Finance · AI
HONG KONG, Sept 22, 2026 - China’s new energy and AI infrastructure sectors have recently reached a notable convergence. PJ Millennium I Limited and PJ Millennium II Limited, wholly owned subsidiaries of PJ Millennium Limited Partnership — whose general partner is Lochpine BG I GP Limited, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Lochpine Capital Limited, a non-controlled, non-consolidated affiliate of Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Limited (“CATL”, 300750.SZ / 03750.HK) — have completed a strategic investment in VNET Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: VNET), one of China’s leading carrier- and cloud-neutral internet data center services providers. The transaction closed on September 21, 2026. Upon closing, the buyers have become VNET’s largest shareholder, holding an approximately 38.1% equity stake in the Company.
The terms of the agreement include a two-year voting and consortium alignment between the companies, providing continuity in VNET’s governance and management while maintaining its strategic direction and operational momentum. The two companies have also entered into a strategic cooperation agreement, aimed at deeper collaboration across operations, technology and ecosystem development, as they jointly pursue the rapidly emerging compute-energy integration market.
Mr. Josh Sheng Chen, Founder and Executive Chairperson of VNET, said:
“We are pleased to welcome CATL as a new strategic investor and sincerely thank them for their strong support of VNET and our long-term vision. Looking ahead, we will work closely together to deepen collaboration across technology, infrastructure and supply chain capabilities, jointly drive foundational and full-chain innovation in the next-generation AIDC industry, advance innovation in integrated compute-energy systems, and contribute to the development of next-generation digital energy infrastructure for the intelligent era.”
As VNET positions itself as an infrastructure provider for the AI inference era, its alignment with CATL at both ownership and business levels has attracted significant market attention. A key question has therefore emerged: why did CATL choose VNET as a major ecosystem partner in its push towards compute-energy integration'
According to Frost & Sullivan, VNET’s carrier-neutral data center services revenue is growing faster than the broader China market. Its wholesale data center segment has demonstrated particularly strong year-on-year growth, ranking first among China’s scaled carrier-neutral data center service providers. By retail data center services revenue, VNET ranked No. 1 in 2025, with a 12.3% market share.
This combination of growth and market share highlights the strength of VNET’s market position. The Company has also developed competitive advantages across resource reserves, project delivery, customer relationships and access to capital markets — capabilities that have helped lay the foundation for this strategic partnership.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Asian Leaders Forum, VNET’s senior management highlighted that the Company’s deep commitment to the Chinese market has enabled it to capture a significant share of incremental customer demand over the past two to three years, while maintaining industry-leading delivery capability. This capability will help support the Company’s international ambitions, given the overseas growth of Chinese enterprise customers.
At the forum, management summarized VNET’s core competitive advantages across four strategic pillars:
First, the Company has secured abundant power-backed resources in regions with relatively low electricity costs.
Second, it has demonstrated strong project delivery capabilities, taking approximately 12 to 18 months from greenfield development to delivery.
Third, it has established deep relationships with a global network of approximately 7,000 enterprise customers.
Fourth, as a US-listed company, VNET benefits from diversified financing channels and solid credit ratings.
The Three-Layer Power-Compute Architecture: A Comprehensive Strategic Blueprint
Moving forward, the two companies are now focused on translating their comprehensive strategic partnership into an actionable industrial blueprint: a three-layer architecture comprising “Gigawatt-Scale Compute-Energy Facilities + Distributed Compute-Energy Networks + Tokenized Energy Attribute Certificates”.
Using this blueprint, the companies will jointly develop a three-layer power-compute system designed to build a nationwide network with global reach, aiming to shape the digital energy infrastructure landscape in the AI era.
1. Gigawatt-Scale Compute-Energy Facilities: The Energy Backbone for Hyperscale AIDCs
By combining CATL’s full-stack energy technologies and energy storage systems (ESS) with VNET’s proven AIDC execution capabilities, the partnership aims to develop next-generation hyperscale campuses designed around power-compute integration from the outset.
Rather than building the data center first and adding power infrastructure later, the approach is to plan computing and energy capacity in parallel from the beginning.
2. Distributed Compute-Energy Networks: City-Level Edge Infrastructure
The second layer focuses on city-level edge infrastructure, directly supporting the strategic deployment of China’s “Six National Compute Networks” and addressing growing demand from smart-city AI applications and localized inference.
By extending beyond mega-scale campuses, the partnership aims to expand into city-level edge infrastructure while promoting standardized product design and greater commercial scalability.
3. Tokenized Energy Attribute Certificates: Commercial Model Innovation
The third layer focuses on commercial model innovation. By leveraging digitized, auditable environmental attribute certificates as a value-transfer mechanism, this framework enables traceable alignment between compliant computing assets, renewable electricity procurement and related energy attributes.
In essence, the model aims to establish a more transparent and verifiable framework linking computing capacity with renewable power and related environmental attributes, supporting future settlement, reporting and optimization of integrated compute-energy operations.
For VNET, the three-layer system represents more than a strategic framework — it provides an execution roadmap for its upgraded “dual-engine” strategy. Gigawatt-scale facilities anchor hyperscale campuses, distributed networks extend coverage to city-level computing, and digital energy-attribute management may, over time, support better traceability, optimization and utilization of green-energy resources.
Together, these three layers support VNET’s transformation from a pure-play IDC operator towards an AI-native integrated compute-energy infrastructure platform.
The Company believes that the entry of a major strategic industrial investor will materially influence institutional perceptions of its risk and growth potential, its financing capabilities, its operational stability and its medium- to long-term expansion pipeline.
With CATL’s strategic backing and the rollout of VNET’s three-layer compute-energy architecture, investor focus is increasingly shifting from the Company’s traditional IDC identity toward its broader role in next-generation AI infrastructure. Still, market recognition is likely to depend not only on strategic narrative, but also on measurable operating delivery.
That operating foundation is already beginning to show. In Q2 2026, VNET reported total net revenue of RMB2.78 billion, up 14.2% year-on-year, with the wholesale segment remaining the key growth driver as its revenue rose 29.3% to RMB1.10 billion.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 25.4% year-on-year to RMB920 million, while adjusted cash gross profit rose 9.4% to RMB1.16 billion. The adjusted EBITDA margin expanded by 3.0 percentage points year-on-year to 33.0%. Adjusted net income reached RMB7.38 million, representing a return to profitability compared with the same period last year.
CATL provides more than capital. Its participation brings expertise and capabilities in energy technologies that are increasingly important to the next phase of AI data center development.
As AI infrastructure evolves, competitive differentiation is moving beyond basic capacity toward integrated capabilities in power access, energy efficiency, cooling, and long-term operational reliability. In that context, the partnership may strengthen VNET’s ability to participate in the next wave of high-quality infrastructure demand.
Notably, several major international investment banks — including Goldman Sachs, HSBC and Morgan Stanley — have recently taken a positive view of VNET.
In its latest report dated 3 September, Goldman Sachs reiterated its Buy rating and set a US$14.00 price target. Morgan Stanley, holding an Overweight rating, also set a US$14.00 target price, while HSBC set its target at US$14.10.
Goldman Sachs noted that VNET is expected to secure approximately 1.0–1.1GW of wholesale orders for the full year, while its 500MW overseas resource deployment continues to progress, supported by disciplined financing and potential additional synergies from CATL’s strategic investment. Goldman Sachs also expects VNET’s wholesale IDC business to deliver a 2025–2028 revenue and EBITDA CAGR of 37%–38%, highlighting the potential for continued growth driven by AI infrastructure demand and further reassessment of the Company’s valuation.
Morgan Stanley maintains its Overweight rating on VNET, setting a US$14 price target, noting that VNET is poised for accelerating EBITDA growth starting from 3Q26, backed by its solid order backlog of 862MW and 3.6GW of available domestic resource capacity. The firm expects capacity deliveries to pick up meaningfully in 2H26, with disciplined overseas expansion plans to mitigate near-term capex risks.
From industrial synergies to potential valuation re-rating, VNET’s positioning within the compute-energy integration landscape is attracting increasing attention from the investment community.
On one side, CATL is expanding its role from a battery supplier towards becoming a broader infrastructure partner for the AI era. On the other, VNET is pursuing a strategic transformation from a third-party IDC operator towards an AI-native, next-generation digital energy infrastructure provider.
The two companies’ strategic trajectories are therefore converging at a pivotal point in the development of AI infrastructure. For VNET, the partnership provides more than additional capital: it creates opportunities for deeper integration across green power, energy storage technologies and global energy networks, potentially strengthening its competitive position as the AI infrastructure market continues to evolve.
Sep 22 · 10:00·ACN Newswire