On May 15, Guotai Haitong Securities released a research report highlighting that the AI-fueled price escalation across the entire industry chain is revolutionizing the value distribution within the semiconductor sector. Specifically, upstream segments boasting core technologies are poised to reap the most significant benefits. The report advises keeping a close eye on industry giants in the storage sector and advanced process foundries. Simultaneously, the core materials segment, characterized by a widening gap between supply and demand, along with equipment manufacturers accelerating domestic substitution efforts, also merits attention. Furthermore, leading cloud providers with superior computational capabilities are identified as preferred investment targets. At present, inflation within the AI industry chain has permeated from upstream core hardware to midstream and downstream sectors, establishing a systematic cost pass-through mechanism. As AI Agents transition from merely 'chatting' to actively 'acting,' a fresh cycle of inflation across the industry chain is anticipated to commence. The widespread deployment of Agents is expected to trigger an exponential increase in Token consumption, with projections indicating a growth of over 300 times by 2024-2025. The backend computational loads prompted by individual user instructions will vastly surpass those of conventional chats. This relentless task invocation will substantially elevate inference workloads, propelling a surge in demand for HBM in AI accelerators. Nevertheless, HBM capacity expansion is hampered by wafer consumption and low yield rates, with supply expected to materialize only by 2027-2028. Consequently, the supply-demand imbalance is set to intensify further, potentially sparking resource competition and price escalations across the entire industry chain.