Alibaba and NetEase bet future on AI despite looming US restrictions, as home province Zhejiang vows to support Big Tech

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang Yong and NetEase CEO William Ding Lei have expressed confidence that the government will support their AI pursuits. Zhejiang has become China’s first province to launch a local policy guideline designed specifically to help Big Tech firms. — SCMP

Alibaba Group Holding and NetEase, two Big Tech firms based in Zhejiang province in eastern China, are betting their future on artificial intelligence (AI), as they put on a brave face over Washington’s existing trade restrictions on chips and potential curbs on cloud computing services, according to the official Zhejiang Daily newspaper.

Daniel Zhang Yong, who will step down as Alibaba’s chairman and CEO in September to focus on running Alibaba Cloud, was quoted as saying that cloud computing forms the basis of the training of large language models (LLMs).