Alibaba gains ground as China’s leading AI enable

• Interest in Qwen climbed to 30% from 18% and is projected to reach 37% within three years, placing it ahead of DeepSeek, Huawei, ByteDance, and Tencent.
• Hyperscalers becoming the preferred platforms for large AI models, with 47% of CIOs favouring them—a 10‑point jump—while interest in independent model developers declined.

Alibaba is emerging as China’s most influential artificial intelligence enabler, with CIO interest in its Qwen large language model and Alicloud services rising sharply in Morgan Stanley’s latest China CIO survey for the second half of 2025, according to analyst Gary Yu’s note to clients.

The survey indicates Chinese enterprises are increasing technology budgets and prioritising AI deployments heading into 2026. Forty per cent of CIOs plan to adopt generative AI via public cloud services in the next year, up from 28 per cent in the prior survey.

Hyperscalers are becoming the preferred platforms for large AI models, with 47 per cent of CIOs favouring them—a 10‑point jump—while interest in independent model developers declined.

Faster revenue growth

Vendor preferences are shifting as a result. DeepSeek remains the most popular individual AI vendor but saw its share fall by 20  per centage points to 45 per cent. Alibaba recorded the strongest improvement in sentiment: interest in Qwen climbed to 30 per cent from 18 per cent and is projected to reach 37 per cent within three years, placing it ahead of DeepSeek, Huawei, ByteDance, and Tencent.

Morgan Stanley said the findings support expectations for faster Alicloud revenue growth in the second half of fiscal 2026 as enterprise adoption accelerates. Citing research firm Omdia, the bank noted that Alibaba holds a 35.8 per cent share of China’s AI cloud services market, the largest in the country.

The results underscore a broader trend toward consolidating generative AI workloads on hyperscale cloud platforms that bundle models, tooling, and compliance, positioning Alibaba as a primary market-share beneficiary as AI spending increases.

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