Alibaba unveils 'most powerful AI chip in China' and 20GW data centre target
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu unveiled the Zhenwu V900 AI chip at the 2026 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, alongside a plan to expand Alibaba Cloud's global data centre capacity to 20 gigawatts by 2032.
Alibaba Group has unveiled what it calls China’s most powerful AI chip, alongside a plan to expand its global data centre capacity beyond 20 gigawatts by 2032.
Chief executive Eddie Wu unveiled the Zhenwu V900 accelerator, from the company’s T-Head semiconductor division, at the company’s 2026 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou on Tuesday, Nikkei Asia reported. The company claims the chip delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, with a single cluster able to support up to 500,000 cards for frontier AI model training and inference. No independent benchmark data has been published.
Alibaba is one of the biggest AI spenders among Chinese companies. It has committed more than $53 billion over three years to AI capabilities and raised about $10.2 billion from a Hong Kong share placement in August, Business Standard reported. On Tuesday, Wu set the 20-gigawatt target for Alibaba Cloud globally by 2032, citing “exponentially rising demand”.
“Last year, we asserted that the more capable AI becomes, the more powerful humanity will be,” Wu said. “Today, I remain steadfast in that conviction.”
Alibaba’s shares leapt more than 5% in Hong Kong on Tuesday, while Tencent surged more than 7%, Business Standard reported.
Wu also said Alibaba plans a model with between 5 and 10 trillion parameters, far larger than what is common among open-weight models today.
Sources
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