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Alibaba And China Telecom are launching a data center in southern China, powered by the e-commerce giant’s own chips, as the country focuses more on local AI infrastructure.
The facility, announced Tuesday, will include 10,000 of Alibaba’s Zhenwu semiconductors, designed for AI training and inference, as well as the capacity to support AI models the size of hundreds of billions of parameters. China Telecom will own and operate the data center.
These are among the most important models and highlight how China’s biggest tech players are advancing their own AI semiconductor technology as Beijing steps up its push for self-sufficiency.
In recent years, the United States has sought to restrict China’s access to key semiconductor technologies, including AI chips from Nvidiawho has accelerated the country’s efforts develop national alternatives.
Alibaba, one of China’s largest technology companies, has been design your own chips using its T-head unit. The Hangzhou-based company is also one of the largest cloud computing players in China. It designs chips, builds data centers and develops its own AI models which it then sells through its cloud computing division. Cloud computing is one of its fastest growing companies over the last few quarters.
On Tuesday, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu announced the creation of a technology committee that he will lead. He will be joined on the committee by the company’s Chief AI Architect Zhou Jingren, Alibaba Cloud’s Chief Technology Officer Li Feifei, and Wu Zeming, Alibaba Group’s Chief Technology Officer.
The organizational changes were made to “accelerate” Alibaba’s AI development, Wu said, according to a memo seen by CNBC.
There is an increasing focus on building large-scale data centers in China with domestic technology. Last month, a computing cluster built with Huawei’s Ascend 910C advanced AI chips went online.
While US tech giants are expected to spend around $700 billion this year to fuel their AI development, Chinese companies have taken a different approach. They spend less and have focused their AI on the sectors that they believe will drive revenue growth and ROI.
China Telecom and Alibaba said the data center, located in Shaoguan in China’s Guangdong province, is expected to expand to 100,000 chips. The computing cluster can be used in industries ranging from healthcare to advanced materials, they added.
