Alibaba has announced significant price reductions across its core cloud products in China, cutting prices by as much as 55%.
The move, reported by CNBC, is aimed at promoting artificial intelligence across China and making cloud capabilities more accessible and affordable amid heightened competition and significant technological improvements.
The decision comes at a time when interest and investments in AI continue to rise globally, spearheaded by the public preview launch of ChatGPT back in November 2022.
Alibaba promotes cloud and AI in Chinese markets
Liu Weiguang, President of Public Cloud Business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, emphasized the company’s commitment to supporting the Chinese digital market: “As the biggest cloud service provider in China and APAC, we see tremendous growth prospect of China’s digital market.”
The price reduction is designed to lower the entry barrier for cloud services, enabling more SMEs and developers to leverage Alibaba Cloud for things like artificial intelligence.
Generative AI requires a lot of compute, storage, and networking capabilities, therefore a holistic and scalable cloud is important to developers’ success in order to both provide the right tools and to reduce or eliminate siloes.
Recent research from analyst firm Canalys revealed that 2023 spend on cloud infrastructure services worldwide had climbed 18% year-on-year.
The same report posits that the growth rate could reach 20% in 2024.
Alibaba Cloud’s price cuts on over 100 product specifications underscore its commitment to fuelling the adoption of AI technologies and supporting the quickly evolving landscape.
However, while Alibaba has a higher market share within China, the company lags far behind Amazon, Microsoft and Google, which together account for around two-thirds of global cloud spend.
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