Alibaba Cloud raises prices for domain name auctions amid AI compute price war

Auctions for previously owned domain names now start at 99 yuan, a 43 per cent increase over new prices announced just a year ago

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Alibaba Cloud’s booth at Hong Kong FinTech Week on November 2, 2023. Photo: Bloomberg

Ann Caoin Shanghai

Published: 5:00pm, 29 Jul 2024

Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing unit – the service handling the online broadcasting of the 2024 Summer Olympics – has announced that it raised prices on its domain name auction platform, as the company tries to deal with rising costs while grappling with price competition for artificial intelligence (AI) services.

Starting from August 1, starting bids for domain names on Alibaba Cloud will be raised to 199 yuan for “.com” addresses and 99 yuan for other top level domains, the company said in a statement published on its official website on Saturday. Hangzhou-based Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Alibaba Cloud’s auction platform allows potential buyers to bid for expired domain names managed through the company’s registrar, offering users a chance to access previously owned domain names rather than purchasing new ones.

The new prices are at least a 43 per cent increase from the previous 69 yuan starting bid for all domain names, which Alibaba announced in August 2023.

The company said it is hiking prices “after careful consideration” in response to “increasing service costs”, but did not elaborate.

Alibaba Cloud has also been making adjustments to its other businesses. It has announced that it would be shutting down data centres in India and Australia in July and September, respectively, which the company said is part of an “infrastructure strategy update”.