Have you noticed? AI large language models are collectively raising prices.
📖 Glossary
AI Box (also known as Agent Computer / Agent PC), is a dedicated local hardware device that runs AI Agents. Pre-installed with an AI agent management system, plug-and-play, running 24/7. Users can remotely command AI to work via Discord, Slack, Telegram, WhatsApp, and more.
DeepSeek V4 introduced peak pricing—API call costs double during weekday business hours. Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen has also quietly adjusted its pricing. One after another. Everyday professionals who rely on AI to write code, research, and draft documents thought AI would keep getting cheaper. Instead, the tide is turning.
The Price Hike Isn't About One Company—The Whole Industry Is Shifting
Why the collective price increase? The reason is simple—they can't keep burning cash. Over the past two years, major LLM providers competed on user acquisition and market share, subsidizing heavily. Now it's time to balance the books. GPU cluster electricity and operational costs are real. VC money can't subsidize free lunches forever.
In plain terms: the free trial is over. The bill is due.
Two Years of Cloud Bills = A Brand New Computer
Let's do the actual math.
A heavy AI user—writing code, researching, drafting documents—easily makes 200 API calls a day. At current market rates of roughly 1.5 cents per call, that's 1,200 yuan per year. This doesn't even count the invisible calls behind AI coding tools like Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Codex. Every Tab completion is a request you never see.
Two years? 2,400 yuan. For one person.
If a ten-person team all use AI tools, that's 24,000 yuan in two years. That's the price of a well-configured computer. But here's the difference: a computer lasts three to five years. Cloud AI bills? They only go up. Today this provider raises prices, tomorrow another introduces a new pricing tier. You never know what's coming next.
Buy Once vs. Pay Monthly—Which Wins?
Zoom out to three years:
Cloud path: A heavy user starts at 1,200 yuan per year, totaling 3,600 yuan over three years. Add unpredictable price hikes, and the real number is only higher.
Local path: Kaihe AIBOX is a one-time hardware investment. LLMs run directly at your workstation. No API call limits. No peak pricing. No late-night queueing. Whether you make 100 or 1,000 calls, the marginal cost is forever zero.
And it's not just about money. Cloud AI creates "billing awareness"—every time you're about to send a request, your brain automatically calculates tokens. Want to run a few extra experiments? Check the budget first. Want to follow up with another round of questions? Think about how much this month's bill already is.
Local AI has none of that mental overhead. Prompt freely. Test freely. Creativity unconstrained by a meter.
Price Hikes Hurt, But Losing Control Hurts More
The bigger concern is ownership. You've spent a year fine-tuning an AI agent—its configuration, memory, personality. Then one day, the platform announces: "Agent features will be adjusted. Certain capabilities are being deprecated."
Is your AI really yours? The data lives in the cloud. The model lives in the cloud. Pricing power lives in the cloud. You're a tenant, not a landlord.
Local deployment means: your data is on your hard drive. Your agents run on your machine. When and how often you use them—nobody gets a say but you. That's real ownership.
Choosing Local Isn't Just About Saving Money
It's about reclaiming your right to use and control AI on your own terms.
Want to learn more about Kaihe AIBOX? Contact us at [email protected]