(March 24): Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is launching a new chip for agentic AI and inference computing, adding to a portfolio of semiconductors designed to drive its artificial intelligence (AI) ambitions.
The Hangzhou-based company’s research arm, Damo Academy, on Tuesday unveiled XuanTie C950, a central processor unit (CPU) based on the RISC-V architecture. The CPU is optimised for cloud computing, and it allows customers to tailor the chip for their specific inferencing use, Alibaba said in a statement.
Alibaba is one of China’s leading AI players, and its chip subsidiary T-Head aims to compete with Nvidia Corp and Huawei Technologies Co in the country. The Chinese company’s proprietary AI accelerators have already entered mass production, chief executive officer Eddie Wu said last week during an earnings call.
Wu last year detailed his plan of having Alibaba becoming an all-stack AI technology provider, including hardware.
T-Head has already made headway in securing major customers and Alibaba is preparing for a separate listing of the chip unit. The company launched its first AI smart glasses in November. It is also planning to introduce basic laptops and other devices for users to access the AI agent tool OpenClaw.
RISC-V is an alternative, open source chip design and competes with architectures by Arm Holdings Plc and Intel Corp.
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The emerging architecture has become popular in China due to persistent geopolitical tensions, with Alibaba being a longtime champion, particularly after Arm was slapped with restrictions in its business with Huawei, following a US campaign to control the flow of technology to the Chinese tech firm.
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