On the evening of October 7, Beijing time, Alibaba Group Chairman Cai Chongxin attended the international technology and investment event Wave by Vento 2026 in Turin, Italy. He discussed the value of AI applications, Alibaba’s full-stack AI strategy, and the future prospects of AI.
Cai Chongxin predicted that in the future, AI will shift from a visible topic to an invisible infrastructure. “In five years, people may no longer discuss AI separately, as it will be integrated into every aspect of business like the internet today. Related terms may evolve with the level of technology adoption, but AI, as a fundamental technological breakthrough, will continue to influence business and society.”
During the discussion, Cai Chongxin focused on sharing Alibaba’s AI development strategy. He divided the company’s development into two phases, with 2023 as the dividing point. Cai Chongxin referred to the period from 1999 to 2023, when Alibaba started its business, as the “BC period” of the company’s development. During this phase, Alibaba’s business scale continued to expand. Starting in 2023, the company entered the “AD period,” clearly focusing on two core businesses: e-commerce and full-stack AI. AI was seen as a key direction for the future, and the company decided to invest fully in it. In his view, AI has opened a new era of development, and it has just begun.
Cai Chongxin further explained Alibaba’s full-stack AI from the perspectives of computing power, models, and application layers: at the computing power layer, computing capabilities are built based on Alibaba Cloud’s 17-year accumulation and its leading position in the Chinese market; at the model layer, large-scale models are developed independently to create intelligent capabilities; at the application layer, AI is applied to products and services for consumer and enterprise customers.
Regarding the current limitations of AI, Cai Chongxin believes that AI is good at helping people “save time,” but it has not yet achieved the same breakthrough in helping people “spend time.” There is still great potential for development. In his view, improving the productivity of knowledge workers is the most certain application scenario for AI. He estimates that the total potential market size (TAM) is approximately 50 trillion US dollars. In fields such as healthcare and research, AI can also become a tool to accelerate innovation.
Cai Chongxin also explained the AI open-source path of Chinese companies represented by Alibaba. “Just like a top university opens up to the world and provides scholarships for students, AI should also open up to open source so that more people can benefit from it. This stems from the philosophical choice of Chinese companies.”
Cai Chongxin is very optimistic about several emerging “Neo Cloud” companies in Europe. He believes that the open-source path is an opportunity for Europe. Europe has a large number of industrial enterprises that can truly utilize this data and improve business operations using open-source models. What Europe needs to do is to build computing infrastructure so that open-source models can run on its own infrastructure.
When asked about the development of China’s AI industry, Cai Chongxin said that China currently accounts for approximately 30% of the global industrial production. Chinese factories have accumulated a large amount of high-value manufacturing process data, which can be used to train AI models, helping enterprises improve product quality and optimize product design. Additionally, China has a complete hardware supply chain in areas such as electric vehicles and robots. In the future, during the stage of integrating AI with the physical world, this supply chain advantage will become a significant competitive edge.
Title: Cai Chongxin: In five years, AI will be as integral to society as the internet is today