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ZTE mentioned it’s positioning its enterprise round a mixed connectivity and computing mannequin, increasing its function in AI infrastructure alongside its established telecom portfolio
In sum – what to know:
AI shift – Computing reached 27% of income as demand for AI infrastructure grows and turns into a bigger a part of ZTE’s general enterprise combine.
Service weak spot – Decreased home telecom capex weighed on the community phase, impacting general profitability regardless of income progress.
International progress – Worldwide markets and enterprise demand are serving to offset home pressures and help growth in computing and gadgets.
Chinese language vendor ZTE is reporting a rising contribution from its computing enterprise because it continues to shift towards AI-related infrastructure and providers.
The corporate posted income of CNY 34.99 billion ($5.1 billion) within the first quarter of 2026, up 6.1% year-on-year, with computing accounting for 27% of whole income.
The rising share displays rising demand for AI infrastructure and associated platforms, partly offsetting weaker spending from home telecom operators.
Development through the first quarter of the 12 months was supported by double-digit good points in computing, house and private gadgets, and worldwide markets. These segments helped counter a decline in home service funding, which weighed on the corporate’s conventional community enterprise. Internet revenue attributable to shareholders reached CNY1.31 billion, whereas revenue declined year-on-year attributable to softer infrastructure spending in China.
ZTE mentioned it’s positioning its enterprise round a mixed connectivity and computing mannequin, increasing its function in AI infrastructure alongside its established telecom portfolio. The Asian vendor is growing an end-to-end framework spanning infrastructure, platforms, functions and gadgets, with a give attention to supporting enterprise and large-scale computing use circumstances.
In its community phase, ZTE launched new switching and interconnect applied sciences aimed toward AI workloads, together with a high-capacity chassis swap designed for large-scale clusters and an answer enabling distributed computing throughout distances of as much as 300 km. These developments are meant to help the rising want to attach and handle compute assets throughout a number of areas, ZTE mentioned.
Worldwide markets remained a key supply of progress, pushed by ongoing 5G deployments, fiber rollouts, and rising demand for computing infrastructure. ZTE mentioned additionally it is deepening collaboration with Chinese language enterprises increasing abroad.
Trying forward, ZTE mentioned it expects AI to stay a central driver of its enterprise, with continued funding in infrastructure, ecosystem partnerships, and operational integration.
“China Cellular is reducing its communication community capex by greater than 20% in 2026, whereas rising its computing infrastructure capex by over 60%. The opposite Chinese language telcos take related methods. So, ZTE has no selection however to develop its computing infrastructure enterprise to maintain its progress. On the opposite aspect, in contrast to some Chinese language distributors banned by the U.S., ZTE can nonetheless work with the U.S. chip suppliers comparable to Nvidia and Intel. This turns into a big differentiator of ZTE when it develops enterprise with Chinese language Web hyperscalers, comparable to Alibaba and ByteDance, and explores the worldwide market,” Guang Yang, senior principal analyst at Omdia, advised RCR Wi-fi Information.
“In 2025, ZTE’s computing infrastructure income was boosted by the massive contracts from these Web giants. Nonetheless, the contracts from Web giants are extra like a double-edged sword. They’ll increase the income, but additionally considerably compress ZTE’s revenue. ZTE should discover a option to stability its progress and profitability in 2026,” the analyst mentioned.
For full 2025, ZTE had reported income of CNY 133.90 billion, up 10.4% year-on-year, with internet revenue reaching CNY 5.62 billion. Throughout 2025, the corporate maintained sturdy R&D funding at CNY 22.76 billion, round 17% of whole income.
Development final 12 months was pushed primarily by its computing phase, the place income rose roughly 150% year-on-year to characterize 24.6% of whole income, supported by sturdy demand for servers, storage, and knowledge heart options linked to AI deployments.