Recently, as the global AI arms race intensified, Alibaba, an Internet giant that had been silent for a long time, suddenly made a comeback and stirred up the entire automotive industry first.

Alibaba Cloud, which has been silently stockpiling AI + cloud capabilities, has taken advantage of the situation to board the express train in the era of artificial intelligence. As new carriers such as flying cars and humanoid robots join the wave of intelligence, Alibaba Cloud's service boundaries will continue to expand.

Alibaba's ambition is also clear, it wants to achieve the ultimate vision of artificial intelligence through ecological integration - AGI (general artificial intelligence), Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming believes that AGI can complete 80% of human work, which means that the business model of various industries may be subverted in the future. Huge disruption contains huge business opportunities.

The computing power war burned to the automobile circle

With the rise of AI large models, the automotive industry has also begun a fierce battle for computing resources. Especially in the field of autonomous driving and intelligent cockpits, end-to-end models with billions of parameters make powerful computing power a key competitiveness. Imagine it's like a car race where whoever has the stronger engine gets the faster and more stable race.

Recently, at the 2025 Electric Vehicle 100 Forum, the news about Tesla's possible cooperation with Alibaba attracted widespread attention. Alibaba Cloud executives revealed that Tesla is indeed in extensive contact with local Chinese companies to explore the possibility of future cooperation. If this cooperation can be realized, it will not only mean that even a technology leader like Tesla will need external support, but also mark the further consolidation of Alibaba Cloud's position in the AI community.

According to Li Qiang, general manager of Alibaba Cloud's AI automotive industry, the results of a global car company's computing power survey at the end of last year showed that Tesla's computing power is almost equivalent to the total computing power of major domestic autonomous driving companies. Still, Tesla needs to work with cloud service providers to get more room for innovation and trial and error.

Not all car companies are as wealthy as Tesla and can build a huge computing center on their own. Li Qiang pointed out that it was not easy to find a place that could hold 100,000 graphics cards and meet energy consumption requirements. That's where cloud computing companies come in. Alibaba Cloud has helped many car companies, such as Xpeng Motors and BYD, build a large-scale computing power reserve, accelerating the process from R&D to practical application.

As early as three years ago, Alibaba assisted Xpeng Motors in establishing China's first ultra-large-scale computing center in Ulanqab. Today, this has multiplied several times. Now, more and more car companies hope to reach the same level of computing power as Tesla in the next three years, and have thrown olive branches to Alibaba Cloud.

In addition to providing computing power support, Alibaba Cloud's large model is also quietly changing the intelligent cockpit experience of cars. For example, BMW has just announced that it will work with Alibaba to develop a new AI engine based on the Tongyi series model for use in new models. In fact, Alibaba Cloud has served more than 90% of automotive brands, including traditional car companies and emerging forces at home and abroad.

The open-source Tongyi model allows car companies to quickly implement applications by calling mature commercial interfaces, and at the same time, it can also be personalized according to the open-source framework, so that each brand's intelligent cockpit has a unique style.

In addition, Alibaba Cloud has also provided other technical support for car companies, such as the "Smart Database" technology, which has helped reduce data storage costs by about 20%, and the coding assistant "Tongyi Lingcode", which has optimized code efficiency by more than 30%. These technological advances provide more possibilities for the innovation and development of car companies.

The automotive industry is staging a "computing power famine", and a "cloud service supermarket" like Alibaba Cloud happens to be located at the checkout counter. Jingtai suggests that investors can focus on: the progress of cooperation between car companies and cloud giants, the AI penetration rate of intelligent cockpits, and the innovation of computing power leasing business models.

When the car becomes a "supercomputer on four wheels", the most profitable one may be to sell "hashrate gasoline"! Alibaba Cloud's wave is really stuck in the throat of the industry.

Alibaba Cloud's two-front operation

Many automotive and tech executives are looking to a future where smart cars are not just a means of transportation to get from point A to point B, but a "third place" beyond homes and offices. In this space, new ecosystems will be born, bringing unprecedented experiences and services.

Alibaba's AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) goal coincides with this vision. Through its powerful AI technology and cloud computing services, Alibaba Cloud has made remarkable progress in the field of automotive intelligence, and has become an indispensable basic service provider for many car companies, just as important as water, electricity and coal.

However, Ali's ambitions go far beyond that. By integrating the entire ecosystem, they hope to achieve AGI – the ultimate goal of Alibaba in the future. Wu Yongming, CEO of Alibaba Group, emphasized in a performance call: "The primary goal of our AI strategy is to pursue AGI and constantly push the boundaries of model intelligence capabilities. ”

Wu Yongming defines AGI as an intelligent being capable of completing 80% of human work, both physically and mentally. Once AGI is realized, the existing business models of all walks of life will be completely subverted and restructured. It may sound sci-fi, but it's this forward-thinking that drives the advancement of technology.

Based on this vision, Alibaba Cloud regards the car as a "mobile agent" and has built a "device-cloud synergy" architecture. This architecture has already shown the prototype of AGI: the intelligent system on the car will continue to learn the habits of the car owner, and the cloud will use the general model to perform complex logical deductions. The "distributed intelligence" formed in this way is an important step on the road to AGI.

For example, the recent collaboration between Alibaba and Zhiji exemplifies this concept. Through this collaboration, Alibaba hopes to show how advanced AI technology can be used to make cars smarter, not only to improve the driving experience, but also to provide users with personalized services.

Smashed 380 billion real money

In the era of AI surging, Alibaba Cloud is not only seen as Alibaba's new growth engine, but also has become the focus of investors to re-examine Alibaba's overall value. In mid-February, Alibaba announced that it would invest more than 380 billion yuan in the next three years to build cloud and AI hardware infrastructure. This is not only the largest investment in Alibaba's history, but also the largest investment ever made by a Chinese private enterprise in this field.

Approximately 80% of this huge investment will be for AI servers, with the remainder going to general-purpose servers, data center infrastructure, and other business segments. Goldman Sachs expects that such a heavy investment will significantly enhance Alibaba Cloud's competitiveness in the context of the rapidly growing demand for AI training and inference.

Foreign institutions have also noticed this and have raised Alibaba's target stock price. Goldman Sachs pointed out that Alibaba Cloud is rapidly transforming into a true technology giant, driven by AI technology.

Over the past few years, Alibaba Cloud has indeed encountered the challenge of slowing growth – from 84% revenue growth in FY2019 to 3.5% in FY2023. However, with the application of AI technology, Alibaba Cloud has returned to the triple-digit growth track for six consecutive quarters. Goldman Sachs' Ronald The Keung analyst team expects Alibaba Cloud's AI-related revenue to reach RMB 29 billion in fiscal 2026 and RMB 53 billion in fiscal 2027, accounting for 20% and 29% of total revenue, respectively, driving the entire Alibaba Cloud to achieve revenue growth of more than 20% in these two years.

Recently, Alibaba Cloud has been full of good news. Apple announced a partnership with Alibaba to develop AI features for domestic iPhones, which means that Alibaba's AI capabilities have been recognized by international tech giants. Subsequently, BMW also extended an olive branch to Alibaba, planning to use the Tongyi model to build its intelligent cockpit. There are even rumors that Tesla is also in contact with Alibaba to explore potential partnership opportunities.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg. As new carriers such as flying cars and humanoid robots gradually join the wave of intelligence, Alibaba Cloud's service boundaries will continue to expand.

Jingtai Investment Suggestions: ✓ In the short term,
look at the procurement tide of AI servers (good for the hardware supply chain);
✓ Medium-term monitoring of the progress of cooperation between car companies/mobile phone manufacturers;
✓ Long-term attention to the right to speak in the AGI ecosystem.

Ali's operation is like upgrading Taobao Mall to an "AI outlet" - both as a counter sister (cloud service) and as a designer (large model), and also wants to collect rent (ecological sharing). What investors should be most concerned about now is not "whether to invest", but "how much to invest"!