Alibaba unveils next-gen AI models and $53 billion infrastructure expansion
Alibaba has unveiled its strongest AI models, Qwen3-Omni and Qwen3-Max. To support these AI advancements, Alibaba is expanding its data centres globally, investing 380 billion yuan ($53.40 billion) in AI-related infrastructure.
Just as Nvidia announced plans to spend $100 billion building out OpenAI’s infrastructure, Alibaba is doubling its ambitions, rolling out a powerful suite of AI models and expanding its data centres to support them.
At its annual Apsara Conference in Beijing, Alibaba unveiled Qwen3-Omni, a multimodal model capable of analysing text, images, audio, and video in real time. Released under an open Apache 2.0 license, businesses can freely download and deploy the system, setting it apart from closed, pay-to-use rivals like Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and OpenAI’s GPT-4o.
The company also introduced Qwen3-Max, its most advanced large language model yet, boasting over a trillion parameters. Alibaba executives say it shows particular strength in code generation and autonomous decision-making, enabling AI systems to act more independently than traditional chatbots. Benchmark tests indicate it outperforms models from Anthropic and DeepSeek in some areas.
What makes Qwen3-Omni unique is its architecture. Instead of adding vision or speech to a text-first system, it integrates all modalities from the ground up. The model is available in three versions, Instruct, Thinking, and Captioner, and can generate text and audio with low latency, outperforming rivals on reasoning, transcription, and video analysis.
Practical applications range from customer support tools that can analyse live video feeds of malfunctioning appliances to interactive assistants for virtual reality environments. Developers can fine-tune personality and style, from consumer services to enterprise transcription, adapting the system for industries.
Supporting these breakthroughs is a sweeping expansion of Alibaba’s infrastructure footprint. The firm plans to open its first data centres in Brazil, France, and the Netherlands, adding facilities in Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai. All this comes from an earlier pledge to invest $53 billion over three years into AI-related infrastructure.
By coupling record-setting AI models with a global data centre buildout, Alibaba is signalling it intends to compete head-to-head with US leaders. With open licensing, massive infrastructure spending, and technical performance that matches or surpasses its Western rivals, China’s e-commerce titan is making a bold play to reshape the global AI landscape.
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