Alibaba Unveils Powerful Zhenwu V900 AI Chip, Plans Model With Up to 10 Trillion Parameters

 

HANGZHOU: Alibaba unveiled a new artificial intelligence chip and plans for a significantly larger AI model on Tuesday, highlighting China’s push to strengthen domestic technology capabilities amid US restrictions on advanced semiconductors.

At Alibaba’s annual Apsara conference in Hangzhou, CEO Eddie Wu introduced the Zhenwu V900, which the company described as China’s most powerful AI processor.

Alibaba said the V900 delivers three times the performance of its predecessor and supports both AI training and inference, the computing process used by trained models to generate responses.

The company expects to begin mass production and commercial release of the processor in early 2027.

Alibaba Plans AI Model With Up to 10 Trillion Parameters

Meanwhile, Alibaba said it plans to train a new AI model containing between five trillion and 10 trillion parameters.

At the upper end, the proposed model would have more than four times the parameter count of Alibaba’s current Qwen 3.8 Max, which contains 2.4 trillion parameters.

Furthermore, Alibaba expects its cloud data-centre capacity worldwide to exceed 20 gigawatts by 2032 as demand for AI computing accelerates.

The company is developing chips, models and cloud infrastructure as part of a broader AI ecosystem.

Announcement Comes Ahead of Trump-Xi Meeting

Alibaba’s announcement comes days before Chinese President Xi Jinping is due to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington, with advanced technology expected to feature in bilateral discussions.

Washington has restricted China’s access to certain high-end AI chips and semiconductor manufacturing equipment. Consequently, Beijing has encouraged domestic companies to reduce their dependence on foreign technology.

Chinese companies including Huawei are developing alternatives to advanced foreign AI hardware, while Chinese developers have also expanded their presence in open AI models.

Wu compared the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence to the Industrial Revolution and said Alibaba was mobilising resources to meet growing computing demand.