(Yicai) March 11 -- Shares of Watertek Information Technology surged by the exchange-imposed daily trading limit after the Chinese information technology firm said it plan to enter the artificial intelligence computing service business.

Watertek [SHE: 300324] closed 20 percent up at CNY3.29 (46 US cents) in Shenzhen today.

Watertek will invest CNY100 million (USD14 million) to set up an AI computing service subsidiary to promote its transformation into an intelligent service provider from digital service provider, the Beijing-based company announced late on March 8.

The new unit’s business will cover the investment in and operation of supercomputing centers, the integration, operation, and maintenance of related systems, computing equipment trading and leasing, and other investment businesses related to the computing power industry, Watertek added.

China has large general-purpose computing power but lacks intelligent computing power, therefore it will have to build many intelligent computing, supercomputing, and cloud computing centers in the future, which will provide many opportunities for the company, Watertek noted.

Watertek’s business transformation still faces challenges. The firm has been in the red since 2020. It logged a net loss of CNY590 million in 2022 and expects the figure to have narrowed to between CNY197 million and CNY394 million in 2023.

Editor: Futura Costaglione