In February 2026, China Foreign Trade Trust successfully established the country's first Data-for-AI asset service trust—“Foreign Trade Trust–Hebei Construction–Data-for-AI Asset Service Trust No.1”. The landmark project represents a significant breakthrough in the legal recognition, circulation, and value realization of data as a strategic asset, highlighting the company's pioneering role in supporting China’s national data strategy.

While “data” has become a familiar term, “Data-for-AI” remains relatively unknown. Unlike raw, isolated data such as construction site sensor readings, project logs, or attendance records, Data-for-AI refers to high-quality, structured datasets specifically curated, cleaned, and annotated to train and power artificial intelligence systems. If raw data is like scattered car parts, Data-for-AI is a fully assembled and tested engine—ready to drive intelligent decision-making and operational applications.

Despite owning large volumes of data, many enterprises face obstacles in realizing its value due to unclear ownership, security concerns, and the absence of valuation mechanisms. The Data-for-AI asset service trust addresses these challenges through a trust structure: companies entrust legally held data assets to a trust company for independent management. Leveraging the legal advantages of trusts—separate property, risk isolation, and flexible allocation—this model enables secure circulation and shared economic benefits of data assets. Initially implemented in the construction sector, the framework is replicable across manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, energy, and other industries, creating a scalable tool for unlocking data potential across the economy.

The successful launch reflects China Foreign Trade Trust’s systematic, long-term engagement with the data economy. In recent years, the company has actively implemented the State Council’s “Data Twenty Measures” and aligned with policy guidance from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission on high-quality trust industry development. The company has identified data asset service trusts as a strategic growth area. As noted by Wei Mengmeng, Party Secretary and General Manager, in the Financial Times:

“Data possesses enormous latent value, yet much of it remains dormant due to challenges in trusted circulation. Trusts, as independent third parties with clear boundaries of responsibility and mature fiduciary management mechanisms, can effectively resolve issues of credibility, compliance costs, and equitable revenue distribution in data flows.”

Guided by this philosophy, China Foreign Trade Trust has built a full practice chain covering theory, product design, and ecosystem collaboration. In 2025, the company partnered with the China Economic Reform Research Foundation to establish the Data Asset Service Trust Smart-Ecosystem Laboratory, exploring legal recognition, valuation, and balance sheet inclusion for data assets. In the same year, it issued China’s first data-asset-backed ABS, creating a pathway for data assets to enter capital markets. By year-end, the company achieved a milestone with the first-ever inclusion of data assets on a trust company balance sheet, transforming its inclusive finance model into tangible data assets, secured via certificates on the Beijing Big Data Exchange.

The launch of the Data-for-AI asset service trust extends the company’s service scope from general data to AI-ready datasets, reflecting a deeper participation in the data value chain and setting a replicable model for other sectors.

Looking ahead, China Foreign Trade Trust plans to deepen exploration in the data domain, enhance supporting mechanisms, and enable more industries to activate, utilize, and monetize their data assets. Building on the inaugural Data-for-AI asset service trust, the company aims to continue its mission of advancing digital finance at scale, providing sustainable and replicable trust solutions to support the development of new productive capacities and the broader construction of a Digital China.