Alibaba Surpasses Domestic Rivals with 100,000 AI Chip Shipments Amid U.S. Decoupling Efforts

Alibaba Group has shipped more than 100,000 units of its flagship Zhenwu 810E AI chips, outperforming domestic competitor Cambricon Technologies in volume. The chips, developed by Alibaba's semiconductor unit T-Head, demonstrate performance comparable to Nvidia's H20 model—a critical milestone as China accelerates its push for technological self-reliance.

Market response was immediate: Alibaba shares ROSE 3.2% in pre-market trading on January 30, 2026, following Goldman Sachs' upgraded valuation. The firm cited successful deployments in major Chinese data centers as evidence of Alibaba's growing dominance in the domestic AI hardware market.

The parallel processing units represent Alibaba's most advanced semiconductor achievement to date, optimized for both training and inference workloads. This development coincides with heightened investor interest in T-Head, which Bloomberg recently reported might pursue an independent listing.