Alibaba Cloud has taken the lead in raising prices, and the increase is not small

AI computing power & storage prices have been raised by up to 34%

The superficial reason is: AI demand explosion + supply chain cost increase

But the real core is summed up in one sentence: Token call volume has exploded

What is even more worth paying attention to is the structural changes behind it

1. AI computing power has begun to enter the "supply-demand imbalance" stage

·MaaS platform demand has surged

·Inference demand (not training) has become the main force

This indicates that AI has moved from the "experimental stage" to the "mass usage stage"

2. Cloud service providers have started to do "computing power allocation"

Alibaba Cloud is already doing: prioritizing Token/inference business

This means: computing power is becoming a kind of "resource allocation"

3. The business model is changing

Previously, cloud service providers competed on: price reduction + scale

Now it has changed to: price increase + priority scheduling + profit optimization

4. Who will benefit?

·GPU/chip manufacturers (demand continues to explode)

·Cloud service providers (profit improvement)

·Leading AI applications (can access resources)

Who will be squeezed? Small and medium-sized AI startups (cannot access computing power or costs rise)