Alibaba's chip datacenter

Alibaba Cloud said on April 8 that it had deployed a 10,000-card artificial intelligence computing cluster in Shaoguan, using its own Zhenwu chips instead of Nvidia processors. (scmp.com) The cluster was built with China Telecom at a data center in Shaoguan, Guangdong, and Alibaba Cloud said it is designed to support training, fine-tuning and inference for large artificial intelligence models. (scmp.com) (alibabagroup.com) An artificial intelligence chip does the heavy math behind systems like chatbots and image generators; a computing cluster links thousands of those chips so they can work as one machine. Alibaba’s semiconductor arm, T-Head, said in January that its Zhenwu 810E chip performs on par with Nvidia’s H20, the model Nvidia has been allowed to sell into China under United States export rules. (scmp.com 1) (scmp.com 2) Alibaba is building more of its own silicon as Washington has tightened restrictions on advanced chip exports to China since 2022. South China Morning Post reported in August 2025 that Beijing had also started pushing Chinese data centers to use more domestic chips. (scmp.com 1) (scmp.com 2) That pressure runs in both directions. Reuters reported in September 2025 that Alibaba and other Chinese technology companies still wanted Nvidia chips even as regulators in Beijing discouraged those purchases, showing that domestic alternatives are being promoted before they have fully displaced Nvidia. (scmp.com) Alibaba has been tying that hardware push to its cloud and model business. In March, the company said its graphics processing units and T-Head chips support end-to-end artificial intelligence workloads, and it described the combination of chips, Qwen models and cloud infrastructure as a long-term advantage. (alibabagroup.com) The company has also been expanding chip volume. South China Morning Post reported in January that Alibaba’s artificial intelligence chip push had passed 100,000 units, ahead of local rival Cambricon, citing people familiar with the matter. (scmp.com) Alibaba’s new cluster opened days after Shenzhen switched on what South China Morning Post described as China’s first 10,000-card intelligent computing cluster built with Huawei Ascend 910C chips. The back-to-back launches point to a race inside China to assemble large domestic computing pools that can train and run artificial intelligence systems without relying on imported top-end Nvidia hardware. (scmp.com) For Alibaba, the Shaoguan site is not just another data center. It is a test of whether a Chinese internet company can supply its own chips at enough scale to run the artificial intelligence services it sells through the cloud. (scmp.com) (alibabagroup.com)