Alibaba Cloud has announced a significant acceleration of its global development, opening new regional data centers in Paris, France, and Johor, Malaysia. These steps were presented at the VivaTech 2026 event in Paris, alongside expansions in Tokyo and Mexico.
Global Network Expansion
The new additions increase Alibaba Cloud's total number of regions to 32 and availability zones to 105 worldwide. This rapid growth is driven by the explosive increase in the need for deploying artificial intelligence models. The company reported that revenue from MaaS (Model-as-a-Service) tokens grew 15 times compared to the previous year in the first five months of 2026.
AI Pricing Policy Shift
Contrary to the long-term trend of decreasing costs in cloud computing, in early 2026, AWS, Google Cloud, and Alibaba Cloud raised prices for AI computing power. AWS was the first to raise prices for overseas AI computing by approximately 15% in January, followed by Google Cloud, and then Alibaba Cloud in March. It is important to note that the price increase applied exclusively to AI products, while general cloud servers continued to show cost reductions. This indicates a fundamental shift in the supply and demand dynamics within the AI infrastructure.
Strategic Investments and Reorganization
In February 2025, Alibaba Cloud made overseas expansion a strategic priority, creating a specialized division for this purpose, which includes hundreds of employees. Company management characterized the internal launch as 'a magnificent turning point in the development of Alibaba Cloud, which spans over ten years.' The company plans investments in AI data centers worth about $52.7 billion, which could potentially rise to $69 billion. In the last 12 months alone, Alibaba spent approximately $16 billion on AI-related purchases, including data centers.
Partnerships and Market Position
Regarding branding, Alibaba Group signed a multi-year partnership agreement with UEFA and UC3 in May 2026. Through this, the company became the Official Partner in AI, Cloud Computing, and E-commerce for the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA European Championship 2028. This collaboration will utilize the large language model Qwen to manage media, fan engagement, and create immersive content.
Competitive Landscape and Outlook
According to Synergy Research Group data, Alibaba Cloud holds about a 4% share of the global cloud infrastructure market, while AWS holds 29%, Microsoft Azure holds 20%, and Google Cloud holds 13%. Although the company dominates China (IaaS share is 27.9% as of the second half of 2025), international markets are a key area for growth. While the company demonstrated nine consecutive quarters of single-digit revenue growth, global hyperscalers maintained growth rates of around 20%. AI deployment is transforming competition in the cloud sector, requiring computation to be placed closer to end-users to ensure low-latency responses from agents and applications, making the density of global nodes a strategic asset.
