How Cloud Expansion Fuels Alibaba’s Global AI Ambitions

Alibaba Cloud has unveiled a major international expansion strategy, underpinned by new strategic partnerships aimed at accelerating AI innovation on a global scale.

Announced during the company’s annual Apsara Conference 2025, the initiative will see new data centres launched in Brazil, France and the Netherlands, with additional facilities planned for Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and Dubai over the next 12 months.

The expansion marks a significant step in strengthening Alibaba Cloud’s worldwide infrastructure, enabling the company to better serve rapidly growing enterprise demand for AI-driven solutions and cloud services.

Fuelling next-generation AI innovation

Alibaba Cloud operates 91 availability zones across 29 regions worldwide and is further expanding its footprint to meet surging demand for AI-powered business transformation on a global scale.

Dr Feifei Li, President of International Business and SVP of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group, says: “AI is revolutionising not only technology, but also the very foundation of how enterprises deliver business value and drive growth. 

“Our strategic expansion of global infrastructure is designed to cater for the accelerating demand from forward-thinking customers. 

“Alibaba Cloud stands at the forefront of AI innovation, co-evolving with our customers with full stack AI and cloud solutions that support businesses anytime and anywhere. 

“We are here to help partners and customers to design, launch and scale groundbreaking AI agents and applications, fuelling the next generation of digital innovation and unlocking unprecedented value in the global marketplace.”

To support this accelerated growth, Alibaba Cloud is establishing new regional service centres in Indonesia and Germany, providing 24/7 multilingual customer support to ensure seamless service delivery worldwide.

In parallel, the company has introduced its AI Catalyst Program, designed to strengthen the global technology ecosystem by equipping select AI firms with expert mentorship, access to Alibaba’s advanced AI tools, and generous allocations of cloud credits and tokens to drive innovation.

Nvidia partnership drives physical AI advances

Alibaba Cloud has strengthened its AI ecosystem through a collaboration with Nvidia, integrating the full suite of Nvidia’s Physical AI software stack into its Platform for AI (PAI).

This cloud-native integration enables developers to accelerate breakthroughs in humanoid robotics and Physical AI applications, providing an advanced environment for experimentation and deployment.

The partnership represents a pivotal step in Alibaba Cloud’s commitment to advancing Physical AI – a field dedicated to AI systems that seamlessly interact with the physical world, including robotics and autonomous vehicles.

By combining Nvidia’s technology with its own platform, Alibaba Cloud is equipping developers with the comprehensive tools and flexibility needed to drive next-generation robotics and AI innovation.

AI in action

Alibaba Cloud’s AI technology is powering transformation across diverse industries worldwide.

In China, AstraZeneca is harnessing Alibaba Cloud’s LLM Qwen and Model Studio to build a next-generation adverse event reporting tool, achieving 95% accuracy in drug safety reviews while tripling operational efficiency.

Xin Zhong, Head of Commercial IT at AstraZeneca China, says: “Working closely with Alibaba Cloud, we managed to harness the benefits of the Qwen LLM and Model Studio: Exclusive, which vastly improved the efficiency of generating adverse event reports from huge amounts of medical literature. 

“We’re proud that we have pioneered this innovation in the industry. We expect to explore more AI-based innovations with Alibaba Cloud.”

Other partners include Shiseido China, which utilises Alibaba Cloud’s AI-driven Cloud Threat Detection and Response (CTDR) platform to safeguard its digital infrastructure with real-time security analytics and expert threat hunting.

This enables Shiseido to detect and respond to cyber threats with unprecedented speed and accuracy while optimising operational costs, supporting secure digital transformation growth.

Jerry Lin, CITO of Shiseido China & Travel Retail, highlights that security is a strategic imperative for growth in China, and partnering with Alibaba Cloud gives confidence to scale digital transformation securely.

“Security is not just a technical requirement but a strategic imperative for our growth in China,” he says.

“Partnering with Alibaba Cloud gives us the confidence to scale our digital transformation securely. “Its AI-driven threat detection and expert services allow us to focus on delivering exceptional beauty experiences to our customers, knowing our cloud infrastructure is protected by advanced security measures in the country.”

Marketing and AI startups such as GladCube and FLUX in Japan are leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s AI models and infrastructure to drive innovation across content creation, financial sector applications, and next‑generation AI solutions.

Hiroki Kaneshima, President & CEO of GladCube, says: “We have long pursued the dual goals of creative excellence and operational efficiency in content development by harnessing generative AI. 

“Our partnership with Alibaba Cloud represents a major leap forward and we are confident it will revolutionise creative content production and reshape the future of digital marketing in Japan.”

Turbo AI is partnering with Alibaba Cloud to harness its secure and resilient cloud infrastructure, delivering integrated AI solutions tailored to regional clients.

The collaboration covers the full AI lifecycle, from model research and development through to deployment and real-world implementation.

By leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s intelligent resource scheduling and elastic computing, Turbo AI can dynamically configure and scale computing resources to meet evolving demands.

“By leveraging Alibaba Cloud’s resilient, secure cloud infrastructure and intelligent resource scheduling, Turbo AI achieves dynamic configuration and elastic scaling of computing resources,” says Yuan LU, Big Data Head of Turbo AI.

“This empowers us to significantly enhance operational efficiency and optimise our clients’ cost performance of AI workloads.”