Alibaba is likely to ‘overshoot’ its original capex target of US$56 billion over three years, CEO Eddie Wu Yongming told analysts
2-MIN READ2-MIN ListenIris Dengin ShenzhenPublished: 6:02pm, 14 May 2026Alibaba Group Holding and Tencent Holdings are doubling down on a massive artificial intelligence spending spree, betting that a new wave of Chinese-made chips will break the supply bottlenecks stifling their ambitions.
While both Chinese tech giants saw revenues trail expectations this quarter, they pledged an aggressive acceleration in capital expenditure, as home-grown silicon from Huawei Technologies and Alibaba’s in-house labs begins to reach scale.
Meanwhile, Tencent reported a sharper surge, with first-quarter capex reaching 31.9 billion yuan – up 63 per cent from the previous quarter.
The surge comes as both companies are grappling with a global shortage of AI chips. “I can tell you that today there isn’t a single card on our service that is idle,” Alibaba’s Wu said on Wednesday.
