Alibaba's Joe Tsai says AI will become invisible infrastructure within five years

Alibaba Group chairman Joe Tsai told the Wave by Vento 2026 technology and investment event in Turin, Italy, that AI will shift from an explicit topic to invisible infrastructure. "In five years, people may no longer discuss AI separately, because it will be integrated into every part of business, just like the internet today," he said, adding that terminology may evolve as the technology spreads but that AI, as a fundamental technological breakthrough, will continue to affect business and society. IT Home reported that the appearance took place on the evening of October 7, Beijing time. [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]

Tsai divided Alibaba's history into two phases with 2023 as the dividing line. He called 1999 to 2023 the company's "BC" period, during which, according to Jiemian and IT Home, its business kept growing. From 2023 the company entered its "AD" period, focusing on two core businesses, e-commerce and full-stack AI, and treating AI as the key direction for the future. "AI has opened a new era, and it has only just begun," he said. He said Alibaba will advance full-stack AI across computing power, models and applications; according to IT Home, this means computing built on Alibaba Cloud's 17 years of experience, large models developed in-house, and AI applied to products and services for consumers and business customers. [ 1 , 2 , 4 , 5 ]

On AI's current limits, Tsai said AI is good at helping people "save time" but has not achieved the same breakthrough in helping them "spend time", where it still has large potential. He called raising knowledge workers' productivity the most certain use case for AI and estimated the related total addressable market at about $50 trillion. He said AI can also speed up innovation in fields such as healthcare and scientific research. [ 1 , 4 ]

On China's AI industry, Tsai said China accounts for about 30% of global industrial output and its factories have accumulated large amounts of high-value manufacturing process data that can be used to train AI models; IT Home reported he said this could help companies raise product yields and optimise product design. He said China has complete hardware supply chains in AI-related fields such as electric vehicles and robots, an advantage he expects to become a significant competitive strength as AI is combined with the physical world. [ 1 , 4 ]

Tsai also described the open-source approach of Chinese companies represented by Alibaba: "Just as a top university opens to the world and provides grants to students, AI should open-source its progress so more people benefit." He said open source is an opportunity for Europe, said he is optimistic about several "Neo Cloud" companies emerging there, and said Europe needs to build computing infrastructure so open-source models can run on its own infrastructure. Yicai noted that Tsai earlier said at the 2026 Yunqi (云栖) Conference that "we need open cooperation and pragmatic innovation more than ever." [ 1 , 4 ]