Alibaba Unveils Ambitious Cloud Expansion Plan
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., a major player in the cloud infrastructure market, is expanding its presence across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The company plans to open its first cloud regions in Turkey, Finland, and the Netherlands over the next 12 months, while also increasing capacity in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Hong Kong.
This aggressive expansion aims to provide more localized cloud and AI services, deepening Alibaba's competition with Amazon.com, Inc. and Alphabet Inc. outside Asia. The move is part of Alibaba's larger strategy to invest heavily in artificial intelligence, having announced a $53 billion, three-year AI investment plan in 2025.
The company also unveiled new AI chips for advanced model training and is developing foundation models with 5 trillion to 10 trillion parameters. Looking ahead, Alibaba plans to build a 20-gigawatt global data center network by 2032, which Citigroup estimates could support more than $160 billion in external cloud revenue.