Alibaba’s latest cloud expansion is best read as a bid to turn its Asian infrastructure base into a broader platform for artificial intelligence services, with new sites planned in Europe and the Middle East to compete with Amazon, Alphabet and other Western providers outside Asia.
Alibaba Cloud said on Wednesday that it would establish its first cloud regions in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months. It also plans to enlarge its data-centre presence in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France and Hong Kong.
The plans were announced at Alibaba Cloud’s annual Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, China. The company currently operates 107 availability zones across 31 regions worldwide, giving the expansion a larger existing network from which to serve customers in new markets.
Alibaba has set a goal of more than 20 gigawatts of global data-centre capacity by 2032. Citigroup estimates that this level of capacity could support about $160 billion in external cloud revenue by fiscal 2033, linking the infrastructure build-out to Alibaba’s ambition to gain more business beyond its established markets.
The expansion forms part of Alibaba Cloud’s full-stack AI strategy, which covers chips, infrastructure and models. Alibaba committed to a three-year, $53 billion AI spending programme in 2025, signalling that the cloud build-out is intended to be supported by sustained investment in the computing capacity and software needed for AI services.
Dr. Feifei Li, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence’s chief technology officer and president of international business, said at the conference: “We are committed to working closely with our global ecosystem to make AI more scalable, practical and accessible for businesses.”
Alongside the infrastructure announcement, Alibaba Cloud introduced AI products aimed at improving the efficiency and cost of business deployments. Smart Studio, one of three new AI products launched, delivers up to 505% higher throughput than standard open-source frameworks on the same hardware, according to the company.
Alibaba Cloud said Smart Fusion can reduce token costs by around 50%. Smart Video supports more than 20 languages and can automatically produce videos up to one hour long from a text prompt.
The company also highlighted existing customer uses of its AI products. Panasonic Digital’s collaboration with Alibaba Cloud cut documentation time by 80% and improved contract review efficiency tenfold, Alibaba said. Lion Parcel has deployed Alibaba’s Qwen-VL-Plus model to automate document processing in its finance operations.
The move into Turkey, Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, France and the United Arab Emirates extends Alibaba Cloud’s reach into markets where Western cloud groups have established operations. The company’s strategy combines new data-centre capacity with AI tools intended to give customers reasons to run workloads on its infrastructure.
Alibaba’s expansion also comes after the Pentagon designated the company a Chinese military company earlier this year. The announcement did not address whether that designation would affect Alibaba’s operations in Western markets, or whether the company will need particular regulatory approvals in the countries where it plans to expand.
Comments (0)