"Lobster Bull Stock" Hits the Brakes After 5 Consecutive Gains, "Computing Power" Trump Card Delayed

Introduction: UCloud, which has suffered losses for six consecutive years, what can it use to win the “Cloud Shrimp Farming” battle?

From the Geek Circle’s Super AIAgent to nationwide “shrimp farming,” in just 10 days, OpenClaw has achieved a remarkable leap from “explosive popularity on GitHub → nationwide lobster farming → the strongest mainline in the stock market.” However, after this brief frenzy, many users began to feel “betrayed” by this lobster.

Many individual users suffered “lobster” attacks, with their personal computer data wiped out, payment accounts abused, and huge expenses incurred; even more users were deterred by the high costs of “shrimp farming,” with daily expenses reaching hundreds or even thousands of yuan. For engineers, programmers, and others who need to call on tokens extensively, the costs are simply unaffordable.

In this wave of “lobster fever,” cloud service providers undoubtedly benefit the most. Relying on the logic of “computing power + scenarios + commercialization,” “cloud shrimp farming” has proven to be the most convenient, safe, and profitable “shrimp farming model.”

Under the “lobster concept,” cloud vendors’ stock prices and computing costs have surged. For example, according to “Cailian Press,” Tencent Cloud announced on March 11 that some models’ billing rates had been increased, with prices now up to five times the original.

In the capital markets, the most watched “lobster concept stocks,” UCloud-W (688158.SH), have risen for five consecutive trading days since March 4. On March 6, March 9, and March 10, their cumulative increase exceeded 42.55%, with a total market value surpassing 20 billion yuan.

After continuous gains, the “lobster concept stocks” experienced a correction on March 11. Kunlun Wanwei, Shunwang Technology, MegSmart, and MINIMAX-WP all saw varying degrees of decline, and some listed companies issued risk warnings. UCloud openly admitted in its risk warning that “the company’s lightweight cloud host products based on OpenClaw images have not yet formed a scaled product system.”

However, UCloud’s stock price did not fall sharply, only decreasing slightly by 0.76%. On that day, trading volume still reached 5.546 billion yuan, with a turnover rate of 26.95%.

Despite the frenzy of capital chasing the “lobster concept,” it is essential to see through the true face of this “neutral cloud vendor.” Compared to industry giants like Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, and Volcano Engine, UCloud’s market appears quite “niche.”

But what is worth noting is that UCloud still has a trump card: “computing and electricity collaboration.” However, this card is not yet fully formed.

UCloud is positioned as part of the “East Data” intelligent computing center project in Qingpu, Shanghai. Originally scheduled for completion by January 24, 2026, it has recently announced a two-year delay to January 24, 2028. In the trend of AI heatwaves, whether the project will catch the industry peak or miss the peak in the next two years may serve as another benchmark to test UCloud’s “quality.”

Six Years of Losses, This “Lobster Stock” Has to Hit the Brakes

UCloud has been hailed as a “lobster concept stock,” related to its interaction with investors on March 2.

On that day, UCloud responded to investors that in late January, it was among the first in the industry to deploy OpenClaw images, becoming one of the first vendors to realize OpenClaw cloud deployment. Its related services are now online in the US, Singapore, Japan, and other overseas nodes, helping users quickly build “7×24-hour personal AI super assistants.”

Soon after, the “lobster farming” craze broke out, and UCloud’s early release of information about “plug-and-play” OpenClaw and being among the first to realize “cloud lobster farming” caused its stock to rise continuously, rewarding investors with a big gain.

On March 9, UCloud hit a 20cm daily limit, and on March 10, it rose another 13.68%, with a total increase of over 36% in just two days.

In these two days, the funds flowing in and out of UCloud were very frequent. On March 9, the total trading volume was 3.108 billion yuan, and on March 10, it soared to 7.625 billion yuan—setting a new high since listing, with a turnover rate of 36.8%.

As the stock’s rise deviated further from its average, UCloud quickly responded to “cool down” the market. However, this statement was somewhat different from its response to investors on March 2.

Back then, UCloud told investors that it aimed to “promote AI technology to be accessible,” “lower the threshold for cutting-edge AI technology,” and “continuously optimize support for AIAgent,” creating a positive impression of its AI commercialization capabilities.

But on March 11, UCloud announced that “the lightweight cloud host products based on OpenClaw images have not yet formed a scaled product system, and technological iteration and commercialization progress may fall short of expectations.”

UCloud also warned that its related business has not yet formed a stable, sustainable revenue stream, with revenues accounting for a very low proportion. The future revenue scale, profitability, and cash flow contribution of its products are highly uncertain, and the short-term impact on the company’s overall performance is limited.

So, what is the true fundamental situation of UCloud?

A recent performance forecast for 2025 shows that the company expects a net loss attributable to shareholders of 76.68 million yuan, and a net loss after deducting non-recurring gains and losses of 146 million yuan.

This marks the sixth consecutive year of losses since 2020, with total losses approaching 2 billion yuan. From 2021 to 2024, UCloud’s revenue also declined consecutively from 2.901 billion yuan to 1.503 billion yuan, a drop of over 48% over four years.

In 2025, UCloud’s revenue is estimated at about 1.7 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.11%, finally halting the decline. The main reason is the rapid development of the AI industry.

UCloud stated that the revenue increase in 2025 was mainly due to sustained investment in the AIGC field, leading to continuous growth in intelligent computing product income. AI-related revenue grew by over 40% year-on-year, accounting for more than 40% of total operating income.

Previously, UCloud’s revenue mainly came from public cloud, private cloud, and hybrid cloud (“Three Clouds” series), with public cloud accounting for the largest share.

In 2021, UCloud’s public cloud revenue once accounted for over 75%. After 2022, public cloud revenue began to decline, but by the end of 2024, it still accounted for over 50%.

It is worth noting that, compared to private cloud, public cloud gross profit margins are lower. For example, in 2023 and 2024, private cloud gross margins were 36.31% and 46.84%, respectively, while public cloud margins were only 12.06% and 21.04%.

Major Cloud Providers’ Prices Have Increased by Over 400%. Does UCloud Have a Chance to “Recruit People”?

UCloud’s revenue decline and profit losses are also related to the ongoing price wars in cloud products over many years.

Since 2018, UCloud’s main products have generally seen price reductions, with significant cuts. In 2025, UCloud believed that competition in the cloud computing market might remain fierce, with major cloud providers likely to continue lowering prices to gain market share, and UCloud may also keep reducing prices in the coming years.

At that time, UCloud also emphasized “vigorous development” of private cloud business. From an industry logic perspective, in the future trend of “AIAgent” dominance, private cloud’s advantages in data security and privacy make it worth focusing on, and higher profit margins are its core value.

However, UCloud quickly encountered the surge in open-source Agent demand driven by OpenClaw, which increased the demand for computing power. Cloud vendors collectively raised prices, and UCloud participated as well.

In late January 2026, Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud announced tiered price increases, and Amazon AWS also raised EC2 machine learning compute prices by about 15% in January.

In mid-February, UCloud followed suit, announcing that from March 1, 2026, it would raise prices for some cloud servers, object storage, and CDN services by 5% to 12% in key regions including North China, East China, and South China.

Similarly, in February, Google Cloud announced that starting May 2026, some products would see price increases of over 100%.

On March 11, “Cailian Press” reported that Tencent Cloud announced adjustments to billing strategies for some models from March 13, 2026, ending free public testing and moving into a pay-as-you-go era.

Moreover, Tencent’s hybrid model, TencentHY2.0Instruct, saw input prices jump from 0.0008 yuan per thousand tokens to 0.004505 yuan—an increase of 463%; output prices rose from 0.002 yuan to 0.01113 yuan—an increase of over 456%.

Similarly, TencentHY2.0Think’s input price increased from 0.001 yuan to 0.0053 yuan, and output from 0.004 yuan to 0.0212 yuan, making the new prices five times the original.

In the tech industry, this collective price hike by cloud providers signals a “cloud computing price increase era,” driven mainly by AI-driven data center power demand, low inventory of memory chips, and rising memory prices expected throughout the year, leading to a supply shortage of computing power and inevitable price increases.

The surge in open-source Agent demand from OpenClaw further amplified this effect, pushing cloud vendors to raise prices collectively.

UCloud has been relatively restrained in this price increase wave. Whether it can leverage this to attract more users remains to be seen.

“Surrounded by Strong Clouds,”

UCloud’s “Compute and Power” Card Still Unplayed

In the tech industry, compared to industry giants like Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Volcano Engine, and Baidu Cloud, UCloud is considered a small to medium-sized cloud vendor. After this wave of “lobster concept” fever, whether UCloud can maintain a stable “lobster cloud” market under the “surrounded by strong clouds” situation is a question worth pondering.

Although UCloud told investors that it was the first in the industry to deploy OpenClaw in the cloud, many large cloud providers also launched similar deployments in January this year.

For example, JD Cloud announced the launch of OpenClaw cloud in January, Baidu Smart Cloud launched an OpenClaw one-click deployment service on February 3; subsequently, Volcano Engine launched ArkClaw SaaS on the cloud, and Tencent Lighthouse released one-click deployment of OpenClaw.

Facing these competitors, UCloud warned that “several cloud service providers have launched similar products, and the company faces significant market competition, with high uncertainty regarding the contribution of related products to future performance.”

The recent OpenClaw-driven Agent open-source wave has indeed been a big boon for cloud vendors. Previously, many ordinary users had no demand for cloud services, but with the arrival of “lobster,” “cloud shrimp farming” has become the most convenient method—effectively providing a large-scale, free “public promotion” for cloud vendors, which was hard to imagine before.

In a market rule where “the strong get stronger,” UCloud still faces considerable pressure against the big cloud players. Although it has a differentiated advantage in the “neutral cloud vendor” niche, this market segment has limited share. UCloud needs more cards to secure its position at the table, and “compute and power collaboration” is one such card.

UCloud’s “compute and power” collaboration focuses on “green electricity supply for computing power and stable power for computing,” centered on two self-built intelligent computing centers, liquid cooling, energy storage, virtual power plants, and ecological cooperation.

The core project is the Ulanqab Intelligent Computing Center (West Hub), covering 140,000 square meters with a total investment of 4.8 billion yuan, planning 12,000 cabinets, with over 7,300 already in operation (2,300 in phase three). Located in a region rich in green electricity, it uses full immersion liquid cooling, with a PUE below 1.1, direct supply of green electricity, and self-provided energy storage, supporting large model training and serving well-known domestic companies.

In recent years, the rental income from cabinets has directly increased the company’s gross profit margin, and future profitability is worth watching.

The Shanghai Qingpu Intelligent Computing Center (East Data Hub), aimed at low-latency inference, deploys domestically produced Kankan clusters, connects to offshore wind power PPA and user-side energy storage, participates in virtual power plant (VPP) dispatching, and benefits from peak shaving and valley filling to earn electricity price premiums.

The “Qingpu Data Center Project (Phase One)” officially started operation in January 2023. It was originally scheduled for completion by January 24, 2026, but recently announced a two-year delay to January 24, 2028.

Additionally, UCloud’s Ulanqab Intelligent Computing Center Phase Two, Building B, is under construction, expanding cabinet and liquid cooling capacity.

“Compute and power collaboration” is essentially UCloud’s moat project. The key is whether it can play this card at the right moment. In the rapidly advancing AI wave, timing is everything.