Chinese Tech Company Alibaba Group Holding has committed to a 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) investment in its cloud computing and AI infrastructure. This investment surpasses the company’s total AI spending over the past decade and will be distributed over the next three years.
Eddie Wu Yongming, Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba, stated last week that the company will “aggressively invest” in AI, the firm’s primary objective.
This spending will go toward improving the software’s computing abilities and creating more data centres, the company said.
On Par with US AI Investment?
Microsoft and Meta announced they will spend $80 billion and $65 billion on AI this year, respectively.
Under President Donald Trump, the US said it will invest $500 billion in AI under the Stargate project, backed by OpenAI and Japanese-owned SoftBank.
In the background, Chinese tech companies rival Western AI developments – sparking wider debate about a US-China AI innovation race.
Chinese startup DeepSeek famously rocked global tech markets with the relase of its R1 chatbot model. This model’s existence stunned audiences both for its cost efficiency compared to Western models and its sophistication despite US-to-China export restrictions.
Alibaba recently announced a new AI reasoning model reportedly similar to DeepSeek’s R1 models. The model is based on Alibaba’s existing Qwen 2.5 – Max model, and is projected for use by cloud providers as has DeepSeek-R1.
The tech company’s AI technology is also being incorporated into Chinese iPhones.
Alibaba Cloud, the company’s computing sector, had a 13 percent year on year revenue increase. This growth was driven by substantial AI-product revenue for the sixth consecutive quarter, the tech giant reported.
