Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba announced on Monday that it will invest 380 billion yuan in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud activities over the next three years.
The announcement is an important signal that Alibaba aspires to become one of the leading players in AI. The announced investments are higher than what the company has invested in AI and cloud computing in the past ten years.
Alibaba is back in the spotlight after co-founder Jack Ma joined other private sector executives in a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last week. The meeting was seen as a major signal that Beijing is reaching out to private companies.
Investors have rediscovered the entire Chinese technology sector this year. Alibaba shares gained over $100 billion in market value, hitting a three-year high. In late January, Alibaba launched Qwen2.5-Max, an AI model to compete with models like ChatGPT.
Major tech companies like Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have already announced billions of dollars in investments in artificial intelligence.