On May 10, during Alibaba Day, Chairman Joseph Tsai unveiled the company's core strategy: 'E-commerce, Cloud + AI'.

Tsai emphasized that Alibaba aims to integrate AI across all businesses and operations, with a vision for AI to drive all operations within the next three to five years.

Elevating AI to this strategic height stems from Alibaba's ambition to break through the grip of competitors' internet entry points, discover new avenues, and attract a broader user base.

Just a day prior, CEO Wu Yongming, in an internal communication, underscored Alibaba's focus on key areas: domestic and international e-commerce, AI + cloud computing technology, and internet platform products. He expressed hope for significant breakthroughs, particularly in AI-to-Consumer (C) applications.

According to 'Huxiu APP', as early as 2025, Alibaba had already embarked on a comprehensive AI transformation across its core businesses, utilizing AI to reshape workflows and evaluating employees based on 'AI incremental indicators,' such as AI-driven GMV increases and user growth metrics.

In February this year, Wu Yongming announced an investment of over 380 billion yuan over the next three years in cloud and AI hardware infrastructure. This marks a record investment in this field by a Chinese private enterprise, surpassing the total invested over the past decade.

Industry experts note that while this investment appears ambitious, it is well-founded. Commercialization challenges persist, and AI infrastructure is indispensable, akin to 'water, electricity, and gas' in the AI era. Wu Yongming likens AI to the future's biggest commodity, with cloud computing networks serving as the current power grid. As AI scales rapidly, infrastructure providers, such as computing power and cloud services, enjoy the most certain profit logic.

It's worth noting that Alibaba's investment in cloud and AI hardware infrastructure does not diminish its commitment to other areas, such as B2B and C2C applications, which remain key investment areas.

At the model layer, Alibaba is also advancing rapidly. On March 6, the Tongyi Qianwen large model team launched QwQ-32B, a reasoning model with 32 billion parameters, matching the performance of DeepSeek-R1, which boasts 671 billion parameters (37 billion activated). On April 29, Alibaba open-sourced its new generation Tongyi Qianwen model, Qwen3, which outperforms global top models like DeepSeek-R1 and OpenAI-o1. Alibaba has expanded its Tongyi Qianwen model training team to around 100 members, making it one of China's largest.

The Tongyi Qianwen large model has gained Apple's recognition. In February, Alibaba and Apple agreed to develop localized AI features for iPhone users, integrating the Tongyi large model deeply into the iOS system, enhancing photo search and text rewriting capabilities.

This March, Alibaba introduced the AI-powered new Quark, revolutionizing traditional AI interaction by integrating AI dialogue, deep thinking, deep search, deep research, and deep execution into a streamlined 'AI superframe' to address all user needs.

Furthermore, Alibaba has begun external AI investments. In 2024, it invested in Dark Side of the Moon, MiniMax, Wisdom Spectrum AI, Baichuan Intelligence, and ZeroOne Everything.

Alibaba's bold AI strategy dates back to 2022. When ChatGPT was released in November that year, Jack Ma recognized AI's potential to transform the global economy but acknowledged Alibaba's lag. At the time, Alibaba was at a low point. After two years of transformation, renowned foreign media now consider Alibaba 'well-positioned to capitalize on China's anticipated AI demand growth.'

In 2025, Alibaba will compete fiercely with ByteDance (Douyin), Tencent (Yuanbao), and DeepSeek in the AI arena. This is also a critical test for Alibaba's AI delivery capabilities. Sources indicate that Alibaba's budget for AI chip procurement this year is 39 billion yuan, over 50% higher than last year. Meanwhile, ByteDance is expected to invest $12 billion in AI chips this year (data not officially confirmed by the companies).

The content of this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. The cover image was created using AI. This article also draws from 'Re-recognizing Alibaba: Taking Big Steps Towards AI' (LatePost) and 'It's Time to Re-examine Alibaba' (Huxiu), for which thanks are given.