Alibaba Group Holding Limited is preparing to launch what it describes as the most powerful artificial intelligence chip in China, an accelerator unit named “Zhenwu V900” that aims to compete with Nvidia, in conjunction with efforts to support a massive expansion in the capabilities of data centers in the coming years.
The company explained, via Bloomberg, that the new accelerator unit was developed by its “T-Head” unit, and provides three times more performance than the previous generation. In the same context, CEO Eddie Wu stated that this unit can be combined into groups of up to 500,000 units, to run advanced artificial intelligence model training operations.
Alibaba is one of the most prominent Chinese companies and a leader in spending in the artificial intelligence sector. It committed to investing more than $53 billion over three years to enhance its capabilities, in addition to raising about $10.2 billion through an additional offering of shares on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange last August.
In a move that reflects the company’s future ambitions, Wu set a strategic goal of increasing the capacity of Alibaba Cloud’s data centers to 20 gigawatts globally by 2032, in line with expectations of a huge and rapid rise in demand.
These developments came at a time when shares of global artificial intelligence companies witnessed notable gains, supported by early signs of success for the new personal assistant program from Meta Platforms, which restored investor confidence in the markets. This momentum was reflected positively on the Asian markets, as Alibaba shares in Hong Kong jumped by more than 5%, while shares of Tencent Holdings, which operates the WeChat application, rose by more than 7%.
