After slashing prices on a selection of its AI services by up to 97%, Alibaba has sparked similar responses from other AI service providers in China, marking the start of a price war in the market. emerging artificial intelligence of the republic.
Baidu Cloud has also announced that it would offer free services based on its Ernie AI models, just hours after Alibaba revealed discounts on nine of its products based on the Tongyi Qianwen platform.
Last week, TikTok's parent company ByteDance revealed prices for its AI services, claiming they were up to 99% cheaper than the Chinese industry standard.
The AI price war is intensifying in China
The aggressive pricing strategies are the first moves in a rapidly escalating battle in the AI sector, as companies fight to attract investment and customers.
However, the price cuts are not what you would call unexpected, as Chinese technology companies have a long history of discounting in various markets to remain competitive. Recently, Alibaba began a series of price cuts in cloud computing, offering discounts of up to 55% on more than 100 domestic services, prompting similar responses from rival companies.
Analysts at Bloomberg Intelligence They say the escalating war could further disrupt China's AI market, and even trigger a broader price war in other services and other countries.
China's AI efforts have had little impact globally, a direct result of geopolitical tensions and efforts by entities like the US government to end some trade.
However, technology companies around the world are also being forced to come up with new pricing strategies. AWS, Microsoft and Google Cloud, which together account for about two-thirds of the cloud market, recently reduced egress fees to appease antitrust regulators.
