JD.com took less than a day to respond to Alibaba Group Holding’s price cuts in cloud computing services with its own sharp reductions, an aggressive round of competition that will benefit customers and erode profits at China’s leading technology companies. Alibaba began slashing prices by as much as 55% on more than 100 services on Thursday (February 29) in a bid to win back customers in the hotly contested market. JD.com, a rival in e-commerce and cloud services, responded later the same day with its own round of price cuts, unveiled on the company’s WeChat account. Alibaba’s stock fell as much as 1.9%, while JD was little changed. The moves by Alibaba mark one of its more aggressive bids to fend off competition from the likes of Tencent Holdings, Baidu, and JD.com. Alibaba had planned to spin off its cloud business into an independent, publicly traded unit but called off the split last year in a reversal that stunned investors.