Alibaba and the American chipmaker Nvidia announced a partnership on Wednesday to expedite the development of humanoid robots.
During a subforum of its annual developers’ conference in Hangzhou, Alibaba announced the partnership with panellists from Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and Nvidia.
Alibaba CEO Eddie Wu announced plans to dramatically increase investment in artificial intelligence, which caused Alibaba’s shares in Hong Kong to rise more than 9 per cent.
The collaboration coincides with increased tech tensions between the US and China.
Nvidia, a pioneer in cutting-edge semiconductors, has limited access to China due to U.S. export restrictions on its most sophisticated AI chips.
Milestone in the development of physical AI
Alibaba described the agreement as a turning point in the development of physical AI and stated that its cloud division will incorporate “the full suite of the Nvidia physical AI software stack.”
“The initiative provides developers with a comprehensive, cloud-native platform to accelerate advancements in humanoid robotics and physical AI solutions,” the statement said.
In February, the Chinese business declared that it would spend at least 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over the following three years on cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Following CEO Eddie Wu’s comments at the Hangzhou event, the company’s shares jumped on Wednesday.
“We are actively proceeding with the 380 billion investment in AI infrastructure, and plan to add more,” he said.