Alibaba share price hits four-year high after Nvidia partnership and $53B global AI infrastructure plan

Alibaba's share price soared on Wednesday after the Chinese e-commerce and cloud giant unveiled its most ambitious artificial intelligence plans yet. According to Reuters, Alibaba's share price in Hong Kong increased by 9.7 per cent to hit a four-year high, while U.S.-listed shares rose almost 10 per cent in premarket trading.

AI as top priority

At its annual Apsara Conference, CEO Eddie Wu said artificial intelligence will stand alongside e-commerce as Alibaba’s central focus. “The speed of AI industry development has far exceeded our expectations, and the industry’s demand for AI infrastructure has also far exceeded our expectations,” Wu told the audience, per MSN.

Earlier this year, Alizila reported that Alibaba had committed to investing 380 billion yuan, around $53 billion, into AI infrastructure over the next three years. On Wednesday, Wu suggested spending will go even higher, without offering a specific figure.

Also read: Alibaba launches Qwen-3 Max, its most powerful AI model yet to rival ChatGPT and Gemini: Here's how to start using

Alibaba & Nvidia partnership

The company confirmed a new collaboration with US chipmaker Nvidia to strengthen its AI infrastructure. The partnership will cover data synthesis, model training, environmental simulations, and testing, but did not disclose whether Nvidia chips would power its coming facilities.

The announcement of the partnership comes just days after Nvidia announced its own $100 billion deal with OpenAI, highlighting the intensifying competition in the global AI race.

Alibaba data center expansion

Alibaba also laid out plans to add its first data centers in Brazil, France, and the Netherlands. More will follow in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai in 2025, according to Reuters. The company currently operates 91 centers across 29 regions.

“Overseas data center investments will help expand Alibaba’s influence among international AI developers and enterprise users,” said Lian Jye Su, chief analyst at Omdia, who noted the strategy builds on years of AI-focused spending.

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Qwen3-Max unveiled

On the product side, Alibaba debuted its most advanced language model yet, the Qwen3-Max. With more than one trillion parameters, the model has shown strong performance in code generation and autonomous agent capabilities, according to Zhou Jingren, chief technology officer at Alibaba Cloud.

Autonomous agent features mean the system can pursue user-set goals with fewer human prompts, a step beyond typical chatbot interaction. Alibaba said third-party benchmarks placed Qwen3-Max ahead of rival products, including Anthropic’s Claude and DeepSeek-V3.1 on certain tasks.

The company also showcased Qwen3-Omni, a multimodal AI for immersive applications in smart glasses and intelligent vehicles.

Strong quarter fuels optimism

The announcements follow a robust earnings report in August, when Alibaba’s cloud unit posted a 26 per cent jump in the Alibaba share price, driven in large part by the demand for AI services, per Bloomberg.

With Alibaba's share price at its highest in four years, investors appear to be betting that Alibaba’s AI gamble, from global centers to new models, will pay off.

FAQs

Why did Alibaba's shares jump nearly 10%?

The company announced a new partnership with Nvidia, unveiled data center plans, and introduced a trillion-parameter AI model.

How much is Alibaba investing in AI?

Alibaba has committed $53 billion over the next three years to AI-related infrastructure.

What is Qwen3-Max?

Qwen3-Max is Alibaba’s new AI language model with over one trillion parameters, aimed at advanced autonomous and coding tasks.

Where will Alibaba build new data centers?

Brazil, France, and the Netherlands are first on the list, with more sites coming in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai.