HONG KONG:
China’s Alibaba Cloud on Thursday said it will slash prices of some of its products by as much as 55%, its most severe price cut to date, amid intensifying competition to attract heavy users, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) software developers.
This would be the second time the cloud arm of Chinese e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding has cut prices in less than a year after reductions of as much as 50% in April.
The cloud service provider said it would lower prices of over 100 products by an average of 20%. The price cuts constitute Alibaba’s latest effort to persuade developers to build data-intensive AI models and applications using its cloud services.
Read Alibaba Cloud announces steepest price cut in race for AI customers
Rivals including Tencent Holdings and Huawei Technologies, which also cut cloud prices last year following Alibaba’s lead, have offered a number of promotions to convince tech companies to develop AI within their ecosystems.
Alibaba Cloud currently serves about one-third of the local market.
An industry analyst said that Alibaba’s price-cutting exercise this time is more aggressive than usual, showing the company’s focus on courting customers. “The discount even applies to the undelivered orders for existing customers. This is seen as breaking the norm,” he said.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 1st, 2024
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