Can an optical module company deserve a trillion-yuan market value?

Recently, one of the most discussed hot topics in the A-share market is that Zhongji Xuchuang, an optoelectronic module company, has "outperformed" Kweichow Moutai, which has long been regarded as a benchmark for value investment in the market.

On June 18th, the stock price of Zhongji Xuchuang soared. It closed at 1,367.88 yuan per share, with a total market value reaching 1.526 trillion yuan, surpassing Kweichow Moutai's 1.519 trillion yuan and ranking sixth in the total market value of A-shares. Even earlier, on June 3rd, the stock price of Zhongji Xuchuang had already exceeded that of Moutai during intraday trading. That is to say, this company has achieved an overtaking of Moutai in both the stock price and market value dimensions.

In addition, this market value has also exceeded that of core companies in the AI industrial chain such as Cambricon. When placed in the context of Internet companies, it is also higher than that of a group of leading Internet enterprises such as Meituan, JD.com, Baidu, and Xiaomi.

However, the peak on June 18th seemed more like a phased lead. In the following trading days, the stock price of Zhongji Xuchuang declined.

As of the close on July 1st, the total market value of Zhongji Xuchuang dropped to approximately 1.36 trillion yuan, falling below Kweichow Moutai's market value of about 1.49 trillion yuan again.

However, this "double overtaking" is enough to make people re-examine the changes in the pricing logic of core assets in the A-share market: in the past, the market was willing to pay a premium for consumer stability; now, funds are starting to pay a premium for key positions in AI infrastructure.

After all, in the context of the A-share market, Moutai has never been just a company. It has long represented the most stable type of aesthetic in the A-share market: brand, channels, cash flow, profit margins, and the certainty of crossing economic cycles.

So, what exactly supports the high valuation of Zhongji Xuchuang? Why can it surpass Cambricon and approach Foxconn Industrial Internet? Is it an industrial revaluation or a valuation bubble behind this round of sharp rise? And how long can it last?

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01 Why is Zhongji Xuchuang Valuable?

The most direct reason why the stock price of Zhongji Xuchuang is high is that optoelectronic modules have reached a critical node in the expansion of AI infrastructure and are becoming a real high-demand segment in AI infrastructure.

In a large-scale AI cluster, thousands of GPUs need to work together. Model parameters, training data, and intermediate calculation results need to flow at high speed between GPUs, servers, switches, and cabinets. The more chips there are and the larger the cluster is, the greater the pressure on data transmission will be.

Taking NVIDIA's NVL72 cabinet-level system as an example, whether it is the widely deployed GB200 NVL72 or the subsequent GB300 NVL72 and Vera Rubin NVL72, the core idea is to connect dozens of GPUs and CPUs into a whole through high-speed interconnections such as NVLink and NVLink Switch.

Once the transmission cannot keep up, computing power will be wasted. This is also the reason why cloud providers will simultaneously drive the demand for switches, network cards, and high-speed optoelectronic modules when expanding their AI clusters.

This is also what is often referred to as "Scale-out" in the industry, which means expanding a large number of servers and chips horizontally into a larger cluster. In this process, the usage and speed of optoelectronic modules will be rapidly increased.

In the past few years, the optoelectronic module industry has been talking about high-speed upgrades. In the era of large AI models, as cloud providers expand their GPU clusters and put forward higher requirements for data transmission between servers and switches, high-speed optoelectronic modules have changed from an industry technology route to real orders.

From a financial performance perspective, Zhongji Xuchuang has translated the demand for AI infrastructure into real revenue and profits.

In 2025, Zhongji Xuchuang achieved an operating revenue of 38.24 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 60.25%; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 10.797 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 108.78%; the gross profit margin increased from 34.65% to 42.61%. By the first quarter of 2026, the growth accelerated further. The company's operating revenue was 19.496 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 192.12%; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 5.735 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 262.28%.

In the first-quarter report, the company mainly attributed the revenue growth to the strong investment of end customers in computing power infrastructure and the continuous growth of product shipments. In subsequent investor communications, Zhongji Xuchuang explained where this round of profit elasticity came from: in the fourth quarter of 2025, the shipments of products such as 800G continued to increase quarter-on-quarter. The 1.6T products began to be shipped to key customers in the third quarter of 2025, and the volume increased even faster in the fourth quarter. In 2026, the company expects that both 1.6T and 800G optoelectronic modules will have large-scale demand and shipments.

800G, 1.6T, etc. refer to the data transmission rates of optoelectronic modules. 800G means a level of 800Gbps per second, and 1.6T means a level of 1.6Tbps per second. The higher the rate, the wider the "highway" for data inside the data center. For cloud providers and AI companies, this not only affects training efficiency but also affects inference costs.

This is the key to the market's revaluation of Zhongji Xuchuang: when many companies are still at the stage of "possibly benefiting in the future and expanding production capacity", Zhongji Xuchuang has already written AI orders into its financial reports. The net profit of 5.735 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2026 has exceeded the total profit scale of 5.171 billion yuan in 2024.

This is also the core logic for the market to give it a high valuation: What stockholders are buying is the performance realization in this expansion of AI infrastructure.

From the demand side, the growth of Zhongji Xuchuang corresponds to the continuous expansion of computing power infrastructure by global core cloud providers and AI companies.

In 2025, the proportion of overseas market revenue of Zhongji Xuchuang was as high as 90.6%. Its growth highly depends on the overseas market and directly benefits from the continuous investment of leading cloud providers and AI computing power customers in North America. At the same time, the company has formed a product matrix of high-speed optoelectronic modules covering 100G to 1.6T and has the ability to deliver 1.6T high-end products in batches.

So, when people say that the stock price of Zhongji Xuchuang is "high", what stockholders mainly focus on is the expansion of global AI data centers, the upgrade cycle of high-speed optoelectronic modules, and the company's position in the supply chain of leading customers.

This can also explain why it can even outperform Cambricon and some Internet giants.

Cambricon represents the scarcity of domestic AI chips. In the first quarter of 2026, Cambricon's operating revenue was 2.885 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 159.56%; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 1.013 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 185.04%. It has rapid growth and large room for imagination. However, compared with Zhongji Xuchuang, Cambricon's revenue and profit base are still small. In the market's pricing of it, the weights of domestic substitution and future space are higher.

As for Internet giants, the logic is different. In the past decade or so, platform-based Internet companies have supported high market values through user scale, advertising, e-commerce, games, and local life services. But today, the growth rate of the main businesses of many Internet companies has slowed down, and the growth rate of traffic has also reached a bottleneck. Businesses such as food delivery, e-commerce, and local life services are also facing more intense competition and profit pressure. In contrast, Zhongji Xuchuang is tied to the construction of global AI data centers, which belongs to the incremental direction that the current capital market is most willing to pursue.

02 The "Aesthetic" of the A-share Market Has Changed

The most noteworthy signal of Zhongji Xuchuang's overtaking of Moutai is that the A-share market is redefining a "good company".

In the past, most of the core assets favored by the A-share market had several characteristics: simple business models, stable cash flows, deep brand moats, and clear industry structures.

Moutai is a standard example in this system. It represents the long-term expansion of China's high-end consumption and also represents a certainty premium: investors are willing to pay for stable growth, strong pricing power, and high dividends. Even when the liquor industry was under pressure in 2025, Kweichow Moutai still achieved an operating revenue of 168.838 billion yuan and a net profit attributable to the parent company of 82.320 billion yuan, with a net profit margin of over 50%. Among them, the revenue from Moutai liquor was 146.5 billion yuan, with a gross profit margin as high as 93.53%.

We have to admit that against the background of slowing consumption growth and fluctuating channel prices, Moutai still maintains extremely strong profitability.

However, from the overall changes in the A-share market, the AI wave has significantly changed the risk preferences of funds.

As of the end of June, there were already 5 technology stocks among the top ten A-share market values, including Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited, Foxconn Industrial Internet Co., Ltd., Zhongji Xuchuang, Cambricon, and Hygon Information Technology Co., Ltd. Another optoelectronic module company, Xinyisheng, also once entered the top ten. The presence of technology stocks in the list of top A-share market values is significantly increasing.

Wu Qing, the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, said at the 2026 Lujiazui Forum on June 17th: "Currently, the market value of the A-share technology sector accounts for more than 30%. Among listed companies with a market value of over 100 billion yuan, the proportion of technology companies has reached 45%. A group of high-quality innovative enterprises have efficiently listed on the A-share market, and the situation where the capital market and new productive forces are moving towards each other and achieving mutual success is accelerating."

The driving force behind this revaluation is the continuous investment of global technology giants in AI infrastructure. Cloud providers are building data centers, and AI companies are expanding training clusters. As computing power infrastructure continues to be upgraded, funds are also starting to look for beneficiary segments along the industrial chain: from chips, servers, to PCBs, switches, optoelectronic modules, and then to liquid cooling and power.

In the context of the A-share market, Cambricon represents the scarcity of domestic AI chips, Foxconn Industrial Internet represents the large-scale delivery ability of AI servers, and Zhongji Xuchuang is stuck in the high-speed interconnection segment of data centers. The more intense the competition among large models is and the larger the computing power clusters are, the easier it is for the market to rediscover the value of these underlying hardware companies.

03 How Far Can the High Growth Go?

If this round of high valuation is to continue, Zhongji Xuchuang still needs to answer several more critical questions.

The most fundamental variable is the pace of global AI data center construction.

The demand for optoelectronic modules mainly comes from the expansion of computing power clusters by cloud providers and AI companies. In the past two years, overseas technology giants have continuously increased their investment in AI infrastructure. As GPU clusters have become larger and larger, the pressure on data transmission between servers, switches, and cabinets has also become higher and higher. As a result, 800G and 1.6T optoelectronic modules have entered a volume growth cycle.

As long as this round of computing power expansion continues, the demand for Zhongji Xuchuang will always be supported. Once cloud providers start to control the pace of data center construction, changes in orders will quickly be transmitted to the company's performance.

Moreover, the customer structure also determines the stability of this round of growth.

Zhongji Xuchuang is deeply tied to leading cloud providers and AI giants in North America such as NVIDIA, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Relying on its first-mover technological advantages in the field of high-end and high-speed optoelectronic modules such as 800G and 1.6T, the company has successfully reaped the optical communication dividends brought by the global explosion of AI computing power.

When the demand from major customers is strong, the company's growth will be rapidly amplified. Once customers adjust their procurement rhythms, the fluctuations will also be amplified. High concentration brings high certainty but also high sensitivity. Especially against the background of repeated Sino-US technological frictions, this high concentration will further amplify external uncertainties.

In the longer term, the optoelectronic module industry itself is still evolving. 800G and 1.6T are just the protagonists in this round of the cycle, and there will be solutions with higher speeds, lower power consumption, and higher integration in the future.

However, as the scale of AI clusters continues to expand, the connection methods inside data centers are also changing. New optical interconnection technologies such as silicon photonics, CPO, LPO, and OCS will all affect the industrial structure in the next stage.

Ultimately, whether the high valuation of Zhongji Xuchuang can be sustained depends on whether it can continuously transform the order dividends brought by this round of AI computing power expansion into product iteration, stable customers, and profit realization.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Tencent Technology", author: Worth Paying Attention To. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.