The global cloud computing market is silently undergoing a transformative shift. In 2024, Tianyi Cloud reported revenues of 113.9 billion yuan, marking a 17.1% year-on-year increase and crossing the 100 billion yuan threshold for the first time. This achievement propelled Tianyi Cloud ahead of Alibaba Cloud, making it the top revenue earner in China's cloud service market. However, amidst this apparent prosperity, internet giants and operator clouds are locked in a fierce battle for supremacy.

Policy dividends once paved the way for operator clouds. Initiatives such as the "East Data, West Computation" project, the digital transformation of state-owned enterprises, and data security compliance propelled Tianyi Cloud, Mobile Cloud, and Unicom Cloud to rapid growth. As part of the "national team" and with the unique advantage of cloud-network integration, Tianyi Cloud garnered significant expectations. In 2024, the revenue growth rates of Mobile Cloud, Tianyi Cloud, and Unicom Cloud stood at 20.4%, 17.1%, and 34.5%, respectively, compared to 66%, 68%, and 42% in 2023, indicating a notable slowdown.

However, the veneer of prosperity cannot conceal the underlying challenges. Under pressure from both internet cloud vendors (Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Huawei Cloud) and fellow operator clouds (Mobile Cloud, Unicom Cloud), Tianyi Cloud's market share growth heavily relies on policy-driven government and enterprise orders, rather than true market competitiveness. As policy dividends diminish, the question arises: does Tianyi Cloud possess the wherewithal to sustain its growth? Is its pride in "cloud-network integration" a genuine differentiator or merely an overhyped concept?

The growth myth is fading.

The golden era of China's cloud computing market is drawing to a close. According to IDC's "2024-2025 China Public Cloud Market Tracker Report," the industry growth rate plummeted from 48% in 2021 to 16% in 2024 and is projected to further decline to 12% in 2025. Tianyi Cloud, once the dominant player in the government and enterprise market as the "national team," now faces a predicament of waning growth momentum.

Digging deeper into the financial data reveals that Tianyi Cloud's "blood loss" extends to its core. The 2024 annual financial report shows that its R&D investment accounted for only 7.2% of revenue, significantly lower than Alibaba Cloud (15.8%) and Huawei Cloud (13.5%). Furthermore, over 60% of R&D funds are still allocated to traditional IaaS infrastructure, while investment in high-value-added areas such as AI and cloud-native technologies is less than 5%. In contrast, Tianyi Cloud's operating costs surged by 28% year-on-year, with data center operation and maintenance expenses accounting for up to 35%, highlighting the inefficiencies of its asset-heavy model.

Internally, despite significant growth in intelligent computing scale, Tianyi Cloud's profit model remains unproven. Compared to Alibaba Cloud's adjusted EBITA profit of 6.12 billion yuan in fiscal year 2024, Tianyi Cloud has a long way to go in terms of profitability.

Rapid changes in the competitive landscape have left Tianyi Cloud vulnerable on all fronts. According to the latest IDC data for 2025, Tianyi Cloud's market share fell from 17% in 2022 to 13.5% in 2024, surpassed by Baidu Intelligent Cloud (14.2%) for the first time, dropping it to fifth place. Meanwhile, ByteDance's Volcano Engine captured a 19% vertical market share in the entertainment and retail sectors with its "AI + content ecosystem" combination. Huawei Cloud gained ground in manufacturing and healthcare through "industry-specific large models + localized services." While Tianyi Cloud still holds a 50% share of the government market, this "comfort zone" is gradually being eroded by Alibaba Cloud's "City Brain 3.0" and Huawei Cloud's "Government Intelligence Entity."

As competitors rewrite the rules with open ecosystems and technological penetration, cracks have emerged in Tianyi Cloud's competitive edge.

Tianyi Cloud's dilemma

Competition in China's cloud computing market has reached a critical juncture, and Tianyi Cloud's predicament is not coincidental. IDC's "2025 Global Cloud Computing Trends Report" points out that within the next three years, cloud vendors that fail to achieve technological leapfrogging will face accelerated market share loss. Tianyi Cloud's current growth decline is a manifestation of its strategic inertia, technological shortcomings, and market ecosystem imbalance.

First: The double squeeze of escalating price wars and demand shifts

In 2024, a fresh wave of price wars erupted in China's public cloud market. Alibaba Cloud announced a 35% price reduction for core products, Huawei Cloud launched the "Thousand Enterprises AI Free Computing Power Plan," and Tencent Cloud adopted an aggressive "buy three years, get one year free" strategy to target small and medium-sized enterprises. According to Gartner's estimates, the industry's average profit margin shrank from 10.2% to 6.8% in 2024. However, constrained by the profit assessment of central enterprises, Tianyi Cloud struggles to keep pace with these price wars, resulting in its IaaS product prices being 18% higher than the market average.

Second: Top-heavy technology investment and closed ecosystems

Missteps in technology roadmap selection are eroding Tianyi Cloud's competitiveness. The 2024 financial report reveals that 68% of its R&D investment is still directed towards the traditional IaaS layer, while cutting-edge areas such as cloud-native and serverless architectures account for less than 12%. In contrast, Huawei Cloud allocates 45% of its R&D budget to AI and cloud-native technologies, and Alibaba Cloud announced the establishment of the "AI Priority Lab" in early 2025, planning to invest 50 billion yuan in large model infrastructure over three years. This imbalance in technology investment has stagnated Tianyi Cloud's product matrix at the "resource-based service" level.

Third: The efficiency trap of the asset-heavy model

Tianyi Cloud's "data center dependency" is becoming a profit black hole. In 2024, the number of its self-built data centers exceeded 100, but the average resource utilization rate was only 58%, 17 percentage points lower than the industry average. During the same period, Alibaba Cloud increased its utilization rate to 82% through intelligent scheduling algorithms, while Huawei Cloud reduced operating costs in western data centers by 40% with the help of the "East Data, West Computation" strategy. In contrast, Tianyi Cloud's data center PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) stands at 1.6, far exceeding the industry-leading level of 1.3, with electricity costs alone consuming 12% of its annual revenue.

Tianyi Cloud's life-or-death struggle

The battleground of China's cloud computing market is heating up, but Tianyi Cloud's future remains uncertain. As policy dividends wane, price wars intensify, and technological iterations accelerate, this once highly anticipated "national team" player finds itself at a crossroads. Will it carve out a path to success or ultimately fade into the shadows of its giants?

However, knowing is easier than doing. When a company's lifeblood flows with the inertia of "resource monetization," when its organizational structure is shackled to the role of a "government and enterprise nanny," and when its evaluation system chases the illusion of "scale supremacy," any transformation faces immense internal resistance. More crucially, the market offers no respite; Alibaba Cloud is redefining cloud service boundaries with AI large models, Huawei Cloud is continually eroding the government and enterprise heartland with "deep industry cultivation," and Tencent Cloud is building user barriers with ecological stickiness. If Tianyi Cloud fails to reshape itself with the resolve to cut its losses, its so-called "transformation" may become a self-deceiving act of behavioral art.

The market's verdict has long been clear: enterprises devoid of a technological soul will eventually be eradicated by technological revolution; platforms lacking ecological vitality will be abandoned by developers; and businesses without profitability will be discarded by capital. The tale of Tianyi Cloud may become the most profound warning in the history of China's cloud computing: policy dividends may create temporary prosperity, but only the crucible of the market can forge a true king.