Alibaba Group Holding CEO Eddie Wu Yongming met Chongqing party secretary and Politburo member Yuan Jiajun on Tuesday to discuss potential collaborations in artificial intelligence (AI), as the Chinese technology giant’s AI capabilities gain increasing recognition.
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In a meeting in Chongqing, Yuan said the southwestern metropolis and Alibaba “have new major opportunities for cooperation”, according to local official media. He expressed hopes that the two parties could work together to achieve “landmark results” in areas such as AI model applications and building computing facilities.
This followed Alibaba’s announcement of an ambitious plan to invest US$52 billion in cloud computing and AI infrastructure over the next three years, in China’s largest-ever computing project financed by a single private business.
The pledged amount exceeds the company’s total spending on AI infrastructure over the past decade and equates to around half of the initial US$100 billion investment earmarked for the United States’ Stargate Project aimed at boosting AI infrastructure.
Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Chongqing had huge potential for AI development and the city was “seizing the opportunity” to empower itself using AI, Yuan was quoted as saying.