Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the priorities of major technology groups. In China, Alibaba is preparing a new step with a $10 billion fundraising round. This operation now takes place as technology investments are sharply reducing profits and cash flows. The group is therefore looking for new ways to support its expansion while accelerating its technological capabilities.
Alibaba regains a pace it hadn’t known for about three years. The Chinese group reports 268.95 billion yuan in revenue for its first fiscal quarter, nearly 40 billion dollars and a 9% increase year-on-year. Cloud accelerates by 45%. AI-related products notably record a twelfth consecutive quarter of triple-digit growth.
Apple changes its strategy in China. No more third-party models: the American giant has trained its own AI, supported by Alibaba, to equip all Apple devices intended for the Chinese market.
Anthropic removed a hidden tracking system of Claude Code after the discovery, in June, of markers identifying certain Chinese users. The company cites the fight against account abuse and model distillation. Is AI tools transparency still compatible with this form of surveillance?
Anthropic turned Claude into a snitch to track down Chinese users. Alibaba fires back with a ban. The AI war invades the code, and developers are left holding the bag.
As Beijing tightens the grip on stablecoins, Alibaba chooses another path: that of the deposit token backed by banks. This is not a technical detail, it is a full-scale test of the limits of the Chinese model: zero tolerance for private onshore stablecoins, but calculated openness for regulated tokens, useful for exports.
The technological battle between Beijing and Washington reaches a new level. According to the Financial Times, China has ordered its digital giants, including Alibaba and ByteDance, to immediately suspend their purchases and tests of Nvidia's latest artificial intelligence chips, the RTX Pro 6000 D. This decision illustrates the rising tensions around semiconductors, now at the heart of the geopolitical and economic rivalry between the two superpowers.
Ethereum, powered by the Pectra update, is surprising. In just five days, the crypto ETH jumps by 42%. It surpasses Coca-Cola and Alibaba in market capitalization. This meteoric rise shakes traditional markets. Today, the time is no longer for the anonymous ambitions of established values. It is about the emergence of a decentralized network that is redefining the financial hierarchy.
Hand in hand, Alibaba and Avalanche shift into high gear. Driven by major ambitions for conquering Web3, the two aim to go further into the realm of enterprise metaverse. The latest news indicates that the Alibaba subnet has been successfully deployed on the Avalanche blockchain.