Why Is Hangzhou, Zhejiang's Economy So Developed? 01

AI has been hot for a few years now. There are many AI companies in Zhejiang, and they have indeed done quite well, being pushed to the center stage in recent years.

Our company, consequently, had GPU computing demands. Last year, we prepared to lease an 8-card RTX 5090 GPU server. Through an introduction, we contacted Zhejiang Suanli (Zhejiang Suanli Technology Co., Ltd.). It was a half-year contract, pay-as-you-go. At first, they said it was 9,000 RMB per month. After agreeing on everything and getting ready to sign, they suddenly added 200 RMB at the last minute.

I felt uncomfortable, but I comforted myself: 200 RMB isn't much, the contract wasn't signed yet, and it was understandable that they wanted to raise it. So we leased it anyway.

This year, after Trump brought Jensen Huang (Nvidia's CEO) to China, some people started bragging everywhere that high-end GPU chips would be supplied to China in large quantities. As a result, graphics card prices on the market stopped sky-rocketing so crazily.

But for some reason, the chips still didn't arrive in large quantities.

Our own business was growing, and we originally planned to purchase five machines equipped with A100 or 5090 8-card configurations. However, the price of an A100 8-card machine went from 850,000 RMB when we first inquired, all the way up to 1.4 million RMB. It increased by about 100,000 RMB per week. Despite this, many suppliers didn't even want to provide a quote, wanting to wait and see.

Watching those numbers shoot up every day, those of us who run our businesses honestly felt extremely anxious and helpless. Buying machines suddenly became incredibly cost-ineffective, so we had to rent 5090s first to keep our business afloat.

At the time, I thought that since we already had one 5090 machine with Zhejiang Suanli, we were repeat customers, so we should go back to them. This time, however, they asked for 15,000 RMB and demanded a full-year contract. What was even more ridiculous was that the hardware configuration was lower than the previous one.

I thought to myself: as long as it can run our tasks and satisfy our business needs, I can accept spending a bit more money and getting a slightly lower configuration.

After agreeing on everything, we prepared to sign the contract, pay, and use the machine. But during delivery, we discovered that the configuration was even lower than discussed—mostly because the storage capacity was significantly smaller. I was upset and went to confront them. After a long drag, they "generously" gave me a discount of 300 RMB.

Looking at that 300 RMB discount, it was truly laughable.

Last Friday, the contract was signed and the machine was delivered. We connected to it remotely; they did not provide a console. Yet we hadn't even used it for six hours before the machine disconnected and we couldn't reconnect.

I contacted them. They slowly replied, saying that the server room had accidentally shut the machine down.

I used to manage large-scale data centers myself. I have never encountered such a low-level shutdown accident. But I still told myself that there are careless people in the world, and booting up takes only a few minutes, so I should just wait.

More than an hour passed, and the machine was still unreachable. They didn't reply to WeChat, and nobody answered the phone. After calling multiple times, they finally picked up and changed their story, claiming that when the server room was migrating other machines, they accidentally misidentified our machine.

Migrating machines in a server room requires checking the machine's SN number against a work order, confirming multiple times, and shutting down in advance. No matter how amateur a team is, they shouldn't make such a mistake.

Later, I complained about this to a friend in the same industry. Hearing this, my friend laughed and said that this machine was likely hijacked by someone else with a higher price.

Only then did I realize that the people at Zhejiang Suanli were really playing me for a fool. While they were fabricating excuses like "the server room is broken, we are repairing the machine," they tried to lease us another machine with a lower configuration and half the performance of what was agreed, without dropping the price by a single penny.

But with that configuration, our business couldn't run at all.

Perhaps this is why the economy of Hangzhou, Zhejiang is so developed. Some enterprises here turn their brains too quickly—as long as they can make quick money, contracts and reputation can be discarded at any moment. The spirit of contract has become a joke. As long as they can make a little more profit, they treat honest customers like fools without any psychological burden.

(To be continued)