Alibaba Cloud's Wang Jian Predicts Rapid AI Growth, Highlights Youth, Innovation As Key Drivers

Alibaba Group Holding BABA Alibaba Cloud Intelligent Group founder Wang Jian said the future of artificial intelligence belongs to young people to solve the most challenging problems, transcending human expectations.

During a speech, Want said he expects AI to develop at a pace beyond people’s imagination in the next five, 10 and even 50 years, citing examples like DeepSeek, which proved that small teams could also lead to disruption, YiCai reported on Friday from China’s Beyond International Technology Innovation Expo 2025.

He said the capabilities of existing LLMs are far above prior expectations.

Also Read: Alibaba’s Home Province Launches $138 Billion AI Push To Double China’s Industry Output By 2027

On Wednesday, Alibaba showcased ZEROSEARCH technology, which it said can cut AI training costs by nearly 90% by helping LLMs simulate search behavior without making actual Application Programming Interface calls to search engines during the training process.

Alibaba’s cloud division is upgrading its AI offerings globally with expanded platform-as-a-service options and enhanced proprietary large language models, including the Qwen-Max and QwQ-Plus reasoning models.

Alibaba Group reported its fiscal fourth-quarter revenue growth of 7% to $32.58 billion, missing the analyst consensus estimate of $33.08 billion. It clocked an adjusted earnings per ADS of $1.73, which beat the analyst consensus estimate of $1.48. 

Cloud Intelligence Group revenue grew by 18% Y/Y to $4.15 billion. However, Alibaba’s cloud infrastructure expansion led to a decline in its free cash flow by 76% to $516 million.

Benchmark analyst Fawne Jiang expects Cloud to maintain momentum with new customer onboarding and cross-selling. The analyst continues to view Alibaba as a leading beneficiary of accelerated AI adoption in China and a top structural player in the sector.

BABA Price Action: Alibaba shares traded lower by 0.72% at $120.61 at publication on Friday.

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