Alibaba Group Holding’s international wholesale marketplace, Alibaba.com, expects all sellers on the platform to adopt its artificial intelligence (AI) tools by the end of this year, as the e-commerce firm boosts its investment in the technology. More than half of the roughly 200,000 merchants on Alibaba.com were already using its AI applications on a weekly basis, President Zhang Kuo told the South China Morning Post in an interview. Introduced in early 2024, these AI tools are designed to assist sellers in marketing, product management, customer engagement and risk control – which form part of efforts to expand Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce business. “I believe that by the end of this year, the adoption rate should be 100%,” Zhang said.
His assessment reflects Hangzhou-based Alibaba’s sharpened focus on cloud computing and AI, following the company’s commitment to invest at least CNY380 billion to enhance its infrastructure related to those technologies over the next three years. That marks the largest-ever computing project financed by a single private business in China.
Meanwhile, Alibaba's research arm Damo Academy has launched the XianTue C930 CPU, which is expected to usher in more open-source chip innovation in China. The server-grade XuanTie C930 processor has the potential to broaden domestic use of open-source chips built on the RISC-V instruction set architecture, countering U.S. tech restrictions. The C930 CPU was developed by Alibaba semiconductor unit T-Head, which is focused on data-center servers and autonomous vehicles. The C930 will begin shipping to clients this month. “The open-source model will help build an inclusive and collaborative global RISC-V ecosystem, making it the new engine for chip industry disruption,” Ni Guangnan, Academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering said. Hangzhou-based Alibaba’s latest open-source initiative not only shows the company’s progress in RISC-V chip design over the past few years, but also reflects China’s commitment to overcome U.S. sanctions which have curtailed China’s access to advanced semiconductor technology and chipmaking equipment, the South China Morning Post reports.
