This morning $BABA (+4.49%) the mail.
The shares of Alibaba rose sharply on Wednesday after CEO Eddie Wu unveiled ambitious plans to massively expand investment in artificial intelligence (AI). The share price of the Hong Kong-listed e-commerce and cloud giant rose by more than six percent, reaching its highest level since 2021. Since the beginning of the year, the gain has amounted to over 107 percent.
Billion-euro offensive for AI infrastructure
At Alibaba Cloud's annual technology conference, Wu announced that the company would continue to expand the three-year initiative worth 380 billion yuan (around 53 billion US dollars) that was presented in February. The aim is to accelerate the development of AI models and the necessary infrastructure.
"We are vigorously pushing forward a comprehensive 380 billion yuan initiative in AI infrastructure and plan to further increase these investments in line with our strategic vision in anticipation of the era of artificial superintelligence," said Wu.
The term "artificial superintelligence" describes a hypothetical form of AI that surpasses the cognitive abilities of the human brain - a topic that is increasingly becoming the focus of leading tech companies.
New generation of Qwen models
As part of the conference, Alibaba also presented the latest version of its language models: the Qwen3-Max. In addition to the flagship model, the company presented further updates to its AI products, ranging from improved cloud services to more powerful developer tools.
Wu emphasized that Alibaba Cloud is uniquely positioned as a "full-stack AI service provider". The company operates its own data centers, which provide the necessary computing power for training and operating large-scale AI models.
Global competition for computing power
The CEO emphasized the scale of global AI investments: "The cumulative investment in artificial intelligence will exceed four trillion US dollars worldwide in the next five years. This is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history."
