Beijing doesn’t like its companies getting too cut-throat...

Bobby

·5 days ago

shared a link post in group #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖via#A Glance of China 行摄中国

Beijing doesn’t like its companies getting too cut-throat in the marketplace and often steps in to discourage the behavior, which is referred to as “involution”.  #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖 

In the latest move, draft regulations issued by the market regulator on Wednesday will ban e-commerce platforms from using “long-term, large-scale” subsidies to hamper market competition or disrupt market order.

We are now seeing similar price cutting among Chinese tech companies with AI offerings. 

TikTok parent ByteDance and Shenzhen-based video gaming giant Tencent Holdings are the latest to launch AI price offensives.

On Monday, ByteDance introduced Seedance 2.0 Mini with a price tag of only 23 yuan (US$3.40) for 1 million tokens – half the cost of the standard version of the popular video generation model. DeepSeek and smartphone/EV giant Xiaomi both cut prices in late May, with Xiaomi making its MiMo V2.5 model 99 per cent cheaper, triggering other frontier labs to follow.

Tencent has cut prices for certain existing models on its TokenHub platform, slashing the cost of its own Hy-MT2-Pro by nearly 70 per cent. Meanwhile, Alibaba Group Holding launched a promotion tied to the 618 midyear sales event, offering 50 per cent off its newest Qwen3.7-Max AI system. Alibaba owns the SCMP.

Unlike the US AI sector, which is dominated by a handful of major players – OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet’s Google – China’s AI segment has more than a dozen heavyweights, making it fiercely contested.

Their models’ homogeneous capabilities and an oversupply in the market had set off a land grab, forcing the companies to offer discounts and incentives to capture more market share, according to Zhang Yi, founder and chief analyst at consultancy iiMedia.

“Our data shows that per-million-token costs have slumped 80 per cent year on year over the past year,” Zhang said, adding that broader adoption of domestic chips and ongoing optimization by AI start-ups could push costs down further.

Will Beijing step in with an anti-involution order for #Artificial Intelligence model players?

https://www.scmp.com/tech.. 

https://www.scmp.com/tech..

www.scmp.com

AI for less: price war in China deepens amid ‘intense’ competition

Narrowing capability gaps between models and falling costs of service set stage for price reductions to continue, analysts say.

Bobby

·5 days ago

shared a link post in group #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖via#A Glance of China 行摄中国

Beijing doesn’t like its companies getting too cut-throat in the marketplace and often steps in to discourage the behavior, which is referred to as “involution”.  #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖 

In the latest move, draft regulations issued by the market regulator on Wednesday will ban e-commerce platforms from using “long-term, large-scale” subsidies to hamper market competition or disrupt market order.

We are now seeing similar price cutting among Chinese tech companies with AI offerings. 

TikTok parent ByteDance and Shenzhen-based video gaming giant Tencent Holdings are the latest to launch AI price offensives.

On Monday, ByteDance introduced Seedance 2.0 Mini with a price tag of only 23 yuan (US$3.40) for 1 million tokens – half the cost of the standard version of the popular video generation model. DeepSeek and smartphone/EV giant Xiaomi both cut prices in late May, with Xiaomi making its MiMo V2.5 model 99 per cent cheaper, triggering other frontier labs to follow.

Tencent has cut prices for certain existing models on its TokenHub platform, slashing the cost of its own Hy-MT2-Pro by nearly 70 per cent. Meanwhile, Alibaba Group Holding launched a promotion tied to the 618 midyear sales event, offering 50 per cent off its newest Qwen3.7-Max AI system. Alibaba owns the SCMP.

Unlike the US AI sector, which is dominated by a handful of major players – OpenAI, Anthropic and Alphabet’s Google – China’s AI segment has more than a dozen heavyweights, making it fiercely contested.

Their models’ homogeneous capabilities and an oversupply in the market had set off a land grab, forcing the companies to offer discounts and incentives to capture more market share, according to Zhang Yi, founder and chief analyst at consultancy iiMedia.

“Our data shows that per-million-token costs have slumped 80 per cent year on year over the past year,” Zhang said, adding that broader adoption of domestic chips and ongoing optimization by AI start-ups could push costs down further.

Will Beijing step in with an anti-involution order for #Artificial Intelligence model players?

https://www.scmp.com/tech.. 

https://www.scmp.com/tech..

www.scmp.com

AI for less: price war in China deepens amid ‘intense’ competition

Narrowing capability gaps between models and falling costs of service set stage for price reductions to continue, analysts say.