China AI Intelligence "LLM service API #2: Favourable demand outlook bol..."

Research evidence excerpt

China AI Intelligence "LLM service API #2: Favourable demand outlook bol..."

Global Research

20 May 2026ab

China AI Intelligence Equities

ChinaLLM service API #2: Favourable demand outlook

bolsters prices Internet Services

Wei Xiong

Analyst

wei.xiong@ubs.com

Lower risk of price competition in light of surging token demand +86-21-3866 8883

We reiterate our view that 2026 is an inflection year for AI agent adoption, with AI usage Kenneth Fong

shifting from chat to action. We observe the rapid scaling of AI agent products across Analyst

OpenClaw and AI coding agents (e.g., Claude Code and Codex), with potential to kenneth-kc.fong@ubs.com

expand adoption from the niched tech community to broader professional users / +852-3712 3890

knowledge workers. The improving penetration, along with significant token Charles Chen

consumption uplift in agent use cases (i.e., 1,000x vs. chat), could structurally drive Analyst

exponential growth of token demand, in our view. That said, compute ramp-up is S1460524020001

generally more linear, as AI chip capacity and data centre build-out take time to charles-za.chen@ubs.com

expand. This supply/demand dynamic has led to widespread price increases across the AI +86-21-3866 8907

value chain, from hardware (e.g., memory and CPUs), to cloud services and, in turn, LLM

API, in contrast to what we saw before (LLM service API #1). Amid surging token

demand, we view competition as a secondary concern. While we note that

DeepSeek V4 offers improved model efficiency and a limited-time discount for

promotion, we have not yet seen follow-up price adjustments from other model

providers. We expect continued improvements in model intelligence, agentic design

(i.e., Harness) and workload accumulation (e.g., SKILL) to evolve AI agents into more