Alibaba is raising prices for its AI computing and storage products by as much as 34%, joining a host of big tech firms moving to capitalize on surging demand in the hope of recouping hefty investments.
The company is hiking prices for its T-Head AI computing chips by between 5% and 34%, it said in a statement. It’s also raising the cost of its Cloud Parallel File Storage service by 30%, it added.
US-listed Alibaba shares gained more than 3% in premarket trading.
The new pricing, which includes Alibaba’s Zhenwu 810E chip, comes after the company launched a major structural revamp this month to focus on monetizing AI. China’s e-commerce leader introduced a series of products, including an agentic AI service for businesses called Wukong, that it hopes will tap into national enthusiasm for the technology.
AI chips are one facet of a broader campaign by Alibaba, which is due to report earnings on Thursday, to become a leader in the technology. The company has been among the most aggressive investors in and advocates for AI since DeepSeek fired up the local tech industry. Chief Executive Officer Eddie Wu has pledged more than $53 billion toward infrastructure and AI development — an outlay he’s said the company could surpass over time.
Alibaba leads Chinese large language model makers in open-source but has so far struggled to translate that into a significant commercial lead. Just this month, Alibaba lost a star model developer, raising questions about the company’s broader approach to AI. The company this week unveiled a big corporate restructuring, creating a new Token Hub business unit to encompass its entire AI portfolio and refocus on profiting from the technology.
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