{"id":436542,"date":"2026-05-20T10:46:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:46:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/436542\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T10:46:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T10:46:15","slug":"alibaba-unveils-new-ai-chip-in-push-for-domestic-alternatives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/436542\/","title":{"rendered":"Alibaba unveils new AI chip in push for domestic alternatives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BEIJING\/SINGAPORE, May 20 (Reuters) – Alibaba Group on Wednesday unveiled a new AI chip, the Zhenwu M890, as the Chinese technology giant intensifies efforts to build domestic alternatives to \u200cNvidia<\/a> processors amid tightening U.S. export curbs.<\/p>\n

The chip, developed by Alibaba’s semiconductor design subsidiary \u200cT-Head, delivers three times the performance of its predecessor, Zhenwu 810E. It is purpose-built for the emerging wave of AI “agents” \u2014 \u200bsoftware systems that can carry out complex, multi-step tasks with limited human oversight.<\/p>\n

Alibaba said the new processor is well-suited to handle the heavy memory and communication demands of agent workloads, where models must retain long stretches of context and coordinate with one another in real time.<\/p>\n

The company also outlined a \u200cmulti-year chip roadmap, saying it would \u2060follow the M890 with a successor called the V900 in the third quarter of 2027, and a further chip, the J900, in the third quarter of \u20602028. The V900 is expected to deliver another roughly threefold performance gain over the M890, Alibaba said, signalling a sustained cadence of in-house silicon upgrades.<\/p>\n

The plan underscores China’s growing efforts to produce locally developed \u200bAI chips \u200bas Washington bans the sale of the most powerful \u200bU.S. processors to Chinese customers, and \u200cfollows a similar announcement by Huawei last year.<\/p>\n

Hangzhou-based Alibaba last year pledged to spend more than 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) on cloud and AI infrastructure over three years, its largest-ever commitment to the sector.<\/p>\n

The investment reflects a broader bet across China’s technology industry that demand for AI computing power will continue to surge as enterprises adopt agent-based applications.<\/p>\n

Alibaba unveiled the chip at its annual Alibaba \u200cCloud Summit, alongside a new server system, the Panjiu AL128, \u200bwhich packages 128 of the accelerators into a single \u200brack.<\/p>\n

The system is available immediately to Chinese \u200benterprise customers through Alibaba Cloud’s domestic model platform, known as Bailian.<\/p>\n

T-Head said it \u200chas shipped more than 560,000 Zhenwu units \u200bto date, with over \u200b400 external customers across 20 industries, including automakers and financial services firms, having deployed the chips.<\/p>\n

Alibaba also announced Qwen 3.7-Max, the latest version of its flagship large language model, which \u200bit said is engineered for \u200cadvanced coding and long-running agent tasks. The company said the model can operate continuously \u200bfor up to 35 hours without performance degradation.<\/p>\n

(Reporting by Liam Mo in Beijing and \u200bMiyoung Kim in Singapore; Editing by Jamie Freed)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BEIJING\/SINGAPORE, May 20 (Reuters) – Alibaba Group on Wednesday unveiled a new AI chip, the Zhenwu M890, as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436543,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,8191,16404,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":["post-436542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alibaba-cloud","tag-alibaba-group","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436542\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}