{"text":[[{"start":7.75,"text":"As the fuel behind the explosive growth of AI, data is transforming itself from a business input into a financial asset."}],[{"start":16.45,"text":"That’s the assumption behind a strategic partnership between a Chinese provider of data solutions and a state-run platform that aims to promote the trading of datasets as a commodity within the digital economy."}],[{"start":28.4,"text":"Shenzhen Xunce Technology Co. Ltd. (3317.HK) supplies data systems and analytics to businesses, including AI-powered data agents that can act on the information they process. The company announced on April 12 it had linked up with the Shenzhen Data Exchange to develop what it called a service framework for “data assetization”, the process of turning data into marketable assets."}],[{"start":54.65,"text":"The partners also agreed to work on harnessing data and AI to drive growth across sectors, to push for data assets to be logged on balance sheets and to foster high-quality data standards and scenarios for robotics, autonomous driving and smart devices."}],[{"start":70.6,"text":"Investors welcomed the tie-up, sending Xunce’s shares 15.61% higher in the first session after the announcement. The closing price of HK$358.4 was more than six times the company’s IPO price from December last year, capping a steady rise in market enthusiasm."}],[{"start":89.94999999999999,"text":"Founded in 2016, Xunce initially focused on building real-time data infrastructure for financial institutions. As a former executive in the China team at the Royal Bank of Scotland, founder Liu Zhijian leveraged his experience to tap into the data processing needs of asset managers, gaining traction with low-latency data integration."}],[{"start":112.44999999999999,"text":"As the technology matured, the company expanded from processing data to offering cloud-based asset management and data analytics to support risk control, investment decisions and compliance. Around 2023, Xunce folded large language models into its upgraded system, adding agent functions that can take actions based on data analysis."}],[{"start":132.5,"text":"Closing the loop"}],[{"start":134.1,"text":"China requires data to circulate within a compliance framework, where exchanges serve a market role and a regulatory purpose. The Shenzhen Data Exchange, set up by the Shenzhen municipal government, provides functions such as confirming data rights, reviewing compliance, setting pricing mechanisms and matching transactions."}],[{"start":153.5,"text":"For Xunce, the partnership offers an opportunity to complete its value chain. In the past, the company focused on collecting, cleaning and analyzing data. Working together with the exchange, it could now be involved in turning data from an internal corporate resource into a priced and tradable asset."}],[{"start":171.25,"text":"This comes as AI applications are shifting towards inference and real-world deployment, and corporations are placing more emphasis on efficiency and cost. In this process, Xunce supplies data fuel within the AI ecosystem, converting previously hard-to-use internal enterprise data into standardized digital units."}],[{"start":191,"text":"Xunce is in a rapid expansion phase. Its revenues doubled in 2025 to 1.29 billion yuan ($188 million), although its gross margin fell to 61.7% from 76.7% in 2024, as its client base expanded from financial institutions to industries such as power, energy and manufacturing, and its products moved from high-margin technology toward larger-scale industrial deployment."}],[{"start":219.45,"text":"The firm’s net loss widened slightly to 94.06 million yuan last year, while its adjusted loss narrowed by nearly a third to 54.85 million yuan. Full-year R&D expenses reached 616 million yuan, equivalent to nearly half of revenue, and were mainly invested in AI infrastructure and applications aimed at sectors such as robotics and assisted driving."}],[{"start":246,"text":"Xunce revenues accelerated sharply from just 198 million yuan in the first half of last year to 1.09 billion yuan in the last two quarters, suggesting a jump in enterprise demand for AI applications."}],[{"start":261.35,"text":"At the same time, the company is shifting from a project- and subscription-based business model to a pricing and revenue-sharing system more closely linked to customer usage, via tokens. That means Xunce’s revenues could rise if customers scale up their AI applications."}],[{"start":278.65000000000003,"text":"As for market value, Xunce currently trades at a price-to-sales ratio of about 63 times, way above the 2.6 times for AI solutions provider Phancy Group (6682.HK) but still below the multiple of around 73 for U.S.-listed data services giant Palantir (PLTR.US). The market appears to benchmark Xunce against data platform companies rather than AI software firms, factoring in the potential for scalability in the future."}],[{"start":310.1,"text":"However, Xunce still only turns over around 1 billion yuan a year. With the latest rally, the market has already priced in upbeat expectations, although it remains to be seen whether data assetization and trading can be fully realized. With that in mind, investors may want to proceed with caution."}],[{"start":337.55,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1776744266_4221.mp3"}