Alibaba has made 470,000 AI chips, admits they’re inferior and may always be

Chinese web giant Alibaba has revealed its T-Head chipmaking business has shipped 470,000 AI chips, and admitted they are currently inferior to rival products, but believes it can build a mutually optimized stack that makes performance gaps moot.

CEO Yongming Wu revealed the 470,000 figure during the company’s Q3 2026 earnings call, without specifying the model he referred to. Alibaba has created several chips at least three chips designed for AI workloads, including the infamously buggy XuanTie C908, the TH1520 for edge AI, and the Pingtouge Zhenwu 810E. The latter debuted in January and is thought to be competitive with Nvidia’s H20, a throttled version of a 2023-vintage Hopper architecture accelerator.

If Wu was referring solely to the 810E, delivering 470,000 since January is impressive as it puts Alibaba’s output at the same pace as Nvidia’s: CEO Jensen Huang last year said the ...