Alibaba shares jump 5% as it debuts 'most powerful' AI chip and 10-trillion-parameter model

Alibaba Group's announcement of a major expansion in its artificial intelligence ecosystem has driven its shares up roughly 5%.

The new developments, unveiled by CEO Eddie Wu during the annual Apsara conference in Hangzhou, highlight the company's aggressive strategy to build domestic alternatives to U.S. hardware and capture surging enterprise demand.

Alibaba Group said on Tuesday it was developing an AI model up to four times larger than the company's flagship model and unveiled a next-generation AI chip it called China's most powerful.

The launch comes as Chinese technology companies race to develop domestic alternatives to Nvidia's AI processors amid tightening US export curbs.

The announcements at Alibaba Cloud's annual Apsara conference in the eastern city of Hangzhou underscore the Chinese technology giant's push to build out every layer of its AI business.

"The truly groundbreaking products of the Machine Intelligence era have not ⁠yet arrived," however, said Chief Executive Eddie Wu, hailing the dawn of an era of comparable to the Industrial Revolution.

He predicted machines would eventually produce more than 1,000 times the "thinking" of all humanity, up from less than 3% today.

The Next-Generation AI Chip (Zhenwu V900):

Developed by Alibaba's T-Head semiconductor unit, the V900 is touted as China's most powerful AI processor.

It delivers triple the performance of its predecessor (the M890) and can be clustered in groups of up to 500,000 chips to train massive models. Mass production is slated for the first quarter of 2027.

Massive New AI Model Plan:

Alibaba announced it is developing a next-generation artificial intelligence model targeting a scale of 5 to 10 trillion parameters—making it up to four times larger than its current flagship Qwen systems.

Alibaba Cloud set an ambitious target to expand its global data center capacity to over 20 gigawatts by 2032. 

Management noted that customer demand remains exceptionally robust, though global supply chain constraints continue to dictate the speed at which they can scale compute infrastructure.

The market response reflects investor enthusiasm for Alibaba's deepening self-reliance in silicon and advanced software development amid ongoing U.S. export restrictions.