Major Chinese cloud providers, including Alibaba Cloud and Baidu AI Cloud, have raised prices for artificial intelligence-related services, pointing to strong demand for computing power and rising infrastructure costs.
Alibaba Cloud said prices for some AI computing and storage products would increase by up to 34%, citing a surge in global AI demand and higher supply chain costs. Baidu AI Cloud announced similar adjustments, with AI compute services set to rise by about 5%–30% and storage products by around 30%, effective April 18.
The moves follow Tencent Cloud's earlier shift to usage-based pricing for its agent development platform, with some models seeing price increases of more than 400%.
The price hikes come as rapid adoption of AI applications drives demand for computing power, reshaping the cloud sector's business model. Analysts say providers are moving beyond basic infrastructure leasing toward offering platforms for deploying AI agents, with frameworks such as OpenClaw lowering deployment barriers and boosting inference demand.
The moves lifted shares of cloud-related companies in China and Hong Kong on Wednesday, with several stocks posting sharp gains.
