Rumor
Alibaba considers raising three-year AI infrastructure and cloud investment to 480 billion RMB
Thursday, January 29, 2026 at 12:41 PM
Alibaba is reportedly considering an increase of its three-year AI infrastructure and cloud computing investment from 380 billion RMB to 480 billion RMB. The company is scaling up GPU procurement internationally and has utilized consumer-grade RTX 4090 cards for inference clusters alongside its proprietary Zhenwu 810E chips to meet capacity demands.
Context
Alibaba is reportedly considering a significant increase in its three-year AI and cloud infrastructure budget, raising the target from 380 billion RMB to 480 billion RMB. This aggressive capital expenditure shift underscores the company’s urgency to secure the computing power necessary to lead the generative AI race in China. To bridge hardware gaps, Alibaba is utilizing a dual-track strategy, pairing its proprietary Zhenwu 810E chips with massive international GPU imports to expand its data center capacity.
The scale of procurement is immense, with insiders reporting that Nvidia hardware is being acquired by the truckload. Faced with tightening export restrictions on top-tier enterprise silicon, Alibaba has reportedly turned to purchasing large quantities of consumer-grade RTX 4090 cards to build inference clusters and supplement throughput. For investors, this signals that major Chinese hyperscalers are willing to employ unconventional hardware sourcing strategies to sustain their AI roadmap and cloud dominance through 2027.
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