Alibaba advances cloud, chips and agents as domestic compute orders draw scrutiny
China-related AI compute news centered on Alibaba’s cloud growth and T-Head roadmap, DeepSeek tooling updates, domestic compute-order uncertainty, and supply-chain developments.
• Alibaba Cloud’s external commercial revenue rose 45% in fiscal Q1 2027, while EBITA profit in its AI cloud and computing-power segment rose 133% year over year and adjusted EBITA margin reached 12%.
• Alibaba CEO Wu Yongming said returns on AI computing-power capex are highly certain and could be recouped within three years, with the payback period potentially shrinking as AI product gross margins improve.
• Wu said T-Head’s second-generation domestically made chip is expected to begin tape-out and output in the second half of this year, while Alibaba Cloud has begun large-scale sales of supernode instances built on the Zhenwu M890 chip.
• Alibaba launched Qwen-UI-Agent, a foundation model for GUI agents covering mobile, desktop, web and DeepSearch use cases.
• DeepSeek Harness added stronger multimodal support, allowing image requests through the DeepSeek model adapter and enabling commands such as /goal and /plan to accept images.
• Gaole Group reported another half-year loss of nearly RMB 30 million, leaving questions over its RMB 6.7 billion computing-power order-driven transformation, including a mysterious customer and funding gap.
• Synergy said 20 markets account for 60% of hyperscale data center capacity, with Northern Virginia and Beijing holding the highest market share.
• Chengdu wafer foundry Haiweihuaxin said its corporate seals were seized after more than 100 unidentified individuals and employees organized by Sichuan Haitian Hi-Tech allegedly forced their way into its offices.