Alibaba’s shares surged in both Hong Kong and U.S. premarket trading on Wednesday after the company announced increased investment in artificial intelligence and rolled out new AI products.
The tech giant’s Hong Kong-listed shares jumped over 6% to their highest point since 2021, bringing year-to-date gains to more than 107%. In U.S. premarket trading, the company’s stock was up 9.3%.
Speaking at Alibaba Cloud’s annual technology conference, CEO Eddie Wu announced plans to increase spending on AI models and infrastructure development. This new commitment is in addition to the 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) three-year initiative unveiled in February. Wu said the company intends to “sustain and further increase our investment” in preparation for an era of “artificial superintelligence,” a hypothetical stage where AI surpasses human intellect.
At the event, Alibaba also officially launched Qwen3-Max, the latest version of its Qwen large language model, along with a series of other updates to its AI product suite. Wu described Alibaba Cloud as a “full-stack AI service provider,” delivering the necessary computing power for training and deploying large AI models through its own data centers.
“The cumulative investment in global AI in the next five years will exceed $4 trillion, and this is the largest investment in computing power and research and development in history,” he added.
To support its global ambitions, Alibaba Cloud will launch its first data centers in Brazil, France, and the Netherlands. Further expansion is planned for next year with new facilities in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai.
The push into AI follows a deal last month where Alibaba’s semiconductor unit secured a contract to supply AI accelerators to Chinese e-commerce giant Unicom. This move is part of a broader trend among Chinese tech firms to achieve self-sufficiency in chip technology amid ongoing trade tensions with the United States.
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