1. What makes up the investment?

In on-premise deployment, hardware such as CPUs costs little; the main cost concentrates on GPUs (AI compute) and storage. Two GPUs can run AI but slowly; when AI speed matters, GPUs can be multiplied (e.g. 8 or 16 cards), with training efficiency improving accordingly.

2. How is the investment scale measured?

Forming baseline productivity requires at least 1-2 million RMB of AI capability investment; the supplier’s own full-configuration cluster investment exceeds 6 million RMB and still requires renting Alibaba Cloud compute for large-scale operations, showing how demanding large-scale AI training is on compute.

3. On-premise vs cloud investment comparison

Mode Investment Applicable to
On-premise From 1-2 million RMB Data-sensitive customers
Cloud Basic fee included in service charge Lower one-time investment

4. Applicable conditions and scenarios

  • Customers with data sensitivity requiring local storage
  • Professional organizations with high demands on AI training efficiency
  • Customers with adequate budgets and routine high-frequency operations

5. Notes

On-premise hardware carries depreciation risk as AI technology evolves; evaluate comprehensively against business scale and cloud deployment costs.