BABA(US:BABA) 3 6 Ke·2025-10-09 10:48Core Viewpoint - The competition in the "AI cloud market" between Alibaba and ByteDance is intensifying, with both companies claiming leadership in various metrics, leading to a complex landscape of market share claims and statistics [1][4][20]. Group 1: Market Share Claims - ByteDance's Volcano Engine claims a 46.4% market share in China's public cloud model market, emphasizing its dominance without using extreme terms like "first" [1]. - Different companies, including Alibaba, ByteDance, and Baidu, all assert they are "number one" in the AI cloud market, but their claims are based on different metrics and definitions [4][20]. - The statistics used by Volcano Engine focus on the Model as a Service (MaaS) segment, which may not encompass all cloud service usage, leading to questions about the comprehensiveness of their claims [3][7]. Group 2: Revenue and Service Models - Alibaba Cloud's definition of AI cloud includes a full-stack service model, covering Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and MaaS, leading to a total revenue figure that positions it as a leader in the AI cloud market [11][21]. - Baidu's claims of being the "first" in AI public cloud services include a broader range of revenue sources, including customized industry services [9][21]. - The overall market for MaaS is still relatively small compared to traditional cloud computing, with Alibaba Cloud's revenue exceeding 800 billion yuan in 2024, highlighting the disparity in scale [17][18]. Group 3: Competitive Strategies - The competition is shifting from price wars to a focus on service depth and model efficiency, as companies realize that simply lowering prices is not a sustainable strategy [23]. - Smaller AI model companies are finding it increasingly important to differentiate themselves, as they lack the resources to adopt a full-stack approach like larger competitors [24]. - The market is evolving towards valuing self-developed models and their performance, with a report indicating that Alibaba's self-developed model holds a significant market share in terms of daily token usage [22].