(Yicai) July 19 - Yicai Media Group, China’s leading financial media group, announced on the sidelines of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) that it will launch its first commodity index covering the AI industrial chain within this year, helping industries control costs and hedge risks.

The index is being jointly developed by Yicai, Shanghai Huazheng Index Information Service Co., and Shanghai Kingstar Fintech Co. The index system and product design have been completed, with the official release scheduled for later this year.

The inaugural index focuses on the AI industrial chain and comprises two segments — an AI price index and an AI cost index — spanning commodities across the upstream and downstream of the chain. The price segment includes a computing power price index and a token price index. The cost segment features raw-material cost indices built around four industrial chains: AI chip manufacturing, data center construction, liquid cooling support, and computing power–electricity coordination, covering dozens of core commodities such as copper, silicon, lithium, aluminum, and energy.

Since its founding 23 years ago, Yicai has been deeply engaged in the commodity and capital markets. It has built connections with thousands of market participants nationwide, including cloud service providers, large-model companies, and computing power bases, laying a solid industrial foundation for the index's development.

Yang Yudong, Chief Editor of Yicai Media Group, said the new index system will draw on Yicai's cross-platform media reach and credibility to provide the market with fair and authoritative industrial price benchmarks, while offering technology innovators and financial institutions standardized solutions for cost monitoring and risk hedging. He noted that this marks Yicai's transformation from a financial content provider into an ecosystem-driven, value-empowering industry platform.

Wu Bin, Chairman of Kingstar Fintech, said launching the commodity index at this juncture is a forward-looking move that aligns with the trend toward financialization in the AI industry. "Establishing a more scientific and transparent price discovery mechanism around new factors of production, such as computing power and data, is an essential foundation for advancing the industry and enhancing its global influence," he said. He added that the index system will support China in building a pricing system for emerging industries with its own distinctive characteristics, thereby strengthening the country's pricing influence in the digital economy.

Liu Zhong, Chairman of Huazheng Index, said that while the direction of the AI industry's development is clear, the specific path is still taking shape through exploration, trial, and error, meaning uncertainties remain. "We hope these indices will, on the one hand, provide timely readings of price levels and trends for core AI production factors and costs in key segments, and on the other hand, offer companies suitable, actionable risk management tools to help them operate steadily amid the AI wave," he said.

In terms of application, AI technology companies, computing power providers, and data centers can use the index to monitor fluctuations in computing power, token, and raw-material prices to hedge against cyclical risks. Traditional manufacturers and new energy companies can draw on the industrial profit index to gauge business conditions and optimize investment decisions. The index will also help industrial capital capture cycles in emerging sectors, provide futures companies and financial institutions with a new vehicle to serve the industry, and strengthen China's voice in the global pricing of digital assets.