China Unicom bets big on AI after sound financial performance

China Unicom will fully embrace artificial intelligence to upgrade its business, and it plans a 28 percent year-on-year increase in computing power expenditure this year, said its chairman.

The remarks came after China Unicon announced robust financial results for 2024 on Tuesday. Net profit rose 10.5 percent year-on-year to 9.03 billion yuan ($1.25 billion), while revenue grew 4.6 percent to 389.6 billion yuan.

The company outlined ambitious plans to invest approximately 55 billion yuan in fixed assets in 2025.

During the 2024 earnings briefing In Hong Kong on Tuesday, Chen Zhongyue, chairman of China Unicom, emphasized the company's strategic pivot toward AI integration. "China Unicom will fully embrace AI to upgrade our cloud computing business, enabling integrated operations of intelligent computing (AI-driven) and general computing. By combining AI model training, inference, and cluster scheduling capabilities, we aim to deliver flexible, one-stop AI services for customers," Chen said.

Despite a 17 percent year-on-year decline in total 2024 capital expenditures to 61.37 billion, computing-related investments climbed 19 percent. This reflects China Unicom's aggressive push to upgrade internet data centers into AI-optimized data centers, amid surging demand for generative AI and large language model infrastructure.

With AI-driven infrastructure as its focal point, China Unicom aims to cement its role in China's booming intelligent computing sector while balancing profitability and innovation. The company's targeted investments and cost optimization measures position it to capitalize on the next wave of digital transformation, China Unicom said.

China Unicom stands out as the only major Chinese telecom operator to achieve double-digit net profit growth for three consecutive years. According to Wind Info, a financial data provider, its R&D expense ratio increased steadily from 2022 to 2024, while sales and management expense ratios declined to 9.49 percent and 6.01 percent, respectively.

China Unicom's shares surged 16.94 percent year-to-date as of March 18.