Alibaba has announced its biggest investment in AI. The Chinese marketplace said it has earmarked at least USD 53 billion (RMB 380 billion) over the next three years for investments in AI and the cloud.

The plan was announced during the company’ latest earnings call on Monday, with Alibaba chief executive officer Eddie Wu describing AI as a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity, with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as the company’s primary long-term objective.

AGI is a theoretical system that can match or even surpass the capabilities of a human being.

Wu shared that AI’s ability to replicate human intellectual and physical labour could fundamentally reshape global industries, driving “significant economic and technological shifts”.

“As AI models evolve, a growing share of AI-generated data will be processed and distributed via cloud networks, a trend that positions Alibaba Cloud as a key infrastructure provider,” the chief executive added in a statement.

The investment announcement comes just days after Alibaba founder Jack Ma met with Chinese president Xi Jinping. The meeting took place on 17 February, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, and included business leaders from China’s tech sector.

The meeting aimed to boost confidence in the private sector and encourage innovation to support China's economic growth.

The spending exceeds Alibaba’s total AI and cloud spending over the past decade, with Wu emphasising that cloud computing remains Alibaba’s clearest revenue driver in AI, with demand for AI hosting services surging.

The firm’s quarter 2024 results reported a revenue of US$38,381 million (RMB280,154 million), an increase of eight per cent year-over-year.

Alibaba‘s Cloud Intelligence Group’s revenue, excluding revenue from Alibaba-consolidated subsidiaries, grew 11 per cent year-over-year, while AI-related product revenue posted triple-digit growth for the sixth consecutive quarter, the report said.

“Looking ahead, revenue growth at Cloud Intelligence Group driven by AI will continue to accelerate,” said Wu. “We will continue to execute against our strategic priorities in e-commerce and cloud computing, including further investment to drive long-term growth.”

The company added that it expects AI to play an increasingly integral role across e-commerce, enterprise services, and consumer applications, boosting efficiency, user engagement, and business innovation.

In its May 2024 shareholder letter, chairman Joe Tsai and Wu outlined Alibaba’s strategic transition to a “user-first, AI-driven” approach, embedding AI across its ecosystem to enhance customer experiences, optimise business operations, and fuel long-term growth.

Earlier this month, Alibaba announced its partnership to bring Apple Intelligence AI functions to the iPhone in China.

Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai confirmed the deal at the World Government Summit in Dubai. “Apple has been very selective,” he said. “They talked to a number of companies in China and in the end they chose to do business with us.”

In January, Alibaba announced the release of a new version of its Qwen 2.5 AI model on Wednesday, called Qwen 2.5 Max, claiming that its new artificial intelligence (AI) model performs better than DeepSeek.

In an announcement posted on its official WeChat account, the tech giant stated that Qwen 2.4-Max outperforms Open AI's GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and Meta's Llama-3.1-405B almost across the board.

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