validation ground in the same park, making the distance between the two layers of assets visible. When validation services can sign repeatable long-term contracts, this part of the capability will move from a leasing story to a premium item on the REITs valuation table.