AAC TECH (02018) signs with Intel, these are more noteworthy

It is understood that recently, at the Intel Technology Innovation Summit, AAC TECH (02018) signed an agreement with Intel. The two parties officially announced a liquid cooling ecosystem partnership. The cooperation list is extensive, spanning CPU cold plates, memory and SSD liquid cooling components, UQD/QD quick connectors, manifolds, and CDUs (coolant distribution units), extending all the way to complete rack-level liquid cooling solutions for entire machine nodes. (AAC TECH Group Executive Director Richard Mok and Intel Data Center Group Vice President and China General Manager Chen Baoli signed the cooperation agreement) In simple terms, a CPU cold plate is a dedicated "water cooling patch" for AI chips, specifically designed to rapidly dissipate heat and cool high-power AI chips; a CDU is the core hub of the entire liquid cooling system, equivalent to a data center's "pump room," responsible for overall water circulation and temperature control scheduling; and precision components such as UQD quick connectors and manifolds are the leak-proof structures and water transport pathways of the liquid cooling system, effectively mitigating leakage risks and ensuring long-term, stable operation of the entire liquid cooling system. The complete coverage of the full suite of core hardware sufficiently demonstrates Intel's full recognition of AAC TECH's full-stack liquid cooling support capabilities. In fact, AAC TECH itself is a global leading thermal management company. In consumer electronics, the company's VC vapor chambers have long remained in the global top tier. In 2025, its thermal management business revenue reached 1.67 billion yuan, a significant year-on-year increase of 410.9%; in the first half of 2026, revenue reached 1.1 billion yuan, once again surging 400% year-on-year. The Apple iPhone 17 Pro series adopted VC vapor chambers for the first time, and the supplier is AAC TECH. In October 2025, Apple Chief Operating Officer Sabih Khan visited China for the first time, making a special trip to AAC TECH's Changzhou production base; during the 2026 Chain Expo, Apple once again invited AAC TECH to exhibit jointly. This level of partnership recognition is rare among Apple's global supply chain vendors. In the liquid cooling computing power sector, since acquiring Yuandi Technology, AAC TECH has successfully completed its leap from mobile phone consumer electronics thermal management to the server liquid cooling track, filling in the key shortcomings of its computing power thermal management business. Its 2.2MW and 2.6MW large-megawatt-class CDU products have achieved large-scale mass production, with monthly capacity stable at over 600 units, and full-scale global batch delivery has commenced. According to the company's management guidance at its earnings call, the liquid cooling business targets revenue of approximately 200 million yuan in 2026, and revenue scale is expected to challenge the 1 billion yuan threshold in 2027. Currently, AAC TECH's liquid cooling business has ranked among the top three in China's AI server liquid cooling market. This signing with Intel further highlights the company's long-term "ambitions." Its deeper value lies primarily in three core dimensions: First, AAC TECH occupies a differentiated ecosystem positioning, with full-chain delivery capability from components to subsystem integration. Unlike players that only possess technology and capacity in a single segment, AAC TECH has scarce full-stack capabilities, with core hardware such as cold plates, quick connectors, manifolds, and CDUs all independently developed and produced in-house, placing it among system-level solution providers. For downstream system integrators, there is no need to coordinate with multiple suppliers for repeated joint debugging, effectively avoiding high-frequency industry issues and significantly reducing project implementation and O&M costs. Second, solution validation follows Intel's unified technical standards, opening up platform-level certification channels. All testing specifications and reliability standards adopt Intel's unified technical system, becoming a core competitive advantage for subsequent expansion into overseas ODMs and global computing power projects. For server OEM manufacturers and leading cloud providers, hardware products that have passed joint validation through the Intel platform can significantly compress testing cycles and reduce validation costs, substantially enhancing AAC TECH's core advantages in global system project bidding. Third, access to top-tier ecosystem resources opens up business incremental space with high certainty and a high ceiling. Currently, the global liquid cooling data center industry has entered a period of rapid expansion. In 2026, the domestic liquid cooling data center market size exceeded 23 billion yuan, and the global liquid cooling data center market size exceeds 110 billion yuan, with enormous growth potential. In China's overall server market, servers equipped with Intel XEON hold more than half the share. AAC TECH's inclusion in Intel's ecosystem supplier candidate pool is expected to rapidly achieve large-scale incremental revenue. At the same time, the company is following the going-global trend to support global computing power projects, and combined with overseas local business expansion, this further raises the overall growth ceiling. The market's traditional perception of AAC TECH is concentrated in the mobile phone consumer electronics hardware sector. In recent years, AAC TECH has accelerated its strategic upgrade, transforming into an AI perception infrastructure supplier, forming a business structure that advances on dual tracks: computing power infrastructure and consumer terminals. Currently, AI-related businesses such as thermal management, high-speed optical communications, and humanoid Siasun Robot&Automation, as well as new business segments including XR optics and automotive acoustics, have become core DRIVEs of the company's revenue growth. According to the company's performance plan, the overall revenue scale of new businesses is expected to reach 8-9 billion yuan in 2027, continuously delivering long-term stable performance increments for the enterprise. Server liquid cooling is precisely a key component of the new businesses on the computing power side. This ecosystem cooperation with Intel is essentially another landmark milestone in the cross-track deployment of AAC Technologies' precision manufacturing capabilities. From this perspective, the deep business transformation underway at AAC TECH may have more long-term research value than the single news item of "partnering with Intel."