The minimum-spend clause locks in a year of foreign revenue worth more than a third of Runjian's first-half sales, through an API route MOFCOM's draft AI export rules exclude.
Runjian, a Shenzhen-listed company registered in Nanning that markets itself as a token service provider, has signed a one-year contract to sell AI tokens to an unnamed overseas customer for US$200 million, or about RMB1.338 billion. The company announced on the evening of October 18 that its wholly owned subsidiary Wuxiang Yungu had signed what it calls an AI token cross-border sales service contract with a client identified only as "X company," according to National Business Daily and Securities Times, in a report carried by Sina Finance. Tokens are the small units of text that AI models read and write, and they are the unit in which this contract is billed.
What the client is buying is model output, delivered across the border. The computing hardware stays in Wuxiang Yungu’s intelligent computing center in Nanning, and the client calls large-model inference, the work of running a trained model to answer requests, through an application programming interface (API) from abroad. Billing is monthly, based on the tokens actually consumed, at unit prices set in orders both sides confirm in writing. The contract runs from October 19, 2026, to October 18, 2027.
The buyer’s identity is the largest gap. Runjian withheld X company’s name, registration details and shareholders under an internal procedure for exempting confidential information from disclosure, Securities Times reported, and said only that the client is in good standing and has no ties to Runjian’s controlling shareholders, actual controllers, directors or senior managers. Jiemian described the buyer as a technology company. Which models the client will run, and the price per token, have not been disclosed.
A minimum-spend clause makes the contract unusually firm for a usage deal
Usage-based contracts usually leave the seller exposed to actual demand. Runjian’s includes an annual minimum purchase commitment: if X company’s spending over the year falls short of US$200 million, it must pay the difference, Securities Times reported. National Business Daily added that all settlement will be in renminbi.
The amount is large relative to Runjian’s current business. The company reported first-half 2026 revenue of RMB3.756 billion, down 22.83% from a year earlier, and net profit attributable to shareholders of RMB26.79 million, down 31.72%, according to National Business Daily. Runjian’s contract is worth about RMB1.338 billion, more than a third of the RMB3.756 billion in revenue the company reported for the first half of 2026. Its computing network business, which includes the data center work, brought in RMB519 million in the half, up 50.31%. The company’s order backlog stood at about RMB23.6 billion at the end of June.
Runjian called the deal a milestone that closes the loop for its token factory and token export business, and said it showed foreign clients recognize its compliance in cross-border digital services. In the same filing, the company cautioned that AI, computing and token businesses remain a small share of total revenue and that the contract might not be fully performed, National Business Daily reported.
Selling inference by API keeps the deal clear of China’s draft AI export rules
The structure matters because China is tightening controls on AI technology leaving the country. On October 16, the Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) published a spokesperson’s explanation of a proposed revision to its catalog of restricted technology exports, which would add AI-related items. The spokesperson said companies using restricted large models to offer API calls, app or web interaction, software-as-a-service or lightweight on-device deployment abroad fall outside large-model technology export management. EastFrontier covered the consultation and its registration requirements on October 17.
Runjian’s contract follows that template: the hardware, the models and the data center stay in Nanning, and only responses cross the border. During a press tour on October 13, a Runjian manager told Science and Technology Daily that the company planned to use the Nanning international communications gateway to open a channel for token exports, and that it had delivered more than 80 data center and computing center projects in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and other Southeast Asian countries. The newspaper described the Wuxiang Yungu facility as the highest-rated and largest intelligent computing center in Guangxi.
Runjian joins a run of large A-share compute orders, with revenue still to prove
More than 20 A-share companies have announced computing contracts in the second half of 2026, according to a Shanghai Securities News report republished by 21st Century Business Herald, including an RMB881 million equipment sale by a Shenhao Technology unit on October 16. That report flagged delivery timing, financing structures and the gap between signed orders and recognized revenue as risks. The deals in that report cover server sales, chip purchases and compute service agreements; Runjian’s is priced on metered output for a foreign buyer, a model EastFrontier described earlier this month as China’s AI infrastructure moved toward production inference and token factories.
Because billing starts on October 19 and is settled monthly, Runjian’s next periodic reports are the first place the contract can appear as revenue rather than as a signed order, which is the gap the Shanghai Securities News report warned about. The other details to watch are any disclosure of who X company is and which models it is calling, and whether MOFCOM’s final catalog keeps the exclusion for API-based services that this contract relies on.