China's Big Tech Firms Raise AI Prices as Demand Soars

By Tracy Qu

China's tech titans are raising prices for AI services, signaling a potential inflection point in the race for monetization.

E-commerce heavyweight Alibaba Group and search-engine giant Baidu on Wednesday became the latest to announce price hikes for artificial-intelligence offerings, accelerating the U-turn taking shape in an industry previously characterized by cutthroat discounting competition.

Alibaba's cloud unit said it plans to raise prices for its T-head AI computing chips, such as Zhenwu 810E, by 5% to 34%. Prices of its storage service will increase by 30%.

In a statement, Alibaba cited a surge in global AI demand and rising supply chain costs as the primary reasons for the price changes, which take effect April 18.

Baidu meanwhile also plans to raise prices for its AI cloud products by as much as 30%, also from April 18, a spokesperson said.

The moves stand in stark contrast to early 2024, when Alibaba slashed cloud computing services prices as much as 55%, swiftly sparking reciprocal cuts from rivals such as JD.com.

Last week, Shenzhen-based tech giant Tencent also announced a price increase for its flagship Hunyuan large-language models.

The wave of price hikes could be taken as a tentatively positive sign of companies' efforts to monetize AI-related services. Many of the biggest players have been striving to make AI a major revenue generator, at the expense of ballooning research-and-development budgets.

For Alibaba, e-commerce remains the top revenue generator, but its AI and cloud businesses have been gaining traction. Earlier this week, the group restructured its AI business to solidify resources and improve profitability, and its earnings reports on Thursday will shed light on how its strategy has been paying off so far.

Write to Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 18, 2026 05:27 ET (09:27 GMT)