Alibaba, the parent company behind Lazada and a number of other services, is also focusing on artificial intelligence through its Qwen offering. In parallel, Alibaba is also seen developing its own semiconductor and hardware solutions to enable its models to operate well.
According to the latest report, Alibaba has developed a special processing chip focused on artificial intelligence inference, which is said to offer performance equivalent to NVIDIA. However, for training purposes, Alibaba still uses third-party chips – but this may change soon. The production of these chips is also said to be done in China, and not through TSMC.
With various restrictions imposed by the United States, the Chinese are starting to look at their own local alternatives, thus allowing them to not rely on foreign technology and have their own offerings. This is readily evidenced by the offerings of Deepseek and others that are seen as equivalent or more powerful than Western offerings, but at a much lower cost.
In addition to Alibaba, there are several other Chinese companies that are also developing their own solutions, including Huawei.