By Amy Hawkins
Publication Date: 2026-01-28 15:00:00
SOn stage in the eastern Chinese tech hub of Hangzhou, Alibaba’s normally media-shy CEO made an attention-grabbing announcement. “The world is witnessing the beginning of an AI-driven intelligent revolution today,” Eddie Wu said at a developer conference in September. “Artificial general intelligence (AGI) will not only augment human intelligence, but also unlock human potential and pave the way for the arrival of artificial superintelligence (ASI).”
ASI, Wu said, “could create a generation of ‘super scientists’ and ‘full-stack super engineers'” who would “tackle unsolved scientific and engineering problems at unimaginable speed.”
Wu also announced plans to invest 380 billion yuan (£40 billion) in AI infrastructure over the next three years. The news sent Alibaba shares soaring to their highest level in nearly four years.
Wu’s foray into the existential techno-frontier rhetoric typically used by Western tech CEOs like OpenAI’s Sam Altman and DeepMind’s Demis…
