Alibaba Unveils New AI Chip, Outlines Plan for Larger Model

By Tracy Qu

Alibaba Group unveiled a more powerful chip and outlined plans for a larger AI model, doubling down on its bid to control both the software and hardware behind its artificial-intelligence ambitions.

T-Head, Alibaba's chip-design unit, unveiled its latest AI chip, the Zhenwu V900, which delivers three times the performance of its predecessor released in May, Chief Executive Eddie Wu said at Alibaba Cloud's annual conference in Hangzhou.

The chip supports both high-precision model training and ultra-low-precision inference. It is scheduled for mass production and commercial release in the first quarter of 2027, Alibaba said.

The company also plans to train a new model with between 5 trillion and 10 trillion parameters, Wu said.

Alibaba's Qwen 3.8 Max, released in July, has 2.4 trillion parameters. Parameters are variables learned during training that help determine a model's output, similar to brain cells: The more a model has, the more knowledge it can store, with the count often used as a rough gauge of its scale and capabilities.

Alibaba's Hong Kong-listed shares rose 3.1% on Tuesday, outperforming the Hang Seng Tech Index, which was up 1.4%.

The moves underscore Alibaba's effort to shift its focus from its traditional e-commerce business to AI. The company faces fierce competition from startups like DeepSeek and Moonshot AI, as well as tech giants including ByteDance.

Write to Tracy Qu at tracy.qu@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 21, 2026 23:57 ET (03:57 GMT)