9 days surge of 100%! Henan Energy State-Owned Enterprise 9.4 billion cross-province computing power race

**Written by | Shushu                             **Edited by | Xiaolan

**→**This is the 1925th original article in Global Zero Carbon

A 9.4 billion yuan acquisition has placed a thermal power state-owned enterprise at the core of the computing power race.

On March 20, Henan’s publicly listed state-owned enterprise—Yu Energy Holding—released an announcement saying it plans to increase capital by 1.1 billion yuan using its own funds into Ascend Computing (Henan) Technology Co., Ltd., holding 42.29%. Its controlling shareholder, Henan Investment Group, will increase capital by 1.4 billion yuan, holding 57.71%. At the same time, both parties will use Ascend Computing as the main vehicle to acquire 91.2% of the equity of Zhengzhou Heying by a total consideration of 70k yuan.

Yu Energy Holding clearly stated that its main goal is to indirectly take a stake in and invest in Zhengzhou Heying, which engages in third-party ultra-large-scale data center business through Ascend Computing.

It is worth noting that the data centers of Zhengzhou Heying are mainly located in Zhangjiakou and Langfang in Hebei—these two places are precisely the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei hub nodes of the national “East Data, West Computing” project.

In other words, this Henan energy state-owned enterprise, whose main business is thermal power, is crossing provincial borders to seize computing power resources in China’s most core locations. So why would traditional thermal power companies invest in a computing power industry that is completely unrelated?

01

Catching a ride on the “power-computing coordination” tailwind

From Yu Energy Holding’s announcement, the answer is already there. The announcement explicitly stated that for power companies, in the future, there is substantial uncertainty regarding power consumption and electricity price trends. Therefore, it is urgent to extend downstream toward load-side demand and cultivate a stable “base” for electricity use.

This is almost the anxiety shared by all power generation enterprises. From 2021 onward, in 2025, the combined installed capacity of China’s wind power and solar power reached 1.84 billion kilowatts, accounting for 47% of the nation’s total installed power capacity—historically surpassing thermal power. While scale has been surging at a wild pace, the lagging ability to absorb power, together with market-oriented reform, has jointly squeezed the profit space of power enterprises.

Taking Yu Energy Holding as an example, from 2021 to 2024, the company’s cumulative losses exceeded 4 billion yuan, and only in 2025 did it expect to return to profitability, achieving net profit of more than 300 million yuan.

Against this backdrop, one key for traditional power generators to stabilize performance going forward is to lock in sustainable electricity demand. Data centers and computing power are precisely the highest-quality electricity-use scenarios at present, and also a new growth point for the power industry.

In the past, data centers were “electricity tigers”—they only consumed electricity. Now, future computing power clusters need to change from “pure consumers” of the power system into “coordinators” that participate in grid regulation.

This is the “power-computing coordination” written into the government work report this year. It has been explicitly listed as a new infrastructure project and made part of the state strategic deployment.

As demand for computing power continues to rise, the load pressure borne by the power grid is also increasing. Power-computing coordination, however, can schedule computing power tasks to regions with lower power loads, achieving “let computing power follow electricity,” thereby easing pressure on energy consumption caused by computing power and improving overall system efficiency.

At the China Development High-Level Forum 2026 annual meeting on March 23, Liu Ruilong, Director of the National Data Bureau, further emphasized again that China will vigorously promote the power-computing coordination project, ensuring that the share of green electricity applications for newly built computing power facilities at hub nodes reaches 80% or above, maximizing the supporting role of green power.

Against this backdrop, for regions that have a foundation in power resources and also want to take on the computing power industry, seizing computing power resources is becoming a new competitive direction.

For example, Yichang—home to the two major hydropower projects of the Three Gorges and Gezhouba—an area rich in clean energy, has already called for building a “computing power capital.” In addition to local governments, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) has also clearly stated that central enterprises should increase their investment in computing power and promote coordinated development of “computing power + electricity,” strengthening the foundation for the artificial intelligence industry.

In this round of deployment, Henan moved first. Through Yu Energy Holding, the province’s only listed integrated energy platform, it acquired data center assets at the core nodes of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. This not only gains computing power resources across regions, but also seeks new outlets for its own power consumption capacity.

As Yu Energy Holding stated in its announcement: by taking a stake in Ascend Computing and investing in computing power infrastructure, it will connect the electricity-use chain of “generation—sales—use.” This can effectively hedge risks related to electricity volume and electricity price fluctuations, enabling efficient coordination between its power main business and the load-side. It will also have a positive role in supporting the company’s high-quality, sustainable development.

02

A 100% surge in 9 days—valuation logic changes

In fact, energy companies like Yu Energy Holding that have stable power resources already possess a natural advantage for extending into computing power services in this wave of “power-computing coordination” as new infrastructure.

Wang Jian, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said: “Actually, power and computing power share a common thing—peaks and valleys in supply and demand. If these peaks and valleys can be well coordinated, the energy needed by computing power can be greatly optimized. Many designs of energy infrastructure may also be reconsidered.”

Financial experts also believe that if traditional power companies enter computing power infrastructure, their valuation logic will switch from the low price-to-earnings “public utility” model to the high price-to-earnings “technology growth” model.

Previously, the key signal that several energy central SOEs were heavily investing in Xinjiang also points to computing power. It can both deliver the cheapest green electricity nationwide to eastern AI businesses and raise the companies’ own technology valuations.

The National Development and Reform Commission recently disclosed that it will advance key areas such as the “six networks” including the power grid and the computing power network, “artificial intelligence +,” and education and healthcare. This year, preliminary estimates put total investment at over 70 trillion yuan.

Within this grand narrative, market sentiment has also been quickly ignited. Since Yu Energy Holding disclosed in early February that it was planning to take a stake in Zhengzhou Heying, the stock surged 100% in 9 days. It was then halted for trading and became a very popular “computing power bull stock” on the A-share market.

However, this announcement did not clarify the specific commercial coordination model. People in the industry speculate that its future path may be related to an “integrated approach to source-grid-load-storage.”

Henan is the first province nationwide to systematically promote the integrated “source-grid-load-storage” model. As of January 2026, Henan has published the list of sixteen batches of integrated “source-grid-load-storage” projects, totaling more than 800 projects. According to Henan’s plan, by 2027, the province plans to implement 1,000 integrated “source-grid-load-storage” projects cumulatively.

Among them, in the “Implementation Plan for Accelerating the Integrated Development of Source-Grid-Load-Storage in Henan Province” issued at the end of 2024, it has already clearly stated that data centers should be included in key application scenarios.

From the current perspective, the power-computing coordination industry chain has formed a closed-loop full-chain coordination pattern: “source—grid—load—storage—computing.” Zhang Zhen, Chief Economist at Jinguang Securities, said that under this new model, coordinated development among these industries will generate market incremental growth on a scale of at least 1 trillion yuan.

However, whether Yu Energy Holding can get a share of the opportunity in this computing power industrial chain investment remains unknown.

The announcement shows that, from the perspective of the transaction structure, Yu Energy Holding will only take a stake in Ascend Computing and will not consolidate Ascend Computing’s financial statements. It will not participate in the specific operations of Ascend Computing. At the same time, intensified competition in the data center industry and improved cost controls may lead to a decline in IDC gross margins, creating operational risks.

From the standpoint of its own financial situation, Yu Energy Holding’s funding pressure also cannot be ignored. Based on the past three annual reports, the company’s asset-liability ratios were 86.89%, 88.72%, and 89.02%, respectively, and have been steadily rising. Although it has expanded financing channels through issuing medium-term notes and advancing private placements, the overall cash situation remains tight. In this context, large-scale external investment will undoubtedly further increase financial leverage.

This cross-industry layout is both a transformation opportunity and a game of risk.

Source:

[1] Shanhé Capital Circle: Yu Energy Holding plans a cross-industry move into computing power—major integration of computing power assets in Henan!

[2] Polaris Electric Power Network: Power generation giants team up with state-owned assets teams to plan an acquisition of nearly 10 billion yuan of a computing power company!

[3] China Securities Journal: A double-digit bull stock, big move! Laying out “power-computing coordination”

[4] Economic Observer: Behind Yu Energy Holding’s 7 consecutive daily limit-ups: a 1.4 billion yuan bet on transforming into computing power

[5] Mago Energy Channel: Big acquisition! This Henan state-owned thermal power plant is rushing to catch a ride