National computing grid to become 'public utility'

China has launched a massive, decades-long initiative to unify its domestic computing resources into a single national grid. The goal, unveiled by officials and engineers at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai on Friday, is to treat processing power as a basic public utility — allowing users to access AI computing as seamlessly as flipping a light switch.

According to the National Data Administration, China's intelligent computing capacity surged to 1,882 EFLOPS by the end of March this year, powered by 14.45 million standard server racks. An EFLOP, or exa floating-point operation per second, is a standard measure of computing performance equal to one quintillion calculations per second.

To maximize this sprawling footprint, China is deploying a three-stage roadmap designed to strengthen self-reliance, optimizing local networks while funding frontier tech like quantum technology and orbital satellite clusters.

Gao Wen, director of Peng Cheng Laboratory and an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, outlined the roadmap at the conference.

"The first stage focuses on pooling computing resources nationwide and about 70 percent of that work has already been completed. It means that roughly seven-tenths of China's computing resources have been incorporated into a unified database that is updated in real time," he said.

"In the second phase over the next five years, the network is expected to begin coordinating computing tasks among selected participants, initially within companies or between cooperating firms rather than serving the public."

He added that the third and final phase would allow computing tasks to move seamlessly across multiple providers without users knowing where the work is being processed.

"Achieving that vision could take one or two decades rather than just a few years. But the final goal is to let Chinese users access computing power as conveniently as electricity," he said.

As AI models continue to grow larger and more computationally intensive, researchers and companies said China must also develop entirely new sources of computing capacity.

Pan Jianwei, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and one of China's leading quantum physicists, said quantum technology was rapidly moving beyond the laboratory.

Quantum communication has already found early use in sectors including finance and government services, while quantum sensing could reach commercial scale sooner in areas such as navigation and medical imaging, he said.

General-purpose quantum computers capable of solving broad real-world problems remain at least 10 to 15 years away, Pan said, but they could eventually transform fields ranging from materials science to pharmaceutical research by tackling calculations beyond the reach of conventional computers.

While the nationwide network is a long-term strategy, China is proving it can scale its computing infrastructure right now using entirely domestic technology. At the WAIC, State-backed server manufacturer Sugon announced the completion of the Sugon 8000, the country's first fully domestically developed AI computing cluster operating at a massive 100,000-accelerator scale.

Wang Shengyong, vice-president of Sugon, said the significance of the project extends beyond its size. "A 100,000-card cluster is no longer just a machine — it's an entire computing system. From AI processors and high-speed interconnects to system software, the platform was built on domestically developed technologies, underscoring China's push to reduce reliance on foreign computing infrastructure," he said.

The nation is also looking beyond Earth. In Shanghai, officials debuted the first satellite constellation under its flagship orbital initiative, the Star Nexus. The ultimate goal is a sprawling constellation of 1,000 spacecraft designed for "space-data-space-compute" architectures, utilizing outer space for superior heat dissipation and lower power costs.