Alibaba Group Holding has delivered more than 100,000 units of its most advanced artificial intelligence chip, the Zhenwu 810E, whose performance is said to be comparable to Nvidia’s H20, according to people familiar with the matter – a milestone that highlights the company’s growing role in China’s race to build domestic alternatives to US processors.

The shipments, handled by Alibaba’s semiconductor arm T-Head, have already surpassed those of domestic rival Cambricon Technologies, the sources said, declining to be named because the information is not public. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.

The Zhenwu 810E is a parallel processing unit – an application-specific integrated circuit designed for both AI training and inference – and represents Alibaba’s most advanced in-house AI chip to date.

Alibaba and Cambricon did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

The move underscores how Alibaba is carving out a larger share of China’s fast-growing AI chip market, as domestic players push to reduce reliance on Nvidia amid strong demand for AI computing power and ongoing uncertainty around US export controls.

The shipment update comes days after Bloomberg reported that Alibaba was preparing a potential listing of T-Head, as investor interest in China’s semiconductor sector gathers pace.

With the Zhenwu 810E, Alibaba joins a crowded field of developers that includes tech heavyweights such as Huawei Technologies and Baidu, as well as specialist graphics processing unit designers including Moore Threads, MetaX Integrated Circuits, Biren Technology and Enflame Technology. At least nine Chinese AI chip companies have exceeded 10,000 units in shipments or total orders – including Huawei, Baidu and Cambricon – according to Chinese financial outlet Caijing.

Cambricon has been one of the strongest performers in the domestic AI chip sector, with revenue surging more than 4,300 per cent in the first half of 2025 amid the AI investment boom, marking a record high since its 2020 listing.

Alibaba’s full-stack capabilities – spanning cloud software, AI frameworks and chip hardware – give it a competitive advantage over many domestic chip specialists, said He Hui, semiconductor research director at Omdia.

Although the Zhenwu 810E has already been widely deployed in Alibaba’s own data centres and by external clients, detailed specifications were only recently disclosed. According to T-Head, the chip supports 96 gigabytes of High Bandwidth Memory 2 Enhanced and delivers memory bandwidth of up to 700 gigabytes per second.

That places it broadly on par with Nvidia’s H20, which has faced effective sales restrictions in China since last August, though it remains behind the more powerful H200.

Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Nvidia was expected to ship an initial batch of more than 400,000 H200 chips to customers including ByteDance, Alibaba and TencentHoldings after regulatory clearance.

By: DocMemory
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