Alibaba introduces China's most powerful AI chip
What's the story
Alibaba has unveiled its latest Zhenwu V900 accelerator, which it claims to be China's most powerful artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The new chip is said to be three times more powerful than its predecessor and can be used in clusters of up to 500,000 units for frontier-model training. The announcement was made by Alibaba's CEO Eddie Wu during an event on Tuesday.
Growth strategy
Alibaba's commitment to AI
Alibaba is one of the biggest spenders on AI among top Chinese companies. It has committed over $53 billion in three years to bolster its AI capabilities.
The company raised about $10.2 billion from a follow-on share offering in Hong Kong last August.
Wu also announced a target of 20 gigawatts of data center capacity for Alibaba Cloud globally by 2032, anticipating an "exponentially rising demand."
AI advancements
Global data center capacity
Alibaba's 20-gigawatt plan is ambitious for a Chinese company but pales in comparison to some of the world's more ambitious projects.
SoftBank Group, for example, is planning a 10-gigawatt-scale computing center in Ohio alone.
Alibaba has promised to ramp up spending on AI hardware and infrastructure as Wu makes artificial general intelligence the company's guiding star.
Future prospects
Model with 5-10 trillion parameters
Alibaba plans to build a model with 5-10 trillion parameters, much larger than what is currently seen among open-weight peers. This will enable longer and more complex tasks.
The company also intends to list T-Head, its semiconductor subsidiary and chip design division, to capitalize on the interest in the booming AI accelerator market.
T-Head has delivered 560,000 units of the Zhenwu product family, and its processors have been used by over 400 external customers, Alibaba said.
Financial outlook
Alibaba expects to recover total investment within 3 years
Despite a more than 75% drop in quarterly profit last quarter after a nearly $10 billion spending spree, Alibaba executives have said their AI investment is starting to pay off.
The company expects annualized revenue from AI-related products to hit $10 billion this quarter.
Wu's team has also said that Alibaba should be able to recover its total investment within three years and plans to quintuple annual cloud and AI revenue to $100 billion in five years.