Alibaba unified global cloud network doubles down by CEO as Chinese firms expand abroad

Eddie Wu sees Alibaba Cloud providing the ‘best AI technical services’ to support Chinese enterprises’ global expansion.

Alibaba Group Holding chief executive Eddie Wu Yongming has doubled down on the company’s plan to create a “unified global cloud network”, months after drawing up a 380 billion yuan (US$52.7 billion) investment programme for computing resources and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in China.

The Hangzhou-based tech conglomerate’s cloud computing and AI services unit, Alibaba Cloud, will accelerate the buildout of that international network across Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas, Wu said at a corporate event on Thursday. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

Alibaba unified global cloud network

He said the unified global cloud network is expected to give Chinese companies consistent AI infrastructure services at home and abroad, while ensuring that Alibaba Cloud provides the “best AI technical service capabilities” to various enterprises.

In addition, Wu expects that initiative to boost Alibaba Cloud’s “global competitiveness” and strengthen support for Chinese companies expanding overseas. Mainland media reports cited Wu as saying: “Global expansion is an inevitable path for Chinese enterprises.”

Alibaba Cloud’s existing international infrastructure includes 87 so-called availability zones across 29 regions, which allows the firm to provide 394 cloud computing and AI products as well as 59 technical services, company data showed.

Those resources already make Alibaba Cloud the largest cloud computing services provider in the Asia-Pacific, according to the company.

Wu said China’s advantages in market scale, engineering talent and competitive experience have resulted in an intense domestic cloud and AI market, which he expected could also succeed globally.

Cloud computing services enable companies to buy, sell, lease or distribute a range of software and other digital resources as an on-demand service over the internet, like electricity from a power grid. These resources are managed inside data centres.

Shares of Alibaba in Hong Kong slid 0.25 per cent to close at HK$118.80 (US$15.18) on Friday.

Alibaba Cloud’s accelerated development of its unified global cloud network reflects the company’s efforts to narrow the gap with rivals Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud in the global market.

Those three US companies accounted for 64 per cent of the US$86 billion in total cloud spending worldwide in the fourth quarter last year, according to research firm Canalys.

Meanwhile, research firm IDC in March predicted 2025 cloud infrastructure spending would grow 33.3 per cent from a year ago to US$271.5 billion. The industry sees that the evolution from simple chatbots to reasoning models to AI agents “will require several orders of magnitude more processing capacity”, IDC said.

In mainland China, cloud spending is expected to reach US$46 billion this year, up from US$40 billion in 2024, on the back of increased AI adoption, according to Canalys.

Alibaba’s cloud computing and AI business reported an 18 per cent revenue increase in the March quarter, representing the unit’s fastest growth since 2022, as AI-related sales recorded triple-digit growth for the seventh consecutive quarter.

In February, Alibaba Cloud opened its first data centre in Mexico and a second data centre in Thailand. The company is also expected to set up new data centres in Malaysia and the Philippines.

Last year, Alibaba Cloud adjusted its global strategy by closing its data centres in Australia and India, while enhancing investments in Southeast Asia, South Korea and Mexico.

Under its revamped Alibaba Cloud Partner Rainforest Plan, the company in December said it aims to work with 100 ecosystem partners this year to develop and provide cutting-edge AI and cloud computing solutions for businesses across various industries around the world.

In terms of AI products, Wu said at Thursday’s event that Alibaba Cloud would push for the increased adoption of its Qwen family of AI models. Qwen has so far open-sourced more than 200 AI models, while seeing over 100,000 derivative models built on it.

The open-source approach gives public access to a program’s source code, allowing third-party software developers to modify or share its design, fix broken links or scale up its capabilities.

Earlier this month, Alibaba Cloud made its new Qwen3 family of AI models available on more developer platforms online, including Ollama, LM Studio, SGLang and vLLM.