Chinese technology giant Alibaba has introduced a new artificial intelligence chip that it describes as the company’s most powerful to date, while also revealing plans to develop significantly larger AI models as competition between China and the United States intensifies.
The announcement was made Tuesday at Alibaba’s annual technology conference in Hangzhou, just days before Chinese President Xi Jinping is scheduled to meet U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington. Artificial intelligence, trade and tariffs are expected to feature prominently in discussions between the two leaders.
New Chip Promises Major Performance Increase
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said the company’s new Zhenwu V900 AI chip delivers roughly three times the performance of its previous-generation Zhenwu M890 processor.
The company described the V900 as the most powerful AI chip currently developed in China. Such processors are essential for training advanced AI systems as well as running inference, the computing process that allows trained models to generate responses and perform tasks for users.
Alibaba uses its Zhenwu chips in its data centers and makes computing resources available through its cloud services.
Alibaba Targets Much Larger AI Models
Alongside its chip announcement, Alibaba outlined plans to train a future AI model containing between 5 trillion and 10 trillion parameters.
Parameters are numerical values used by AI systems to learn patterns and generate outputs. Larger models can require enormous amounts of computing power during development and operation.
Alibaba’s latest Qwen3.8-Max model has approximately 2.4 trillion parameters. Meanwhile, Chinese AI company Moonshot has said its Kimi K3, released in July, contains about 2.8 trillion parameters.
Alibaba’s proposed model would therefore represent a substantial increase in scale.
Cloud Expansion to Support Rising AI Demand
Alibaba also announced plans to significantly expand the computing infrastructure supporting its cloud business.
The company expects its total computing capacity to exceed 20 gigawatts by 2032, citing rapidly increasing demand from customers developing and operating AI applications.
The expansion highlights the enormous amount of electricity and infrastructure required to support increasingly sophisticated AI systems. Alibaba executives said shortages throughout the global AI data-center supply chain are already affecting the pace at which additional computing capacity can be deployed.
China Pushes for Greater AI Self-Reliance
Alibaba’s announcements come as Chinese technology companies accelerate efforts to develop domestic alternatives to advanced U.S. semiconductor technology.
U.S. export restrictions have limited China’s access to some of the world’s most advanced AI processors and chipmaking equipment. Despite those restrictions, Chinese companies have continued investing heavily in domestic chip design and AI development.
Huawei also recently announced new chip technologies as it seeks to strengthen China’s position in the global semiconductor and AI industries.
Analysts say China’s ability to reduce the technology gap with the United States will depend not only on chip design but also on the country’s ability to manufacture advanced processors at scale.
Neil Shah, vice president at Counterpoint Research, said increasing computing resources can help Chinese companies compensate for limitations in semiconductor technology.
Counterpoint senior analyst Parv Sharma noted that the future gap between Chinese and U.S. AI capabilities will also depend on progress in semiconductor manufacturing, rather than chip architecture alone.
Chinese AI Models Expand Internationally
Chinese-developed AI models are also gaining attention outside China. Open models from Chinese companies can often be accessed at lower costs than some proprietary systems developed by leading U.S. AI companies.
Alibaba’s Qwen family is among the Chinese AI model series competing for international users and developers.
The growing availability of Chinese AI models adds another dimension to the broader technology competition between Washington and Beijing, extending beyond semiconductors to cloud computing, software and artificial intelligence.
Alibaba CEO Predicts Rapid Growth of Machine Intelligence
Wu said Alibaba is using its available resources to respond to increasing customer demand for AI computing.
He compared the development of artificial intelligence with earlier industrial transformations and predicted that machine intelligence will expand dramatically in the coming years.
While acknowledging that today’s AI systems do not replace human intelligence, Wu argued that future machines could eventually perform vastly greater amounts of computational “thinking” than humans collectively produce.
Alibaba’s latest chip and model announcements underscore the scale of investment underway in China as technology companies seek to overcome semiconductor restrictions, expand AI infrastructure and compete in an increasingly strategic global industry.
