The Next Generation of Computers is the Super AI Cloud, Says Alibaba CEO Edd...

Eddie Wu, CEO of Alibaba Group

TMTPOST -- The next generation of computing will be defined by the rise of the “super AI cloud,” said Alibaba Group CEO Eddie Wu said at the 2025 World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province on Friday.

Wu outlined Alibaba’s vision for the evolution of AI, describing three distinct stages of development: intelligent emergence, artificial general intelligence (AGI), and artificial superintelligence (ASI). He said the vast computing power needed to fuel this transformation would depend on large-scale infrastructure and full-stack technological capabilities, an area where Alibaba Cloud aims to play a defining role.

“The massive computing power required for the AI revolution demands equally massive infrastructure,” Wu said. “Only super AI clouds can support what is becoming the next generation of computers.”

Alibaba Cloud, the company’s cloud computing arm, is positioning itself as a full-stack AI service provider offering model training, inference, deployment, and optimization within one integrated platform. Wu said the company is building a global AI cloud network to provide developer-friendly services and deliver “world-class intelligent capabilities” worldwide.

Wu also said the industry is now entering the second stage of AI development, in which AGI is no longer just a concept but a present reality. “AI agents can now handle a vast range of digital tasks and, through interfaces, even control certain physical devices,” he said. “The hallmark of this stage is human augmentation.”

China’s AI sector has in recent years been driven by breakthroughs in large models and consumer-facing applications. But as competition in those areas intensifies, Wu signaled a strategic shift toward the infrastructure that underpins artificial intelligence, suggesting that Alibaba sees its long-term advantage not in competing model-for-model, but in building the supercomputing foundation for the AI era.

The full transcript of Wu’s speech is as follows, edited for clarity and brevity.

Over the past year, the global intelligence revolution driven by artificial intelligence has achieved significant breakthroughs. China’s self-developed large models have continued to advance, with active innovation in AI applications such as AI agents, AI coders, and AI hardware. The processes of AI industrialization and AI-driven industry transformation are accelerating, marking the opening of a new intelligent era.

In August this year, the State Council issued the Opinions on Deeply Implementing the “Artificial Intelligence+” Initiative, which set the goal of fully entering a new stage of smart economic and social development by 2035. Given the current pace and scale of AI progress, we are confident that this ten-year objective is within reach. The liberation of productivity—and of humanity itself—through AI will be beyond imagination.

We believe that the development of AI will unfold in three stages. The first is the emergence of intelligence, which has defined the recent wave of innovation. By learning from vast amounts of human knowledge and understanding human intentions, AI is beginning to enter the real world to solve problems and create value. The hallmark of this stage is “learning from humans.” The second stage is the transition toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and we believe we are now at its very beginning. When we express our needs to AI, intelligent agents can already perform a wide range of digital tasks and, through interfaces that connect to the physical world, operate certain devices. The defining feature of this phase is “assisting humans.” The third stage is the realization of Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), when AI, connected to raw real-world data, gains autonomous learning and self-iterating capabilities. The hallmark of this stage will be “surpassing humans,” though this outcome remains far in the future.

From intelligent emergence to AGI and ultimately to ASI, this is a profound computing revolution that is giving rise to the next generation of computers: the super AI cloud. The immense computing demands of AI require ultra-large-scale infrastructure and full-stack technological expertise. Only super AI clouds can support this transformation. In this new era, Alibaba Cloud positions itself as a full-stack AI service provider, offering world-class intelligent capabilities through a global AI cloud network and delivering developer-friendly AI services worldwide.

“Qwen” is one of the world’s leading large language models. In the model rankings released by the Hugging Face community at the end of September, Qwen ranked first overall and claimed seven of the top ten positions. From the day Qwen was launched, we chose the path of open source, fully supporting the developer ecosystem and collaborating with developers around the world to explore the limitless potential of AI applications. Through three years of sustained openness, Qwen has become the world’s most influential family of open-source models, with more than 300 models released across all modalities and scales. The total number of downloads has exceeded 600 million, and more than 170,000 derivative models have been created, ranking first globally.

Technological inclusivity represents a new opportunity in the AI era. Over the past thirty years of internet development, global attention has focused on the “digital divide.” As we turn the page into the intelligent era, the new generation of AI products, with their natural language interfaces, has inherently lowered access barriers. This creates unprecedented opportunities for the elderly, children, people with disabilities, and other groups to benefit from technological progress. At the dawn of this new age, the industry must take a forward-looking approach to ensure that digital intelligence technologies become a force for inclusion, helping everyone bridge the digital divide.

Technological inclusivity is also central to our values. Three years ago, Alibaba established China’s largest open-source AI community, ModelScope, which provides developers with one-stop services for model experimentation, downloading, fine-tuning, training, inference, and deployment. Many of the industry’s leading models were first open-sourced in the ModelScope community.

As of mid-October, ModelScope has hosted more than 120,000 open-source models, over 5,500 MCP services and debugging tools, and has served more than 20 million users. We are pleased to see that more than 20.7% of developers in the community come from small organizations with fewer than 50 people, while independent developers account for 13.7%. The community’s Innovation Space channel features nearly 23,000 AI applications spanning over 20 industries, with about 95% created by individual developers.

In September, ModelScope and the Alibaba Foundation jointly held the first Small But Mighty AI Open Source Public Welfare Innovation Challenge, focusing on rural education, elderly care, support for children with autism, and accessibility. The initiative encouraged developers and non-profit organizations to explore new inclusive applications of AI for social good.

Dear colleagues, the gateway to the intelligent era has already opened. The digital world is undergoing a sweeping transformation, and the physical world is on the verge of profound change. This is an innovation opportunity for the entire industry and a development opportunity for society as a whole. Alibaba will continue to fulfill its responsibility as a technology platform company, working hand in hand with partners to build an open, collaborative, secure, and inclusive intelligent future.