Chinese e-commerce and retail giant Alibaba will invest more than €50 billion in AI and cloud computing infrastructure over the next three years, the company announced on Monday.
China is not leaning back as the US hopes to assemble €478 billion and Europe is stacking up some €318 billion in AI infrastructure investments.
In a Thursday earnings call, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said the company would “aggressively invest” in AI infrastructure, but did not disclose numbers.
While Alibaba’s US shares rose 4% in premarket trading Friday, they fell 3% again on Monday after disclosing the size of the investment.
In a sign that the tech race is gaining importance in China, President Xi Jinping held a pro-business meeting last week with some of the big names in Chinese tech after years of rising censorship and regulation. At the rare meeting, Huawei’s founder told President Xi that Chinese concerns over a lack of homegrown chips or operating systems had eased.
The exact degree of collaboration between China’s tech giants is unknown. Last week, the BBC reported that Chinese disruptor Deepseek has shared user data with TikTok owner ByteDance.
