Sichuan Province has officially launched its inaugural Token factory, marking a significant milestone in the region's artificial intelligence infrastructure development. The "Tianjiang Baize Token Factory" has been activated and put into commercial operation in the Ya'an Economic and Technological Development Zone, representing a strategic collaboration between Tianfu Jiangxi Laboratory and the local economic development zone. The facility leverages the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park as its physical infrastructure backbone, while Tianfu Jiangxi Laboratory serves as the core provider of computing equipment and technical capabilities, combining their strengths to produce premium industry-grade Tokens for the regional AI sector.
What exactly constitutes a Token factory? A typical operation must clear three critical hurdles to be considered legitimate. First, it requires stable computing infrastructure, including data centers and computing clusters that form the physical foundation. Second, it demands the ability to adapt, deploy, and optimize inference for mainstream large language models. Third, it needs sustainable operational and commercialization capabilities, encompassing metering and billing systems, quality monitoring, and supply chain assurance. These requirements explain why not every region can simply replicate a fully functional Token factory, and why the activation of the Tianjiang Baize facility represents such a notable achievement in redefining the computing landscape of Western China, establishing a new paradigm for the Token industry under the national "East Computing, West Data" strategy.
The Token economy is experiencing explosive growth, with China pursuing a distinctive "open source plus factory" approach.
Since the beginning of this year, "Token" has transformed from a technical measurement unit tucked away in documentation into the hottest "new currency" in the artificial intelligence sector. As leading large model capabilities continue to advance, an increasing number of enterprises and developers have integrated AI into their daily operations, driving exponential growth in Token consumption across society. According to public data, daily Token call volumes for large models in China have surged from the billions range in early 2024 to approximately 140 trillion by the first quarter of 2026, representing a thousand-fold increase in just two years. International Data Corporation projections indicate that public cloud large model Token calls in China will reach 1,944 trillion in 2025, a year-on-year increase of roughly 16 times, with expectations that this figure will climb to approximately 40 quadrillion in 2026, corresponding to a market size of around 18.6 billion yuan. Tokens are rapidly evolving from a purely technical concept into a fundamental industrial necessity.
Behind this explosive growth lies a distinctly Chinese industrial strategy. In contrast to overseas markets dominated by single giant models, domestic manufacturers have generally pursued a differentiated path of "open source models plus Token factories." Companies including Zhipu, Moonshot AI (Kimi), and DeepSeek have all open-sourced their foundational models, then leveraged ecosystem partners to establish Token factories that convert computing capacity into scalable, deliverable, and profitable products and services. This means that a genuine Token factory cannot simply engage in arbitrage or reselling—it must possess a complete commercial closed-loop capability, enabling stable production, continuous delivery, and a truly viable business model that generates sustainable profits.
The current pricing structures of mainstream domestic models further validate this commercial value proposition. The increasing sophistication of pricing systems demonstrates that Token operations have become a precision-driven industry. From large model developers such as Zhipu, Kimi, and DeepSeek, through Token factories, and onward to intermediary stations and channel distributors, ultimately reaching end users, a complete "production, distribution, and consumption" industrial chain has taken shape, with market scale expanding correspondingly.
Sichuan's strategic positioning leverages unique regional advantages under the national computing strategy.
Within the national layout of AI and computing power industries, Sichuan currently lacks a leading large model developer and has no local chip manufacturing enterprises, placing it in what appears to be a "mismatched" position within the Token wave. However, when examined through the lens of resource endowments and industrial foundations, two factors deserve particular attention: abundant clean energy and deep technical talent reserves. Ya'an benefits from rich hydropower resources, keeping data center electricity costs at nationally competitive low levels, while Tianfu Jiangxi Laboratory, affiliated with the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, has long assembled a concentration of research talent specializing in artificial intelligence and advanced computing. As Chen Hui, deputy director of the Advanced Computing Frontier Research Center, noted, "Where there is energy, we lack talent; where there is talent, we lack energy"—this precisely captures the structural contradiction facing many regions in computing infrastructure deployment. Sichuan uniquely combines both "green energy" and "top-tier talent," and by starting from raw computing capacity and utilizing the Token factory as a "converter," the province can more rapidly transform computing resources into deliverable, monetizable industrial capabilities, translating the "East Computing, West Data" policy from a slogan into tangible industrial scale.
A complete value transformation chain from energy to industry
From the perspective of Tianfu Jiangxi Laboratory, the significance of the Token factory extends well beyond mere Token trading. The progression from energy to computing power, from computing to Tokens, and ultimately from Tokens to industry constitutes a complete value transformation chain. Developing Token factories is fundamentally about providing "the most essential nourishment" for Sichuan's software and AI industries, enabling local enterprises to access the most advanced large model capabilities at lower cost and higher efficiency, truly allowing the AI industry to "take root and flourish" within the province. Based on this industrial vision and drawing on years of accumulated AI research, Tianfu Jiangxi Laboratory took the initiative to partner with the Ya'an Big Data Industrial Park to commence Token factory construction. In August of this year, the Tianjiang Baize Token Factory was officially commissioned and immediately achieved sales momentum, specializing in producing the latest versions of Tokens for high-grade domestic models including Zhipu, Kimi, and DeepSeek, delivering high-value computing services to industry clients.
It is particularly noteworthy that the factory exclusively offers full-capability versions of mainstream large models, covering core scenarios such as complex reasoning, long-text comprehension, multi-turn dialogue, and high-concurrency rapid response, while adhering to a supply principle of "no downgrading, no routing." Through proprietary dedicated concurrency queue technology, the factory's operational system effectively manages peak traffic, ensures low latency and high availability, and verifiably maintains Token service output quality consistent with stated specifications. Chen Hui stated, "According to our plan, the project will reach a production capacity of approximately 3 trillion Tokens per month by September. Within the year, we will complete two capacity expansions, targeting a monthly production capacity of 10 trillion Tokens, and we aim to rank among the top-tier domestic Token factory producers by the first quarter of 2027."
Co-developing industry standards to empower the provincial software sector
In addition to its own production capacity development, Tianfu Jiangxi Laboratory is also driving the establishment of industry "rule-making" for the Token sector. The factory has pioneered a Token metrology standard through its self-developed trusted intelligent computing space technology, establishing unified, verifiable, and comparable measurement benchmarks for Token production, circulation, and consumption. This is complemented by a trusted Token measurement mechanism that ensures every Token leaving an auditable and tamper-proof trace from output to consumption. This trusted framework is specifically decomposed across four dimensions, and the laboratory will collaborate with national standard-setting institutions and local governments to jointly release China's first Token metrology standard white paper, providing the industry with unified, reliable measurement benchmarks and supporting the standardization of the Token market. Concurrently, the laboratory will cooperate with relevant provincial authorities on initiatives focused on improving efficiency and quality for provincial software enterprises, helping local companies more rapidly and affordably capitalize on the AI industry development momentum. Going forward, the laboratory will leverage its platform advantages to advance the operation of the Token factory through Tianjiang Baize (Chengdu) Technology Co., Ltd., establishing an operational standard system characterized by "high production capacity, high quality, and high trustworthiness" to provide exemplary support for the standardized and normalized development of Sichuan's Token industry.