Alibaba increases AI investments: stock price rises significantly

Alibaba's stock price experienced a rise of about nine percent on Wednesday afternoon in Hong Kong after CEO Eddie Wu announced an increase in the company's AI budget. The e-commerce giant had already committed to investing 380 billion yuan (approximately 45 billion euros) in AI infrastructure over the next three years. However, details about the additional expenditures were not disclosed. This announcement coincided with the presentation of Alibaba's latest and most powerful AI model at a company conference in Hangzhou, China. The company's Chief Technology Officer, Zhou Jingren, explained that the Qwen3-Max model contains over one trillion parameters. These parameters are crucial for how the system processes information and makes predictions. Interestingly, Alibaba claims that its Qwen3-Max model surpasses competitors like Anthropic's Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 in certain metrics, relying on third-party benchmarks. Looking to the future, Wu estimates that global investments in AI will exceed four trillion US dollars in the next five years. This assessment comes at a time when Chinese competitors like Tencent and JD.com, as well as US technology companies, are investing significant resources in AI. However, Alibaba's progress is hindered by restrictions on access to AI processors from the American company Nvidia. Reportedly, the Chinese internet regulatory authority has prohibited the purchase of Nvidia's AI chips by the country's largest technology companies as part of efforts to strengthen the domestic chip industry and reduce reliance on the US. In August, Chinese companies were already warned against acquiring Nvidia's H20 chip, specifically developed for China, due to concerns regarding the security of national data and systems. This warning followed after the US lifted a previously imposed export ban on H20 chips to China in April, which had been imposed amid a trade dispute.