Alibaba is stepping up its artificial intelligence ambitions with plans for a new model several times larger than its current flagship system and a next-generation chip designed to handle increasingly demanding workloads. The announcements sent Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares up 5.1% on Tuesday (September 22, 2026), taking them to their highest level in about a month.
The developments were announced at Alibaba Cloud’s annual Apsara conference in Hangzhou, highlighting the company’s strategy of building its own technology stack across models, semiconductors and data center infrastructure.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said the company’s Qwen team is working toward a model with between 5 trillion and 10 trillion parameters. The planned system would be significantly larger than Qwen 3.8 Max, Alibaba’s current flagship model, which has 2.4 trillion parameters.
The company said it is developing larger models to handle more complex, longer-running tasks as it works toward artificial superintelligence. Wu also said the Qwen team has made progress in enabling models to identify weaknesses, conduct experiments, and generate training data with less human involvement.
Alibaba’s roadmap includes Qwen 4, while future iterations such as Qwen 4.5 and Qwen 5 are expected to scale toward the 5 trillion-to-10 trillion parameter range.
Alongside its model plans, Alibaba unveiled the Zhenwu V900, developed by its T-Head semiconductor unit. The company says the processor delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, the M890.
Alibaba plans to begin mass production and commercial release of the chip in the first quarter of 2027. The company also expects AI chip shipments to grow significantly as demand for computing power increases.
The chip can reportedly be connected in clusters of up to 500,000 units for training and running large AI models, giving Alibaba greater control over the infrastructure supporting its AI systems.
Alibaba is also expanding its cloud infrastructure to support rising demand. Wu said Alibaba Cloud aims to increase its global data center capacity beyond 20 gigawatts by 2032.
"The industry's mid-to-long-term demand far outpaces our supply capabilities," Wu said, adding that Alibaba Cloud would begin bringing its AI supernodes online at commercial scale this quarter.
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He described customer demand for AI services as exceptionally strong, while acknowledging that supply-chain constraints are limiting the pace at which new infrastructure can be deployed. Alibaba Cloud plans to begin bringing AI supernodes into commercial operation at scale this quarter.
The broader push comes as Chinese technology companies work to develop domestic alternatives to Nvidia’s processors amid tighter US export restrictions. Alibaba’s latest announcements show the company is seeking to build capabilities across the full AI stack, from chips and models to the data centers needed to run them.