A price war is deepening in China’s artificial intelligence sector as companies cut rates or dangle promotions amid intense competition, according to analysts from Bank of America Securities. ByteDance on Monday introduced Seedance 2.0 Mini, a video-generation model, with a price of 23 yuan (US$3.40) for 1 million tokens – half the price of the standard version. This followed a promotional campaign offering rebates on its Coze AI agent platform. ByteDance joined rivals DeepSeek and Xiaomi, which both cut prices in late May, with Xiaomi making its MiMo V2.5 model 99 per cent cheaper. Tencent last week cut prices for certain models on its TokenHub platform, slashing the cost of its Hy-MT2-Pro by nearly 70 per cent. MiniMax AI halved the price for its newly released M3 model series. Alibaba Group Holding launched a promotion tied to the 618 midyear sales event, offering 50 per cent off its newest Qwen3.7-Max AI system. The falling prices were welcomed by some users, including an office worker surnamed Li from Guangzhou.