{
  "id": 9266565,
  "title": "Alibaba Cloud set to open new data centres in Europe next year as overseas push speeds up",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/09/23/alibaba-cloud-set-to-open-new-data-centres-in-europe-next-year-as",
  "topic": "tech",
  "section": "Tech",
  "published": "2026-09-23T04:00:10.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "SCMP Tech",
    "slug": "scmp-tech",
    "url": "https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3368454/alibaba-cloud-set-open-new-data-centres-europe-next-year-overseas-push-speeds"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "Alibaba Cloud, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group Holding, plans to establish data centers in Turkey, Finland, and the Netherlands within the next year, accelerating its overseas expansion strategy. The first new data center is set to open in the Netherlands in October. Additionally, the cloud unit will increase its capacity in existing regions such as Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Hong Kong, according to Li Feifei, the CTO and president of international business at Alibaba Cloud. During the company's Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, Li emphasized the company's commitment to expanding its global cloud footprint to bring computing resources closer to customers and partners.\n\nAlibaba Cloud currently operates 107 availability zones across 31 regions, making it the largest infrastructure-as-a-service provider in Asia-Pacific with a 22.5% market share, according to Gartner. The company's revenue from AI and Cloud Computing Services, a crucial growth engine that integrates Alibaba Cloud with its chip-design arm T-Head, grew by 45% in the three months ending June 30, reaching 48.4 billion yuan (US$7.2 billion). Li also revealed that annual recurring revenue from model and application services, including model-as-a-service offerings, had increased to 20 billion yuan in recent months.\n\nThe international expansion aligns with a series of announcements on Tuesday, where Alibaba unveiled its full AI stack, including the training of its Qwen 4 model and future Qwen 5 models with up to 10 trillion parameters. The company also introduced the Zhenwu V900 AI processor, slated for commercial release in the first quarter of 2027, and set a goal to operate over 20 gigawatts of global data center capacity by 2032. According to Neil Shah, a vice-president at Counterpoint Research, Alibaba's vertically integrated AI approach, optimizing its Qwen models with its own stack from chips to software, is impressive. However, achieving full independence may hinder the company in the near-to-medium term, and catching Western rivals in efficient \"tokenomics\" remains a challenge.",
  "summary": "Alibaba Cloud, Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud business unit, is set to launch data centres in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months, speeding up an overseas push as it seeks to win enterprise customers through its “full stack AI capabilities” spanning chips, cloud infrastructure and multimodal models. The first of these new data centres will open in the Netherlands in…",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}