Alibaba unveils China's most powerful AI chip.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba has officially unveiled its new artificial intelligence chip, the Zhenwu V900, calling it China's "most powerful." The announcement was made by CEO Eddie Wu during the annual Apsara conference in Hangzhou.

The new processor, developed by Alibaba's T-Head division, offers performance three times that of its predecessor, the Zhenwu M890. According to Wu, a cluster based on the V900 can support up to 500,000 cards for advanced model training and inference tasks, with expectations of a significant increase in annual shipments.

Alibaba has also outlined a roadmap focused on three pillars: AI models, chips, and cloud computing. The group plans to bring the total capacity of data centers managed by Alibaba Cloud to over 20 gigawatts by 2032, driven by "exceptionally strong" AI demand.

The development of the Zhenwu V900 chip emerged in the context of U.S. trade restrictions on the export of advanced semiconductors to China for national security reasons. These measures have created a significant bottleneck for Chinese AI companies, making it difficult for them to access the most powerful chips, such as those produced by Nvidia.

The race for technological autonomy began several years ago, when Beijing identified dependence on foreign semiconductors as a strategic vulnerability. Alibaba, through its T-Head division established in 2018, has progressively developed its own capabilities in chip design, culminating now in the V900.

This technological roadmap is part of a three-year, 380-billion-yuan (approximately $52 billion) investment plan for AI and cloud services, also funded by an equity offering of over $10 billion launched in August. The goal is to bridge the computing power gap that, according to Liang Wenfeng of DeepSeek, represents China's greatest competitive disadvantage compared to the United States.