A sign at the Alibaba Group Holding Co., Ltd. booth at the Smart China Expo on Monday, September 4, 2023 in Chongqing, China.
Shen Qilai | Shen Qilai Bloomberg | Getty Images
Alibaba's cloud business announced Thursday that it will cut prices on a wide range of core cloud products by up to 55% to boost AI growth in China.
Alibaba Cloud said the move aims to “make cloud capabilities more comprehensive and accessible in the AI era.” The price reductions go into effect on Thursday and apply to more than 100 product specifications.
“As the largest cloud service provider in China and the Asia-Pacific region, China's digital market is expected to see significant growth,” said Liu Weiguang, president of public cloud business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
“Therefore, we have launched a price reduction campaign to lower the barrier to entry for cloud services, so that more enterprises and developers can enjoy technological benefits and accelerate the adoption of advanced public cloud services across various industries in China. “We decided to do it,” Liu said.
Interest and investment in generative AI has skyrocketed since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022.
In a report published in November 2023, McKinsey explained that the much-hyped technology presents opportunities for incumbents.
“One of them is using the cloud to support generative AI initiatives. Generative AI requires the cloud to scale because of the huge demands on compute, storage, and networking. Additionally, the complexity of generative AI means that it must be implemented through scalable enterprise cloud platforms rather than isolated pilots or initiatives run by individual development teams,” McKinsey analysts said. Stated.
Canalys predicts that global cloud service spending will increase by 20% in 2024, compared to 18% in 2023 due to the proliferation of AI applications.
“Hyperscalers are steadily increasing their investments in generative AI, and we expect that leveraging their capabilities will create new opportunities in cloud usage,” Canalys said.