ALIBABA Group Holding is rolling out its second major price cut for cloud services in years, aiming to win back users from rivals such as Tencent Holdings competing to provide the tools critical to training artificial intelligence (AI).

The Chinese Internet pioneer will slash prices starting on Thursday (Feb 29) on scores of internet-based services by as much as 55 per cent, and by 20 per cent on average. The discounts span more than 100 products, including data storage and elastic computing options for online processing power to clients, Alibaba executives told reporters in Beijing.

The cuts mark one of the more aggressive moves by Alibaba to stay ahead of Tencent and Baidu in the cloud business. They come after Alibaba called off a spinoff and initial public offering for the formerly fast-growing unit, a move that surprised investors hoping to buy into a key business that’s essential to AI development. Alibaba’s shares slid 2.3 per cent in Hong Kong after the news, the most since Feb 9.

It is now focusing on growing the public cloud – the domestic services arm aimed at enterprise customers – given United States sanctions curtailing the supply of advanced chips to Chinese firms. Chief executive officer Eddie Wu has taken direct control of the unit and revamped major lines.

“That’s why we decided to launch the price reduction campaign – to lower the threshold of cloud services for more enterprises and developers to reap the technological dividends and accelerate the adoption of advanced public cloud services across various industries,” Liu Weiguang, president of the unit’s public cloud segment, said.

Alibaba has struggled over the past year to revamp its vast e-commerce, logistics and cloud empire in the face of fierce competition and geopolitical risks. The company is looking to revive growth after two years of regulatory scrutiny and Covid-era economic turbulence. It seeks to hive off non-core assets to raise capital, while dividing its sprawling operations into more clearly defined areas.

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But the cloud – the business spawned over a decade ago from the need to support a mammoth e-commerce operation – remains a focal point.

The company announced cuts from 15 to 50 per cent for core products of the Alibaba Cloud in April last year, in a move aimed at capitalising on the demand for raw computing power needed for AI models such as Alibaba’s own Tongyi Qianwen. The previous round of discounts triggered fears that rivals such as Tencent and Baidu will follow suit, eroding margins for a wide swath of the Chinese Internet industry.

Thursday’s cuts will apply retroactively to clients that renew their orders on discounted products for at least a year within the next three months, for the remaining undelivered cloud resources they had previously purchased.

The price cuts from China’s largest cloud provider are also aimed at attracting longer-term customers, with special discounts for five-year plans. The free-usage amount for consumer storage will also double to 20GB from 10GB.

Alibaba executives stressed that the discounts will open up more possibilities particularly for smaller firms. The company has backed startups such as Zhipu and Moonshot AI that are developing generative AI platforms to compete with sector leaders such as Baidu. The Chinese Internet search leader reported disappointing results Wednesday, hit partly by the surging costs of AI development. BLOOMBERG