Alibaba accelerates data center expansion in Europe, Middle East as AI arms race goes global

Alibaba Cloud is pushing aggressively into new territory. The company announced plans to establish its first cloud regions in Turkey, Finland, and the Netherlands within the next 12 months, adding to an already expanding global footprint that spans Malaysia, Germany, the UAE, France, and Hong Kong. The announcement, made during the Apsara conference in Hangzhou, is part of Alibaba Group’s broader $53 billion investment plan in AI and cloud infrastructure. That figure, roughly 380 billion yuan, was first laid out in 2025 and covers a three-year spending window. The scale of what Alibaba is building Alibaba’s infrastructure roadmap targets a 20-gigawatt global data center network by 2032. Citigroup estimates that if Alibaba pulls this off, the network could generate over $160 billion in external cloud revenue. Alibaba Cloud executive Li Feifei revealed that the company is advancing its ability to train AI foundation models with parameters ranging from 5 to 10 trillion. Alibaba Cloud launched a second data center in Dubai in October 2025, nine years after opening its first facility in the city. Additional developments in Brazil and France have further deepened the company’s internatio...