Alibaba doubles down on ‘super-scale’ computing infrastructure plans as AI demand grows

Alibaba Group Holding will keep investing in super-scale computing infrastructure to empower the artificial intelligence era, CEO Eddie Wu Yongming said at China’s annual internet industry summit on Friday.

Meeting the AI industry’s demand “requires super-scale infrastructure and full-stack technology accumulation”, Wu told the audience at Friday’s opening of the 2025 World Internet Conference, an annual industry gathering in the town of Wuzhen in eastern Zhejiang province. The event will run through Sunday.

Wu, also chairman of the company’s AI and cloud services unit Alibaba Cloud, said the group’s envisioned “super AI cloud” infrastructure would be “capable of supporting” such demand. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The Hangzhou-based tech giant, which had earmarked 380 billion yuan (US$53 billion) for AI infrastructure spending over the next three years, planned to increase that capital outlay to meet the rising demand from the AI sector.

Alibaba’s ambitious infrastructure spending programme reflects China’s heightened tech self-reliance efforts, especially in semiconductors and AI, as part of the country’s next five-year plan.

Echoing his speech at Alibaba Cloud’s Apsara Conference in September, Wu told the Wuzhen conference that the world was moving towards artificial general intelligence (AGI) and that would eventually lead the industry to artificial superintelligence (ASI).