Alibaba Boosts Global Data Centers Amid Rising AI Rivalry
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is intensifying its data center expansion in Europe and West Asia, driving its 20-gigawatt global infrastructure development amid the intensifying competition in AI chips and models with the United States. The Chinese ecommerce leader will establish its inaugural cloud regions in Turkey, Finland, and the Netherlands within the next 12 months, as stated by Alibaba executive Li Feifei during the company’s flagship Apsara conference in Hangzhou on Wednesday. The company will also expand its data center footprint in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Hong Kong, a move that will enhance its capacity to deliver localised cloud and AI services.
Alibaba’s growth strategy indicates that it is increasingly competing directly with Western rivals like Amazon.com Group Inc. and Alphabet Inc. in markets outside of Asia. Its global ambition aligns with the vision of Chinese President Xi Jinping to share the country’s advances with the world, at a time when officials from the Trump administration are urging other nations to prioritise the use of US technology offerings and to steer clear of alternatives from China. Alibaba’s global cloud network extends across Japan, Southeast Asia, and West Asia. In recent months, it has inaugurated new facilities in Brazil and France, with the objective of delivering generative AI services to local enterprises.
“We are committed to working closely with our global ecosystem to make AI more scalable, practical and accessible for businesses,” said Li, who serves as chief technology officer and president of international business for Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. Alibaba initiated its annual tech summit in Hangzhou earlier this week, showcasing its comprehensive AI capabilities – mere days before Xi’s first state visit to the US in over a decade, with AI prominently featured on his agenda. The company unveiled a new line of AI chips, asserting that they represent China’s most powerful offerings, specifically designed for frontier-model training. It also stated that it is developing new foundation models with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters, significantly exceeding the scale of current open-weight models.
Underpinning this hardware-and-software initiative is a strategy to establish a 20-gigawatt global data center network by 2032 – which Citigroup estimates could generate over $160 billion in external cloud revenue. Alibaba stands out as one of China’s most assertive investors in digital infrastructure, perceiving it as essential for the attainment of artificial general intelligence. The company outlined a $53 billion, three-year AI investment plan in 2025 and has since indicated that capital spending will continue to rise.
