China’s Alibaba to invest $50bn in AI, cloud computing

BEIJING: Chinese tech giant Alibaba said on Monday it will spend more than $50 billion on artificial intelligence and cloud computing over the next three years, a week after co-founder Jack Ma was seen meeting President Xi Jinping.

Investors have piled into Chinese technology stocks since the start of the year, with Alibaba -- which runs some of the country’s biggest online shopping platforms -- seeing its shares soar to three-year highs.

The gains have been boosted since the Hangzhou-based firm announced robust sales growth last week, adding to signs that the sector is staging a comeback from years of gloom sparked by a government crackdown.

Alibaba plans to “invest at least 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over the next three years to advance its cloud computing and AI infrastructure”, a company statement said. The firm said its strategy was aimed at “reinforcing (Alibaba’s) commitment to long-term technological innovation... (and) underscores the company’s focus on AI-driven growth”.

The statement did not detail how the company would allocate the funds or what specific projects would be supported. It did add that the investment would exceed its total AI and cloud spending over the past decade.

Alibaba last week reported an eight percent bump in revenue for the three months through December, beating estimates to reach 280 billion yuan -- and triggering a 14 per cent surge in its Hong Kong shares on Friday.

CEO Eddie Wu said last week that the quarterly results “demonstrated substantial progress in (Alibaba’s) ‘user-first, AI-driven’ strategies and the re-accelerated growth of our core businesses”.

The company and its industry peers endured years of dampened investor confidence after Beijing launched an aggressive regulatory crackdown on the tech sector in 2020. But they have been riding higher in recent months, buoyed by the launch of a chatbot by Chinese startup DeepSeek that has upended the AI industry.

The turnaround comes as the world’s second-largest economy continues to battle sluggish consumption and persistent woes in the property sector. At a rare meeting with business luminaries last week, Xi hailed the private sector and said the current economic problems were “surmountable” -- a move widely interpreted as a show of support for big tech.

Ma remains an influential figure despite no longer being an Alibaba executive and shunning the limelight since authorities brought down affiliate Ant Group’s high-stakes IPO in 2020. His inclusion in the meeting hinted at the billionaire magnate’s potential public rehabilitation following the tangle with regulators.