Alibaba Commits Over $50B to AI and Cloud After Jack Ma’s Xi Jinping Meeting

• Alibaba announced plans to invest billions in AI infrastructure.
• Founder Jack Ma recently met with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
• Since the meeting, Alibaba’s stock has climbed more than 11%.

Alibaba has pledged to invest “at least” 380 billion yuan ($52 billion) in new cloud and AI infrastructure over the next three years.

The move comes the week after company founder Jack Ma joined Chinese President Xi Jinping and other Big Tech bosses to discuss China’s AI economy.

Alibaba’s AI Investment

After reporting quarterly earnings on Thursday, Feb. 20, Alibaba announced the AI spending pledge on Monday.

A report from the firm’s newsroom stated that the investment will “[reinforce] its commitment to long-term technological innovation,” and “[underscore] the company’s focus on AI-driven growth and its role as a leading global cloud provider.”

With a 36% share of the Chinese cloud market, Alibaba is set to benefit from rising AI adoption, boosted by DeepSeek and a foreign investment boom.

“As AI models evolve, a growing share of AI-generated data will be processed and distributed via cloud networks,” the company stated. This trend, “positions Alibaba Cloud as a key infrastructure provider.”

However, Alibaba isn’t the only Chinese Big Tech firm riding the AI wave.

Chinese Big Tech Boosted by Xi Jinping

Alibaba’s infrastructure announcement comes a week after Xi’s meeting with Big Tech leaders.

Jack Ma, Tencent CEO Pony Ma, and the bosses of BYD, DeepSeek, Xiaomi, and others attended the event.

In the week since, Alibaba’s share price has climbed more than 11%, catalyzed by the show of support from Xi and better-than-expected earnings results.

Facing a trade war with the U.S., the meeting sent a clear signal about how the government views private corporations.

After a period of sluggish growth, Beijing is hoping to kickstart the economy by doubling down on innovation and creating a more favorable business climate.

China’s AI Ambitions

While Alibaba’s $52 billion commitment is dwarfed by the $500 billion Stargate project in the U.S., it still exceeds the firm’s total AI and cloud spending over the past decade.

Delivering the company’s quarterly results, CEO Eddie Wu said Alibaba “will continue to execute our strategy and make significant investments to seize opportunities presented by the AI era. Meanwhile, “the pursuit of [Artificial General Intelligence] is our primary objective,” he added.

Other Big Tech players are also doubling down on AI investment.

Baidu CEO Robin Li recently called for greater infrastructure spending to support China’s continued competitiveness in the space.

“The investment in cloud infrastructure is still very much required,” he said. “In order to come up with models that are smarter than everyone else, you have to use more compute.”