Global AI stock valuations remain high, with continuous waves of concern about a bubble in the US stock market. Many investors are beginning to ask: how far can this AI investment trend go?

Recently, a signal worth pondering has emerged—a domestic AI hardware product has gone viral. NetEase Youdao's AI Q&A pen sales have surpassed 100 million yuan. This is no small number. To me, it signifies that the investment prospects for AI hardware are truly promising and full of imagination. Moreover, the approach is completely different from the American model.

In fact, tech giants have long understood this market opportunity. OpenAI spent $6.5 billion to recruit the "Father of the iPhone" to develop consumer-grade AI devices, a clear signal. Over here domestically, companies are also busy with similar efforts—super terminals like Doubao Phone and Quark Glasses are emerging one after another. The numbers behind these are even more astonishing—some institutions predict that from 2025 to 2029, the global edge-side AI market will jump from 321.9 billion yuan to 1.22 trillion yuan. That’s a trillion-yuan-level opportunity.

The problem is, making money under the wind is difficult. Many AI hardware manufacturers are copying the American approach—focusing first on technological iteration, then on ecosystem building. But they end up just refining general-purpose products, with commercial monetization still far off. Stock valuations become a game of concepts; without performance support, prices can fall very quickly.

Why did Youdao’s Q&A pen break the 100 million yuan mark? Because it took a different approach. Instead of pursuing "big and comprehensive," it focused deeply on specific scenarios. Coupled with AI-native design thinking, commercialization accelerated. This provides an insight for the entire sector: during the AI popularization phase, targeting vertical scenarios with precision is more likely to yield returns than blind expansion. The investment benchmarks become clearer.

From infrastructure investments like GPUs to now the application layer with real products, the focus of the AI industry is shifting. Future investment opportunities will increasingly concentrate on companies that thoroughly understand niche fields and can turn AI technology into tangible revenue. Remember this approach.