“The Hangzhou-based company’s cloud unit launched its third data centre in Malaysia this week and it also plans to open its second data centre in the Philippines in October,” it said in a statement released today.

Alibaba Cloud also said it’s launching a global competency centre in Singapore to help accelerate AI adoption across industries.

It said the centre would help more than 5,000 businesses and 100,000 developers access advanced AI models.

Best known for its e-commerce operations in China, Alibaba has been charging into AI, building standalone offerings around its Qwen AI models and growing its cloud services.

It has also announced infrastructure investments in Thailand, Mexico and South Korea.

In the wake of DeepSeek’s emergence on the global stage, Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu declared in February the company’s “primary objective” is now artificial general intelligence, a goal in the industry to build AI systems with human-level intellectual capabilities.