While U.S. attention focuses on what American companies are doing with AI and cloud technology, a China-led parallel universe is emergingAlibaba and Huawei each have substantial and rapidly growing cloud businesses, as well as their own AI models and siliconThough U.S. hyperscalers will continue to lead in the U.S. and Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and the Asia Pacific regions will be key market share battlegrounds,

AWS, Google, Microsoft and even Oracle have been racking up cloud and AI headlines recently. But other major players are getting less attention in the west: Chinese cloud giants Alibaba and Huawei. AI could thrust them into the spotlight.

“We’re seeing the emergence of a true dual AI stack and cloud ecosystem emerging — U.S.-led vs. China-led,” AvidThink Founder Roy Chua told Fierce. “So, absolutely the industry should pay attention” to the extent that they’re not already.

Indeed, the Chinese cloud giants are pretty hard to ignore. Alibaba Cloud is the fourth largest cloud provider in the world by market share and infrastructure-as-a-service revenue, according to data from Synergy Research Group and Gartner. It operates 89 availability zones in 29 regions spanning Asia, the Middle East as well as North America, Europe and Australia. Around half of its regions are in its home country of China.

Meanwhile, Huawei Cloud operates 101 availability zones across 34 regions, primarily in Asia, the Middle East and South America. It also has facilities in Ireland, South Africa and Mexico, though is otherwise notably absent from North America and Europe.

For comparison, Microsoft Azure has the largest cloud footprint, claiming over 70 cloud regions (55 of which are listed here). Google Cloud, meanwhile, has 42 regions and AWS offers 38.

Regions don’t directly correlate to market share for a variety of reasons (some of which, yes, are geopolitical). According to Synergy Research Group’s data from July 2025, Amazon, Microsoft and Google had 30%, 20% and 13% market share, respectively, compared to Alibaba’s 4% and Huawei’s 2%.  Gartner’s market share numbers for the 2024 infrastructure-as-a-service market were slightly different with Amazon at 37.7%, Microsoft at 23.9%, Google at 9%, Alibaba at 7.2% and Huawei at 4.1%.

AI growth catalyst

Both Huawei and Alibaba are trying to capitalize on the AI boom to boost those percentages.

Alibaba in February announced plans to invest roughly $53 billion (RMB380 billion) over the next three years to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure. In July, it reported AI demand drove Cloud revenue up 26% to $4.6 billion in its calendar Q2. It has also been building up its AI capabilities with the launch of its Qwen series of foundation models, which are being used by Alibaba’s partner SAP.

Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu said during its July earnings call that rising demand for post-training services and inferencing is expected to continue to drive cloud growth “on a sustained upward trajectory in the coming quarters.”

Huawei, meanwhile, has zeroed in on an “AI for Industries” approach, which aims to tackle the biggest challenges faced by sectors including government services, finance, manufacturing, healthcare, mining, railways, autonomous driving and meteorology. All told, Huawei said its Pangu family of models have been applied to more than 500 use cases across 30 verticals.

This strategy seems to be paying off. The company noted in its 2024 annual report that revenue from its public cloud business outside of China grew by more than 50%, with rapid growth in regions including Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific.

“While many of us have a U.S.-centric view of the AI race, the world is a little different,” Moor Insights and Strategy VP and Principal Analyst Matt Kimball told Fierce.

“Ali, with Qwen has a competitive model supported by its own tools (Qwen for text, QVQ, etc..) along with broad open-source support. It also has its own inference chip. When you look at this, it is very akin to every major CSP in the U.S., only on a smaller scale,” he said. Huawei, he added, is in a similar boat.

Seizing the opportunity

Chua said it’s entirely possible that AI could function as Alibaba and Huawei’s big break, though he doesn’t see them overtaking U.S. hyperscalers.

“MENA, LATAM, etc., are less aligned with the U.S. and there are countries, which already have concerns about Western export controls, that may want to see the rise of an alternative to a U.S.-dominated AI stack,” he told Fierce. “Those regions also have higher demand for affordable AI compute and the Chinese providers are able and happy to provide that.”

Kimball agreed that AI presents a significant growth opportunity for Alibaba and Huawei, particularly in Latin America, Africa, Eastern Europe and China. And while the Middle East has and will likely to continue to lean in favor of Western cloud providers, Kimball pointed to the region as additional “fertile ground.”

“It would be wise for U.S./Western Europe players to track and assure competitiveness in these markets,” he concluded.