Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings are doubling down on a massive artificial intelligence spending spree, betting that a new wave of Chinese-made chips will break the supply bottlenecks stifling their ambitions.While both Chinese tech giants saw revenues trail expectations this quarter, they pledged an aggressive acceleration in capital expenditure, as home-grown silicon from Huawei Technologies and Alibaba’s in-house labs begins to reach scale.Alibaba was likely to “overshoot” its original capex target of 380 billion yuan (US$56 billion) over three years, to fund the investment required for the buildout of AI data centres, CEO Eddie Wu Yongming told analysts on Wednesday. The company said its March quarter capex reached 27 billion yuan, slightly down from the previous quarter’s 29 billion yuan.
SRCSouth China Morning Post
LANGEN
LEANCenter-Right
WORDS121
ENT5
THU · 2026-05-14 · 10:02 GMTBRIEF NSR-2026-0514-76217
NSR-2026-0514-76217News Report·EN·Technology
Alibaba, Tencent present a tale of two strategies for AI spending
Alibaba and Tencent are significantly increasing their spending on artificial intelligence, driven by the anticipated availability of domestically produced AI chips from companies like Huawei and Alibaba's own labs. This accelerated capital expenditure aims to overcome current supply chain limitations hindering their AI development.
Iris DengSouth China Morning PostFiled 2026-05-14 · 10:02 GMTLean · Center-RightRead · 1 min
South China Morning PostFIG 01
Reading time
1min
Word count
121words
Sources cited
1cited
Entities identified
5entities
Quality score
100%
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Briefing Summary
AI-generatedNEWSAR · AI
Alibaba and Tencent are significantly increasing their spending on artificial intelligence, driven by the anticipated availability of domestically produced AI chips from companies like Huawei and Alibaba's own labs. This accelerated capital expenditure aims to overcome current supply chain limitations hindering their AI development. Both tech giants reported revenues below expectations for the recent quarter. Alibaba's CEO indicated that the company is likely to exceed its three-year capital expenditure target of 380 billion yuan (US$56 billion) to support the expansion of AI data centers. In the March quarter, Alibaba's capital expenditure was 27 billion yuan.
Confidence 0.85Sources 1Claims 4Entities 5
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Article analysis
Model · rule-basedFraming
Technology
Economic Impact
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AI-assessed
CalmNeutralAlarmist
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0.80 / 1.00
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Sources cited
1
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Key claims
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Alibaba's March quarter capex was 27 billion yuan, a slight decrease from the previous quarter.
statistic
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0.95
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Both Alibaba and Tencent reported revenues below expectations this quarter.
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0.95
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Alibaba's CEO stated the company might exceed its 380 billion yuan (US$56 billion) capex target over three years for AI data centers.
quoteEddie Wu Yongming
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Alibaba and Tencent are increasing AI spending due to a belief in Chinese-made chips overcoming supply issues.
factual
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Full report
1 min read · 121 words§ 05
Entities
5 identifiedKey playerOppositionContextPositiveNeutralNegative
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Keywords & salience
9 termsai spending
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artificial intelligence
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chinese-made chips
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alibaba
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tencent
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capital expenditure
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ai data centres
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huawei technologies
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supply bottlenecks
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