CITIC Securities: AI Industry Focus Shifts to Inference and Monetization, Sees Structural Opportunities

36Kr reports that a CITIC Securities research note states that recent initiatives by model providers such as Anthropic and OpenAI to slow down advancements in frontier capabilities have triggered significant market volatility and widespread discussion. CITIC Securities analyzes the event, noting it is unrelated to the moral scruples of the two founders but rather reflects shrewd business calculations and current operational challenges faced by leading model providers. Rising regulatory costs are more beneficial for top-tier model firms, while the disconnect between model progress and application deployment puts sustained pressure on these leaders regarding market positioning and monetization. It is expected that industry regulation will gradually improve in the future, prompting leading model companies to focus more on application deployment to balance financial pressures. The firm maintains a bullish outlook on structural opportunities in CSPs, platform software vendors, and hardware semiconductors as the AI industry's focus shifts toward inference and monetization.