China's first trading platform for computing power went online on Friday, in a move to integrate computing resources that will fuel the development of strategic industries such as artificial intelligence and will support ChatGPT-like applications.

The platform, which went online in Yinchuan, Ningxia Hui autonomous region, on Friday, is designed to integrate computing power resources, according to Chinese tech company Dawning Information Industry Co, also known as Sugon, which has participated in co-constructing the platform.

The computing resources of 27 companies and institutions such as Sugon, Huawei Technologies Co, ZTE, Alibaba Cloud and China Telecom in Ningxia have been connected to the platform, Chinese news portal Jiemian reported.

Major domestic big data institutions such as the State Information Center and Beijing Institute of Big Data Research, and AI companies such as Baidu and Sense Time are also among those connected to the platform, Jiemian said.

Previously, when enterprise customers wanted to purchase computing services, they needed to consult multiple computing enterprises. These computing enterprises are also fighting on their own and lack a unified allocation of resources.

The platform, as a key initiative of China's east-data-west-computing project, can help solve these problems and maximize efficiency.

The east-data-west-computing project refers to sending data gathered from the more prosperous eastern regions of China to the less developed but resource-rich western regions for storage, calculation and feedback, as well as establishing more data centers in western China, which can help the country improve its imbalance in the layout of digital infrastructure and maximize the value of data as a production element.

Aiming at the most scarce and urgently-needed AI computing capacity to support ChatGPT-like applications, Ningxia has also started to build a GPU large computing base in Zhongwei, Ningxia. After completion, it will also be connected to the trading platform to support Chinese AI companies, China Media Group reported.