Alibaba Cloud to Open First Regions in Turkey, Finland, Netherlands

Alibaba Cloud will open its first regions in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months, with the Netherlands site first to come online in October, Bloomberg reported from the company's Apsara conference in Hangzhou.

Alibaba executive Li Feifei delivered the announcement, which also covered footprint expansions in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France and Hong Kong. Combined with the three new regions, that adds up to eight locations across the coming year, DatacenterDynamics wrote.

The moves are, in Bloomberg's phrasing, "propelling its 20-gigawatt global infrastructure buildout" during China's escalating AI competition with the US. That capacity target sits inside a $53 billion, three-year AI investment plan the company outlined in 2025. Citigroup estimates the 20GW figure could translate to more than $160 billion in external cloud revenue by fiscal 2033, up roughly $60 billion from an earlier $100 billion forecast for fiscal 2031.

The expansion follows the same Apsara conference's chip and mega-model reveals earlier this week, tracked here, where the company's CEO also outlined plans for models with between 5 and 10 trillion parameters.

Alibaba has said capital spending will keep rising beyond the $53 billion figure. Site-level megawatts, capex per region and the accelerator mix inside the new European zones were not disclosed in the reporting.