Alibaba Group has announced plans to expand its data centres in Europe and the Middle East, and establish new cloud regions in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months, reported Bloomberg.
The company also intends to increase its data centre presence in Germany, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), France and Hong Kong.
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Alibaba said the expansion would support the provision of localised cloud and AI services in those markets.
Alibaba cloud intelligence chief technology officer and international business president Li Feifei announced the plans at Alibaba’s Apsara conference in Hangzhou on 23 September.
The projects form part of Alibaba’s plan to build a 20GW global data centre network by 2032. The company’s cloud network already operates across Japan, Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
Alibaba has recently opened facilities in Brazil and France as it seeks to offer generative AI services to businesses in local markets. The new European and Middle Eastern infrastructure would extend its cloud footprint beyond Asia, where it has operated a broader network.
Li said: “We are committed to working closely with our global ecosystem to make AI more scalable, practical and accessible for businesses.”
The data centre announcement came during Alibaba’s annual technology summit, where the company presented its AI hardware and software plans. It unveiled a new range of AI chips, which it described as China’s most powerful and designed for training frontier models.
Alibaba also said it was training foundation models with between 5 trillion and 10 trillion parameters.
The infrastructure programme comes as competition over AI chips and models between China and the US intensifies. Alibaba’s expansion would place it in greater competition outside Asia with Western cloud providers including Amazon and Alphabet.
The company’s international plans also coincide with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s stated aim of sharing China’s technological advances globally.
The source said Trump officials have encouraged other countries to prioritise US technology products rather than alternatives from China.
