Alibaba is making its largest infrastructure investment to date, committing over CNY 3.8 trillion ($550 billion) over the next three years to build a comprehensive global cloud computing network. This massive investment, announced at the 2025 Alibaba Cloud Chinese Enterprise Going Global Conference, represents more than the company's total cloud infrastructure spending over the past decade.
Investment Scale: CNY 3.8 trillion ($550 billion) over three years - exceeding total cloud infrastructure spending of past decade
Strategic Investment in Global Cloud Infrastructure
Alibaba Group CEO and Alibaba Cloud Chairman Wu Yongming outlined the company's ambitious plan to create a unified global cloud computing network spanning China, Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. This investment will focus on building cloud and AI hardware infrastructure with unified technical architecture and service platforms across domestic and international markets.
The initiative addresses growing demand from Chinese enterprises seeking to expand globally. Wu emphasized that China's 1.4 billion-person market, diverse application scenarios, and large pool of quality engineers create products and technologies that can compete effectively in global markets. Chinese companies have already achieved technological leadership in 5G, AI, and smart vehicles, with their capabilities creating spillover effects internationally.
Comprehensive Global Technology Stack
Alibaba Cloud CTO Zhou Jingren detailed the company's full-stack global technology system, which currently operates 87 availability zones across 29 regions worldwide, covering over 70 countries. The infrastructure spans three key layers: Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Model as a Service (MaaS).
At the IaaS level, Alibaba Cloud's ninth-generation Elastic Compute Service has been commercially deployed globally with improved performance and reduced pricing. The company's Lingjun intelligent computing clusters deploy over 100,000 GPUs, providing AI training and inference services. Storage capabilities include object storage with exabyte-level capacity and block storage supporting 3 million random IOPS with 12GB/second throughput.
Global Infrastructure: 87 availability zones across 29 regions, covering 70+ countries with 394 cloud and AI products
AI Model Internationalization Strategy
The company is accelerating AI product internationalization through its Tongyi model family, which has open-sourced over 200 models with more than 100,000 derivative models, making it the world's largest open-source model ecosystem. The latest Qwen 3 model supports 119 languages, including numerous minority languages and dialects, and has become a popular choice among developers in Japan, Southeast Asia, and Middle Eastern countries.
According to Gartner reports, Alibaba Cloud leads in generative AI engineering, ranking second globally in both product features and future potential. The company is deploying Tongyi, Bailian, PAI, and big data products internationally while expanding overseas AI infrastructure layout.
Language Support: Qwen 3 model supports 119 languages including minority languages and dialects
Addressing Enterprise Pain Points
The investment directly addresses three major challenges Chinese enterprises face when expanding globally: computing power access, regulatory compliance, and cost management. Guangzhou Automobile Group's infrastructure head Wang Qijun shared how partnering with Alibaba Cloud helped solve compliance challenges and reduce data processing costs by 50% compared to overseas cloud providers in the Middle East region.
Alibaba Cloud has obtained over 150 security compliance certifications, representing what the company claims is the world's most comprehensive compliance system. The company provides 24/7 integrated service experiences across domestic and international markets, leveraging Alibaba's own overseas expansion experience to help Chinese enterprises navigate complex IT compliance challenges in various global markets.
Cost Benefits: 50% reduction in data processing costs compared to overseas cloud providers (Guangzhou Automobile Group case study)
Proven Track Record and Client Success
Since launching its first overseas data center in Hong Kong in 2014, Alibaba Cloud has served 250,000 Chinese enterprises going global across various industries, including NetEase, miHoYo, Transsion, Xiaomi, Mobvista, XPeng Motors, Foton Motor, Midea Group, Sany Heavy Industry, China Eastern Airlines, GAC Group, Mango TV, and GoodWe.
The company's global expansion continues with recent openings of data centers in Mexico and Thailand, demonstrating its commitment to providing localized services while maintaining unified technical architecture across all regions.