Alibaba’s chairman delivered a blunt message to European industry leaders: the continent’s clearest shot at AI sovereignty runs through open-source technology, not proprietary systems controlled by American tech giants.
Joe Tsai made the remarks at the Wave technology conference in Italy, where he framed Europe’s manufacturing depth as an untapped asset. Factories generate enormous streams of operational data. That data, Tsai argued, could train AI models tailored to European production needs, provided companies refuse to surrender it to closed platforms.
“You don’t want to feed it into some closed-source API,” Tsai said. “You want to maintain those data and be able to take open-source models and then further train your model, and improve it for your use.”
His pitch lands at a pivotal moment. Washington’s export restrictions on advanced chips have pushed Chinese developers toward open-source collaboration as a workaround, while leading American labs increasingly guard their research. The result: a widening strategic split in how the world’s two AI superpowers approach innovation.
Tsai pointed to China’s open-source ecosystem as proof that constraints breed creativity. Chinese developers publish papers and release models widely, he noted, while American closed labs “don’t write papers anymore because they don’t want to share.”
Alibaba itself has doubled computing infrastructure spending annually for three straight years. The company generates roughly $25 billion in free cash flow, much of it now funneled into a “full-stack AI” strategy spanning chips, infrastructure, and models.
At September’s Apsara Conference, Alibaba unveiled the Zhenwu V900 processor, calling it China’s most powerful AI chip. The company also outlined plans for a 10 trillion parameter model.
For Europe, Tsai’s argument carries a clear implication: industrial data represents leverage. But converting that leverage into technological independence demands sustained investment in computing capacity, engineering talent, and model development, none of which comes cheaply or quickly.
Alibaba now faces the same test. Its open-source bet must eventually produce commercial returns that justify the spending.
