Chinese e-commerce giant and a major artificial intelligence company Alibaba's CEO Eddie Wu sees the overall global investment in artificial intelligence reaching $4 trillion over the next five years and said it will exceed the company's previous investment pledge of 380 billion Yuan ($53 billion) over the next three years on AI-related capabilities.
Speaking at the International AI Innovation Forum on September 24, Wu said the pace of growth of the AI industry and the demand for related infrastructure has 'far exceeded' expectations, and Alibaba will be increasing its investment, though did not specify the quantum of increase to its already announced plan to spend over 380 billion yuan on infrastructure over three years. "The speed of AI industry development has far exceeded our expectations, and the industry's demand for AI infrastructure has also far exceeded our expectations," Wu said.
Alibaba's CEO added that trajectory of Artificial General Intelligence will move towards a 'Artificial Super Intelligence' that could surpasses human intelligence and self-iterate.
The comments sparked a rally in the shares of Alibaba, as investors added bets on the company's confidence in AI as a core growth engine.
China's AI Play
Aside of Alibaba, Tencent's projected annual AI-related capex could reach ~90 billion Yuan in 2025 as against 77 billion Yuan in 2024. Baidu is stepping up with aggressive plans for an 'AI-first' strategy and new model launches, though the exact investment in AI is not fully disclosed. According to Bloomberg, the total capital expenditure on AI by Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and JD.com could cross $32 billion in 2025 alone, as Chinese companies refuse to yield to OpenAI or Meta Platforms in terms of AI infra spend.
New AI Model
At the event, Alibaba also unveiled its largest-ever artificial intelligence model - Qwen3-Max - its most powerful till date. The model has more than 1 trillion parameters - variables defining how AI processes information - with strength in code generation and autonomous agent capabilities. An autonomous agent requires fewer human prompts than a chatbot like ChatGPT, and can take action independently towards a goal set by the human user.
Global Data Centres Plans
Alibaba also said it intends to open its first data centres in Brazil, France and Netherlands in its pursuit of a global AI strategy, with AI facilities in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Dubai over the coming year. The development is part of Alibaba's plan to position AI as a core priority alongside the e-commerce business.
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