Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, announced plans to expand its international presence with new data centers and partnerships aimed at supporting artificial intelligence (AI) adoption worldwide.
At its annual Apsara Conference 2025, the company said it will establish its first data centers in Brazil, France, and the Netherlands. Additional sites are planned for Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Dubai over the next year. To strengthen customer support, Alibaba Cloud will also set up regional service centers in Indonesia and Germany. The company currently operates 91 availability zones in 29 regions globally.
“Our strategic expansion of global infrastructure is designed to cater for the accelerating demand from forward-thinking customers,” said Dr. Feifei Li, president of International Business and senior vice president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence Group. “Alibaba Cloud stands at the forefront of the AI innovation, co-evolving with our customers with full stack AI and cloud solutions that support businesses anytime and anywhere.”
As part of its strategy, Alibaba Cloud launched the AI Catalyst Program to help AI startups and companies scale globally. Participants will gain access to expert guidance, AI products and tools, and go-to-market resources. The program offers up to 2 billion free tokens on Model Studio, the company’s generative AI development platform, along with up to $120,000 in cloud credits.
The company also announced new collaborations showcasing how AI can be applied across industries. Its Platform for AI (PAI) will integrate NVIDIA’s Physical AI software stack to support developers working on humanoid robotics and related applications. This partnership provides a cloud-native platform for building and testing Physical AI solutions.
In Europe, Alibaba Cloud is working with the International Skating Union (ISU) and ThinkSport, an innovation platform created by the International Olympic Committee, to launch the Sports Data Hack Challenge. Running from October to December 2025, the program will bring together startups, developers, and academics to build AI-driven solutions for the sports industry.
In the healthcare sector, AstraZeneca China is using Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen large language model and Model Studio to develop tools that help analyze medical literature and report adverse drug events. The collaboration has led to a vertical model in the medical field that improves accuracy in identifying safety information and speeds up reporting processes compared with manual reviews.
Through these initiatives, Alibaba Cloud said it aims to expand its infrastructure and provide more businesses with access to AI-driven solutions across industries.