Chinese giant maps out datacenters across Europe and beyond, yet US chip curbs cast a long shadow

Analysis Alibaba this week opened an AI war chest containing tens of billions of dollars, a revamped LLM lineup, and plans for AI datacenters in Europe. But it also prompted a flurry of questions over how it will achieve all this in an increasingly fragmented IT landscape, when critical resources are in short supply.

Proximity to the demand is key – in order for Alibaba to compete globally, it will need to position itself as close to its users as possible

At the mega vendor's Apsara conference in Hangzhou, China, it detailed the latest iteration of its Qwen3-Omni LLM, which can process text, images, audio, and video while generating text and speech.

Critically, it is available under an Apache 2.0 license, making embedding it more tempting for companies loath to tie themselves into the ecosystems of ChatGPT et al.

But the Chinese giant also sketched out plans for a ...