Bambu Lab's $10B Gamble: Price Cuts as a Dominant Strategy or Future Overextension?

Last autumn, I visited a friend in Bao'an, Shenzhen, who makes figurines. He rented a 100-square-meter rural house and packed it tight with 40 Bambu Lab P1S printers running 24/7. Next to each machine was a production schedule printed from Excel, and even the AC outdoor units were wrapped in insulation foam. He did the math: a single machine costs less than 3,000 RMB, printing 10 hours a day yields a gross margin of 200 RMB, so he breaks even in three months. But when he said this, his brow was furrowed—because the warehouse next door had just brought in 20 entry-level Creality machines, priced at half of Bambu Lab's. Although tuning them is a hassle, they've been stealing quite a few orders for monochrome prints.