Highest increase of 34%! Alibaba Cloud and Baidu Intelligent Cloud announce price increases simultaneously

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(Source: Daily Economic News)

On March 18, Alibaba and Baidu platforms announced simultaneous price increases for related products and services due to soaring global AI demand boosting computing power.

Baidu Intelligent Cloud issued a notice on price adjustments for AI computing, storage, and other products, stating that the rapid development of global AI applications has led to sustained growth in computing power demand. The costs of core hardware and related infrastructure have risen significantly. To ensure long-term stable operation and service quality, some product prices will be structurally optimized.

The scope of this adjustment includes the following products and services: AI computing-related products and services—price increase of approximately 5%-30%; parallel file storage and others—price increase of about 30%. The adjustments will take effect from 00:00 on April 18, 2026 (Beijing time).

Baidu Intelligent Cloud stated that products purchased before the effective date will not be affected during the current billing cycle. The new prices will apply in subsequent renewal cycles.

Alibaba Cloud announced on its official website that due to the explosive growth in global AI demand and supply chain price increases, Alibaba Cloud’s AI computing, storage, and other products will see price hikes of up to 34%.

This round of price increases includes: computing cards like the PingTouGe ZhenWu 810E rising by 5%-34%; CPFS (Intelligent Computing Edition) for file storage increasing by 30%.

Alibaba Cloud said that if users purchased related services before April 18, 2026, they will not be affected by this adjustment during the current order/billing cycle. The new prices will apply starting from the user’s next renewal cycle.

Sources reveal that another major reason for this price hike is the “surge in token call volume.” During the Spring Festival, AI Agent applications exploded, and Alibaba Cloud’s MaaS business Bailing achieved its highest growth rate from January to March this year. Alibaba Cloud is shifting its scarce AI computing resources toward token-related services.

This indicates that China’s largest cloud provider, Alibaba Cloud, is adjusting its business strategy—shifting from selling computing resources to selling intelligence—by leveraging its self-developed Qianwen large model.

Two days ago, Alibaba established a new Alibaba Token Hub (ATH) business group, including Tongyi Laboratory, MaaS business line, Qianwen Division, Wukong Division, and AI Innovation Division, covering the full range from foundational model research and model service platforms to AI applications for individuals and enterprises. Meanwhile, Alibaba will create a unified model service platform, Bailing, which will be offered externally by Alibaba Cloud as a commercial MaaS service.

Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming stated in an internal letter: “We are on the eve of an AGI explosion. A vast number of digital tasks will be supported by hundreds of billions of AI Agents, which will run on tokens generated by models, becoming the main interface for human interaction with the digital world.”

Major overseas cloud providers also raised their core cloud product prices this year. On January 22, AWS announced a 15% price increase for EC2 instances used for large model training. On January 27, Google Cloud announced price hikes for data transfer services, AI, and computing infrastructure, with increases up to 100%.

Editor | Cheng Peng, Du Bo, Du Hengfeng

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