Insight Report Annual Review: A Complete Analysis of Industry Trends in 2025

As time passes and a new chapter begins, various industries in 2025 are seeking new growth engines amid economic transformation. As a professional industry research and data analysis sharing platform, Insight Report not only brings together numerous in-depth and authoritative studies but also delves deeply into industrial research and data insights. Today, we summarize the key industries that have attracted significant attention in 2025, unlocking the stories of their "trailblazing journeys."

Non-ferrous Metals: Gold Prices Soar, "Doctor Copper" Reigns Supreme

The non-ferrous metals industry has benefited from macroeconomic recovery and demand driven by emerging industries, exhibiting a structural characteristic of "stable upstream sectors while mid- and downstream sectors face pressure," with overall operations remaining steady. Currently, the industry shows differentiated trends in both fundamentals and financing, with specific performances as follows:

• From the perspective of industry fundamentals, corporate operating performance has steadily improved, highlighting resilience. Data shows that in the first three quarters of 2025, the total assets of sampled enterprises grew by 9.4%, revenue increased by 7.62%, and total profits surged by 30.05% year-on-year. Meanwhile, the price trends of major metals have diverged: gold and copper prices have risen steadily, supported by safe-haven sentiment and demand from emerging industries, while aluminum prices have maintained a range-bound fluctuation pattern.
• At the same time, the industry's financing structure continues to optimize, and credit risks show differentiation. From January to November 2025, the scale of bond financing in the industry increased by 11.41% year-on-year, with issuers demonstrating strong credit quality—AAA-rated enterprises accounted for 76.15% of the total. Specifically, credit quality remains robust for upstream resource-based enterprises, whereas mid- and downstream smelting and processing enterprises, affected by factors such as low processing fees and squeezed profit margins, have shown signs of repayment pressure for some firms.

From "Etching" to "Atomic Layer Deposition": Manufacturing Precision Defines New Heights

Driven by the robust expansion of AI infrastructure, the global semiconductor industry exhibits a divergent growth pattern akin to "ice and fire": while demand for AI-related digital chips, memory chips, and wafer fabrication equipment (WFE) is soaring across the board, consumer electronics-related sectors remain in an adjustment cycle, yet to see a significant rebound.

• Specifically, the wafer fabrication equipment (WFE) sector stands out with strong growth certainty, projected to increase by 11% in 2026. The core driver is the continued ramp-up in corporate investment within advanced logic chips and memory, fueled by the AI wave. Analog chips, on the other hand, are aligning with the cyclical recovery rhythm as channel inventories gradually return to healthy levels. Coupled with renewed demand from industrial and automotive sectors, the industry's vitality is steadily rising.
• Judging by market trends, capital investment in the AI domain will adopt a "barbell strategy"—where leading enterprises focus on high-investment, advanced AI model training while low-cost inference solutions are simultaneously deployed. Under this trend, customer structure has become the core variable differentiating semiconductor companies' stock performance, with firms embedded within the Google ecosystem holding a competitive edge.
• In the memory market, competition in the high-bandwidth memory (HBM) sector is intensifying, while supply for traditional DRAM and NAND memory remains tight. Compounded by capacity constraints in the HDD industry, the overall supply-demand tension in the memory market is expected to persist through 2026.

Supply-Demand Divergence Drives Market Trends; Anchoring High-Barrier Materials and Energy Storage Leaders

Demand for new energy infrastructure remains stable; lithium carbonate faces oversupply, putting pressure on lithium prices.

• In the new energy materials sector, caution is needed against overcapacity and price fluctuations, with priority given to high-technological-barrier segments (e.g., semiconductor materials). For battery materials, attention should be on varieties with stable demand, such as lithium hexafluorophosphate.
• Energy storage demand exceeds expectations; CATL's market share may exceed 35% in 2026. The lithium industry maintains a neutral rating, as the resumption of production in South American salt lakes suppresses lithium prices—focus on the self-sufficiency rates and cost advantages of companies like Tianqi Lithium and Ganfeng Lithium. Companies with high solar energy inventory and lithium mining assets should be avoided.

 From "Chemotherapy" to "Cure": Anti-Cancer Injections Make Tumors Vanish On-Site

The innovative drug industry has moved beyond homogeneous competition and entered a new phase of "R&D realization + globalization." Clinical value and platform capabilities have become the core competitive advantages. Specifically, the industry has achieved significant breakthroughs in R&D financing, global expansion, and payment system development.

• In terms of R&D and financing, the trend of focusing on high-quality assets has become prominent, leading to a gradually differentiated landscape. Data shows that from January to October 2025, there were 268 financing rounds for innovative drugs, with an average funding amount of $15 million. Mid-to-late-stage projects (Series B and beyond) accounted for 39% of the total. Simultaneously, capital has concentrated on cutting-edge fields such as ADC, bispecific antibodies, and AI-driven drug discovery, while target development has shifted from following trends to pioneering innovation.
• At the same time, the globalization process and payment systems have undergone dual upgrades, further enhancing the industry's value. From January to October 2025, the total value of License-out deals reached $46.205 billion, with ADC, nucleic acid drugs, and bispecific antibodies becoming the main drivers of global expansion. Additionally, five domestically developed CAR-T products have been included in commercial insurance catalogs, forming a dual-payment system of "medical insurance + commercial insurance," effectively improving access to high-value innovative drugs.

 Automotive Industry: From "Hands on the Wheel" to "Completely Hands-Free

The globalization of China's automotive industry has entered a deep-water zone, with overseas sales steadily rising. Intelligentization and localization have become the core competitive focus, as reflected in the following aspects:

• In terms of global achievements, Chinese automakers have delivered impressive performance in overseas markets, with sales approaching those of mainstream competitors. Data shows that in the first half of 2025, the overseas sales share of Chinese automakers has largely caught up with American and Korean brands, demonstrating significant long-term growth potential. It is projected that by 2030, overseas sales could reach 7.5 to 10 million vehicles, increasing China's global market share to 15–20%. Meanwhile, the collaborative expansion of the industrial chain has yielded notable results, with overseas business of component suppliers growing rapidly—power battery companies, in particular, have achieved a compound annual growth rate of up to 93%.
• At the same time, localization and intelligentization have become critical challenges and opportunities in the industry's globalization. On the challenge front, the localization rate of Chinese automakers overseas significantly lags behind Japanese and European counterparts (both exceeding 80%), making localized R&D and factory establishment in key markets decisive for success. Additionally, component suppliers face considerable profitability pressures abroad, with 55% of them merely breaking even overseas, while issues such as unclear strategic positioning and talent shortages urgently need resolution. On the opportunity side, intelligent technologies are rapidly gaining traction, with smart cabins and autonomous driving becoming core product differentiators, providing crucial support for Chinese automakers to achieve a competitive leapfrog.

 From "Being Able to Compute" to "Understanding You": AI Truly Enters Everyday Life

AI infrastructure spending continues to grow at a high rate, with hyperscale enterprises serving as the core drivers. Emerging players like OpenAI and Anthropic are accelerating their deployments, and capital expenditure is expected to remain intensive through 2026. Competition among AI models has intensified, with Google’s Gemini surpassing the OpenAI GPT series in multiple benchmark tests. The iteration of model performance has become a key variable in the distribution of value across the industry chain.

• The pace of AI commercialization will be a major market focus in 2026. The speed at which enterprise-level applications penetrate fields such as coding, customer service, and healthcare will determine the long-term value of the industry.
• In the AI chip sector, there is a parallel trend toward customization and generalization. Broadcom’s advantage in custom silicon and Nvidia’s software ecosystem barriers in the training domain create differentiated competition. The progress of China’s domestic AI chips and models in achieving self-reliance will reshape the global industry chain landscape.

Consumer Industry: Love Your "Old Self," Emotional Value at Its Peak

The consumer retail market is undergoing a profound structural shift, with "relevance to me" emerging as the core driver of growth. The dual demands for experiential upgrades and self-fulfillment continue to propel industry transformation. Currently, significant changes are evident across dimensions such as growth performance, channel dynamics, and consumption logic, reflecting two key trends:

• On one hand, market growth rates are visibly diverging, and the channel landscape is rapidly restructuring. The overall omnichannel growth rate for fast-moving consumer goods stands at only 3.4%, with online channels growing 18.5% year-on-year, while offline channels declined by 5.0%. Among segmented channels, membership warehouse stores grew by 4%, snack stores by 20%, and O2O front-end warehouses surged by 25%, demonstrating that emerging channels have become the primary engine of industry growth.
• On the other hand, consumption logic continues to evolve, fueling explosive growth in specific segments. Specifically, consumer demand has shifted from "cost-effectiveness" to "quality-for-price," with 82% of consumers willing to pay a premium for convenience-oriented products and 66% prioritizing health-related options. Meanwhile, emotional consumption is steadily gaining traction—77% of major food and beverage consumers seek emotional value, while sectors like the single economy, pet economy, and silver economy have risen as high-potential growth areas. Notably, lower-tier markets have shown robust performance, with rural retail growing 4.3% in 2024, outpacing the national average and solidifying their role as a reliable source of incremental growth.

Forward-looking Perspectives

Looking back at 2025, the A-share market experienced a significant valuation uplift driven by "grand narratives," while export resilience exceeded expectations, though domestic demand remained sluggish. Concurrently, global AI capital expenditure continued to be revised upward, and domestic policies elevated "new quality productive forces" to an unprecedented level, accelerating the transition of sectors like commercial aerospace, embodied AI, and AI computing power from thematic speculation to industrial implementation.

Looking ahead to 2026—the inaugural year of the "15th Five-Year Plan"—the prevailing view is that the market's main theme will shift from "valuation expansion" to "earnings realization." Only "new tracks" that genuinely possess technological breakthroughs + policy support + confirmed orders will be worthy of focused allocation. Synthesizing current views, positioning can be prioritized along four main lines:

1. AI Infrastructure: From "Optical Modules" to "Liquid Cooling" to "Domestic Computing Power"

• The 1.6T optical module market enters its first year of volume expansion in 2026, with parallel adoption of new technologies like silicon photonics, thin-film lithium niobate, and CPO, offering substantial profit elasticity for leading manufacturers.

• Rack-level solutions like NVIDIA's GB300/Rubin and Google's ASIC are driving higher liquid cooling penetration, benefiting leading data center thermal management companies first.

• The scaled shipment of domestic GPUs/super-nodes, combined with mandatory localization policies, is forming the "Five Golden Flowers": computing power chips, servers, AIDC, and cloud platforms.

2. AI Applications & Terminals: Modules, Controllers, CDN, Edge SoCs

• Plummeting large model token costs are driving AI migration to the edge, spurring demand for:

  • High-computing edge AI modules, robot controllers, and automotive/home smart hubs.

  • CDN providers upgrading to "AI edge computing nodes," benefiting from both traffic and computing demand.

  • Accelerated import substitution for edge AI SoCs and high-bandwidth memory (HBM) supply chains.

3. Commercial Aerospace + Low-Altitude Economy: Policy Dividends Enter Order Realization Phase

• The newly established "Commercial Aerospace Department" under the CNSA is accelerating satellite constellation deployment, reusable rockets, and commercialization of remote sensing data.

• Low-altitude economy (eVTOL, drone logistics) is included in multiple local government investment lists for the "15th Five-Year Plan," shifting the industry chain from "theme" to "bidding."

4. Diffusion Tracks of "New Quality Productive Forces": Embodied AI, 6G, Quantum, Biomanufacturing

• Embodied AI (humanoid robots + AGI) is included in the government work report for the first time, with small-batch industrial deployment expected in 2026.

• 6G pre-research bidding has begun, opening upgrade opportunities in communication equipment for terahertz, satellite internet, and RIS new materials.

• Special funds and government procurement for quantum communication and biomanufacturing (synthetic biology) are improving order visibility.

Tactical Allocation Notes

• Timing: Focus on sectors with the highest "earnings certainty" (AI computing power & optical communication) in H1 2026; shift to sectors with the greatest "order elasticity" (commercial aerospace, low-altitude economy, AI terminals) in H2.

• Risks: Overseas macroeconomic volatility, the pace of domestic policy implementation, and technological pathway divergence within certain sectors.

The industrial transformation of 2025 has been a convergence of demand upgrading and technological innovation, as well as a resonance between policy guidance and market choice. In 2026, industries will continue to advance amid differentiation, with innovation remaining the core driving logic. Insight Report will continue to delve deeply into industrial research, providing more profound forward-looking insights, and accompanying everyone in seizing opportunities and navigating through cycles.