Alibaba Cloud plans new AI data centers across Europe
Cloud power crosses borders.
Alibaba AI expanding into Europe. Image by Cybernews.
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- Alibaba Cloud plans new data centers in Turkey, Finland, and the Netherlands within 12 months.
- The Netherlands is expected to receive the first new facility in October.
- Alibaba Cloud also plans to expand capacity in Germany, France, Malaysia, the UAE, and Hong Kong.
- The company aims to exceed 20 gigawatts of global data center power capacity by 2032.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
Alibaba Cloud has announced plans to open new data centers, also known as “cloud regions,” in Turkey, Finland, and the Netherlands over the next 12 months, with the Netherlands expected to receive its facility first in October.
The company, owned by Chinese multinational Alibaba Group, also set forth its intentions to increase existing data center capacity in Germany, France, Malaysia, the UAE, and Hong Kong.
“We’re expanding our global cloud footprint to bring computing resources closer to customers and partners,” said Li Feifei, the CTO and president of international business at Alibaba Cloud, during the Apsara Conference in Hangzhou.
Alibaba currently operates 107 data center clusters, known as "availability zones,” across 31 regions, though the exact number of data centers remains undisclosed to the public.
The European expansion follows closely in the wake of the firm's “full-stack” announcement this week.
“Full stack” means that rather than relying on third-party suppliers like Nvidia, most of Alibaba’s own silicon chip unit will be done in-house, as well as covering its own cloud infrastructure and AI agents.
At Apsara, the firm also outlined its target to exceed 20 gigawatts (GW) of power capacity across its global data centers by 2032. To put that into context, a McKinsey report estimated the global total at approximately 82GW at the end of last year.
The expansion puts Alibaba in more direct competition with rivals like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google in the AI race, especially as the industry emphasizes the need to put data centers close to its users.
It was in November last year that Alibaba revealed its significant investment plans for a “super cloud” infrastructure, to help prepare for artificial superintelligence (ASI), the next stage in its evolution.
And in August this year, Alibaba unveiled its latest AI model, Qwen3.8-Max, ranked second in the world for analyzing images and video, only behind the major rival Claude Fable 5, powered by the US firm Anthropic.
