Alibaba Group Holding co-founder and chairman Joe Tsai confirmed on Thursday that the e-commerce giant has struck a deal with Apple to put its Qwen artificial intelligence (AI) models on iPhones, while also praising recent innovations from start-up DeepSeek that he said will inspire more developers to focus on open-source solutions.
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Alibaba “feels extremely honoured to be able to do business with a great company like Apple”, Tsai said during the World Governments Summit held in Dubai this week. Tsai’s comments were the first official confirmation of the deal.
The South China Morning Post, which is owned by Alibaba, reported on the partnership on Tuesday, citing sources. News of the deal was first reported by The Information.
“Apple has been very selective. They talked to a number of companies in China, and in the end, they chose to do business with us,” Tsai said, adding that the iPhone maker wants localised AI on its devices.
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Does the arrival of China’s low-cost DeepSeek mean the end of Nvidia’s chip dominance?
Does the arrival of China’s low-cost DeepSeek mean the end of Nvidia’s chip dominance?
The deal concludes a months-long search for a partner to help the US tech giant launch Apple Intelligence in mainland China, where AI models for public use require regulatory approval. Internationally, Apple Intelligence uses OpenAI’s GPT models, which are not officially available in China.
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