A research report from CITIC Securities highlights that model providers like Anthropic and OpenAI have recently called for a slowdown in the pursuit of cutting-edge capabilities—a move that has ignited considerable market attention and debate. CITIC Securities posits that this shift is not rooted in ethical concerns from the founders, but is instead propelled by strategic commercial considerations. It reflects the current operational challenges faced by leading model vendors. With escalating regulatory costs, these top-tier providers are under constant pressure regarding market positioning and monetization, resulting in a gap between model advancements and their practical application. Looking ahead, it is anticipated that industry regulations will progressively refine, prompting leading model companies to place a stronger emphasis on practical application implementation to ease financial strains. Consequently, the AI industry’s focus is expected to shift towards inference and monetization. CITIC Securities maintains a positive outlook on structural opportunities within the CSP, platform software vendors, and hardware semiconductor sectors.