Alibaba has unveiled an artificial intelligence chip called the Zhenwu V900, which the company says delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, the Zhenwu M890.
The announcement was made by Alibaba chief executive Eddie Wu at the company's annual Apsara Conference, held in Hangzhou in eastern China. During the event, the technology group outlined a strategy built around three core areas: artificial intelligence models, chips, and cloud computing.
According to a transcript published on the corporate portal Alizila, Wu said the Zhenwu V900 — developed by T-Head, Alibaba's semiconductor unit — outperforms the previous model by a factor of three. He added that a cluster based on the V900 can support up to 500,000 boards for training and inference tasks involving advanced AI models. The company also plans to significantly increase annual deliveries of its AI chips.
The launch comes as Chinese technology companies race to reduce their dependence on foreign suppliers such as US chipmaker Nvidia. Washington has imposed export restrictions on Nvidia's most advanced semiconductors, citing national security concerns.
Those restrictions have turned computing power into one of the central challenges facing China's AI industry. DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng has said in recent months that the key gap between China and the United States lies not in talent or technology, but in 'computing resources'.
Alibaba also announced plans to expand the total capacity of data centres operated by Alibaba Cloud to more than 20 gigawatts by 2032. The investment is intended to meet what Eddie Wu described as 'exceptionally strong' demand for AI services.
Wu acknowledged, however, that medium- and long-term demand from the sector 'far exceeds' the company's current supply capacity. The team behind Qwen, Alibaba's family of AI models, meanwhile intends to train a new system with between five billion and ten billion parameters.
Alibaba introduced the Qwen3.8-Max in August, a model with 2.4 billion parameters, and has also been investing in the development of open-source models aimed at developers and enterprises.
That same month, Alibaba launched a share offering of more than ten billion dollars to fund AI infrastructure. The transaction forms part of a broader investment plan of approximately 56 billion dollars in artificial intelligence and cloud computing over three years.
Source: Diário Económico
Original article: https://www.diarioeconomico.co.mz/?p=546287
