As the global race for artificial intelligence supremacy accelerates, the industry’s most formidable bottleneck is shifting from silicon to the socket. Hou Jinlong, a director at Huawei and President of Huawei Digital Energy, recently underscored this reality at the 2026 Global AIDC Industry Forum. He predicted that the installation scale of Artificial Intelligence Data Centers (AIDCs) will continue to see explosive growth as massive models and intelligent agents move toward large-scale deployment.
Hou’s central thesis—that "the end of computing power is electricity"—serves as a stark reminder that the digital frontier remains tethered to physical infrastructure. For companies like Huawei, the AIDC is no longer merely a storage facility but a "computing power production system." In this new paradigm, the speed of delivery and the reliability of the power supply are directly correlated with investment returns and business viability.
To sustain this trajectory, Hou argues for a fundamental overhaul of how data centers are powered and cooled. He advocated for a transition toward high-voltage, direct-current (DC) architectures and the widespread adoption of power electronics. These upgrades are essential to support the ultra-high-density loads required by modern AI training, which traditional power grids are currently ill-equipped to handle.
Furthermore, liquid cooling has transitioned from a high-end luxury to an absolute necessity for high-density computing. As thermal loads reach the limits of air-cooled systems, Huawei is positioning itself as a leader in high-reliability liquid cooling and intelligent lifecycle maintenance. This strategic pivot highlights Huawei’s ambition to dominate the "digital energy" space, ensuring that the AI revolution does not stall due to an outdated electrical backbone.