(Yicai) Aug. 4 -- Hongxin Electronics Technology Group's stock rose after the Chinese flexible printed circuit boards supplier said it plans to invest CNY12.8 billion (USD1.8 billion) to build a new artificial intelligence computing center to meet soaring demand across various industries.

Hongxin Electronics [SHE: 300657] closed 4.9 percent higher at CNY30.69 (USD4.26) a share today. The broader Shenzhen market climbed 0.5 percent.

Hongxin Electronics' subsidiary has inked a deal with the government of Qingyang in China's northern Gansu province to invest in and construct the AI data center either solely or in collaboration with ecosystem partners, the Xiamen-based parent company announced late on Aug. 1.

The project will be built in phases and include a high-performance intelligent computing center with an operational capacity of no less than 40,000 PFlops, a high-performance server assembly base supporting large language model training and inference, and several other computing power-related projects, including a high-performance computing research institute, Hongxin Electronics noted.

Qingyang is one of China's eight national computing power hubs and is a core development area for the computing power business of Hongxin Electronics, which has previously invested in and constructed projects in the city. The local aggregated computing power exceeded 50,000 PFlops as of the end of last year and will likely top 100,000 PFlops by the end of this year and 300,000 PFlops by the end of 2026.

Last September, Hongxin Electronics said it had teamed up with China Mobile's Gansu branch to build an AI data center in Qingyang, boasting abundant green energy resources, with operational capacity exceeding 3,000 PFlops. It has also allied with the local branch of China Telecom to build a 2,000 PFlops computing power center in the city.

Editor: Martin Kadiev