Alibaba Group unveils new AI chip Zhenwu V900, plans to train new AI model

The new Zhenwu V900 AI chip comes from the company’s T-Head semiconductor unit [File] | Photo Credit: REUTERS The Alibaba Group unveiled its new Zhenwu V900 AI chip this week, pitching it as China’s most powerful, and promising tripled performance when compared to its predecessor.The Chinese e-commerce and internet giant also committed to training a new AI model with between 5 and 10 trillion parameters, apart from growing its global data centre capacity.The new Zhenwu V900 AI chip comes from the company’s T-Head semiconductor unit.The unveiling comes at a time when U.S. technologists are clashing over AI safety standards, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei calling for tech restrictions against China to prevent AI distillation. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has pushed for the ability to compete in the Asian country’s market against Chinese chip rivals.On August 20, Alibaba reported a 75% fall in quarterly net profit. However, CEO Eddie Wu hailed a “strong quarter” for the company, noting the commercialisation of its AI capabilities. There was also a 9% rise in revenue during the quarter.“Alibaba Cloud’s external revenue growth accelerated to 45%, with AI-related product revenue delivering triple-digit growth for the twelfth consecutive quarter. We recently launched frontier language, coding, video, audio, image and music models, all delivering top-tier performance,” he said in the company’s earnings statement for the June quarter 2026.With inputs from Reuters Published - September 22, 2026 01:35 pm IST