Alibaba Cloud bumps prices by up to 34% due to AI demand and hardware costs

Date:
Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:30:00 +0000

Description:
Alibaba Cloud says surging AI demand and strained supply chains has made its products more expensive.

FULL STORY ======================================================================Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Threads Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Tech Radar Get the TechRadar Newsletter Sign up for
breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. You are
now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletter Alibaba is rising some prices by as much as 34%, particularly for GPU-intensive services Surging AI demand and the global chip shortage are to blame The semiconductor market will continue to grow Alibaba Cloud has been forced to rise prices across many of its services, and by as much as 34%, due to the increasing costs associated with acquiring the hardware needed for its data centers.

The Chinese cloud giant blamed surging global AI demand for the price increases, which are incrementally worse the more compute-intensive a service becomes. For example, many services are only seeing a smaller increase of around 5%, but GPU-powered product lines are seeing rises of around 25-34%. Article continues below You may like Notebook prices could be set to soar
and no, it's not the Apple MacBook Neo's fault, but those pesky RAM and CPU price rises again DRAM prices set to almost double by March 2026, and yes, we all have our AI overlords to thank for that wonderful news Experts warn PC prices could rise even more in 2026 as RAM costs set to soar higher Alibaba Cloud price hikes are because of the chip shortage Increased pressure on supply chains due to the recent AI boom has caused CPUs, GPUs, memory chips and storage to rise in cost. The effects are being felt across personal, consumer and enterprise products alike.

"Due to the explosion of global AI demand and the rise in supply chain
prices, the procurement cost of core hardware in the industry has risen significantly," the company wrote in a customer notice (translated using machine learning). "After careful evaluation, we have decided to adjust the price of AI computing power, CPFS (intelligent calculation version) and other services from April 18, 2026."

Alibaba says current contracts are unaffected until renewal, and so existing customers must prepare for potentially sharp price hikes.

Despite disruptions to the supply chain, Alibaba promises to "continue to provide stable, safe and efficient cloud computing services to help you achieve business innovation." Are you a pro? Subscribe to our newsletter Sign up to the TechRadar Pro newsletter to get all the top news, opinion, features and guidance your business needs to succeed! Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.

However, Alibaba isn't alone AWS has also been forced to increase prices for its cloud computing services, while enterprise and consumer versions of Microsoft 365 have become more expensive in recent months too.

Looking ahead, cloud products in general could continue on an upward price trajectory, with global semiconductor revenue on track to hit $1 trillion for the first time ever in 2026 per Omdia forecasting . Follow TechRadar on
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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/alibaba-cloud-bumps-prices-by-up-to-34-percent-d ue-to-ai-demand-and-hardware-costs


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