Core Insights - Alibaba Group Holding has significantly reduced charges for its Qwen3-Max AI model by nearly 50%, indicating a potential price war in China's competitive AI market [1][3][5] Pricing Strategy - The minimum price for Qwen3-Max has decreased to US$0.459 per million input tokens and US$1.836 per million output tokens for domestic users [3] - A further discount of 50% is available for batch API calls executed during non-peak hours [4] Competitive Landscape - The pricing adjustments reflect increased competition in China's foundational model market, particularly following the launches of new models by start-ups like Moonshot AI, Zhipu AI, and MiniMax [5] - Moonshot AI's Kimi K2 Thinking model has reportedly outperformed established models like OpenAI's GPT-5 and Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 in various benchmarks [6] Market Trends - The AI industry in China has experienced multiple price wars, including the "hundred models war," leading to intensified competition in specific sectors such as coding [6] - ByteDance's Volcano Engine has introduced a new coding agent priced at 9.90 yuan (US$1.30) for the first month, reflecting aggressive pricing strategies among Chinese AI firms [7]