Alibaba plans data centres in Europe and Middle East

Alibaba unveiled plans Wednesday to expand its overseas data centres, with new cloud regions planned in Europe and the Middle East as competition over artificial intelligence infrastructure grows.

The Chinese technology company said it would establish its first cloud regions in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands. It also said it would expand its data centre footprint in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France and Hong Kong over the next 12 months.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said the company was targeting more than 20 gigawatts of global data centre capacity by 2032. He also said Alibaba planned to train an AI model with five to 10 trillion parameters.

The company announced the plans during its annual flagship conference in Hangzhou. It also unveiled a new AI chip, the Zhenwu V900, which Alibaba said would deliver three times the performance of its predecessor, the Zhenwu M890.

Wu called the Zhenwu V900 “the most powerful AI chip in China today”.

The announcement came before an expected Washington meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump, where trade tensions are expected to be discussed. Beijing and Washington are competing in frontier technologies including semiconductors, artificial intelligence and robotics.