Alibaba presents Zhenwu V900 AI chip: "The most powerful in China"

Alibaba has unveiled a new artificial intelligence chip calling it "the most powerful ever developed in China". This was announced by the group's CEO, Eddie Wu, following US restrictions on access to advanced semiconductors which pushed Chinese technology companies to develop their own alternatives. Speaking at the annual Apsara conference in Hangzhou, eastern China, Wu outlined a roadmap focused on three pillars: AI models, chips and cloud computing. As the Alibaba CEO specified, the new Zhenwu V900, developed by T-Head (Alibaba's division dedicated to semiconductors), would be able to offer "three times higher performance than its predecessor, the Zhenwu M890".

Alibaba's new chip

Wu went on to point out that the new chip, based on the V900, could support up to 500,000 boards for advanced model training and inference tasks. As such, the company expects a significant increase in annual shipments of AI chips. The launch comes amid a race by Chinese technology companies to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers, such as US-based Nvidia, whose most advanced chips were recently subject to export controls imposed by Washington on national security grounds.

Alibaba: “Demand for AI is exceptionally strong”

Alibaba also announced a goal to bring the total capacity of data centers operated by Alibaba Cloud above 20 gigawatts by 2032, driven by demand for artificial intelligence Wu described as "exceptionally strong." The company's CEO has indeed acknowledged that medium and long-term demand in the sector "far exceeds" the company's supply capacity. The group then announced that the team responsible for Qwen, its family of AI models and a cornerstone of its cloud strategy, plans to train a new system with between 5 and 10 trillion parameters, following the August launch of the Qwen3.8-Max model (with 2.4 trillion parameters) and the promotion of open source models for developers and enterprises.