Chinese tech giant Alibaba has announced a major collaboration with U.S. chipmaker Nvidia to accelerate the development of humanoid robots.
The partnership will see Alibaba Cloud integrate Nvidia’s full suite of physical AI software, creating a cloud-native platform for developers.
The announcement, made at Alibaba’s annual developers’ conference in Hangzhou, comes as the company’s shares jumped over nine per cent.
This follows comments from CEO Eddie Wu, who confirmed plans to increase a previously announced $53 billion investment in AI infrastructure over the next three years.
The collaboration is a notable development given the ongoing tech rivalry between China and the United States.
While Washington has restricted Nvidia from exporting its most advanced AI chips to China, the partnership appears to focus on the growing field of physical AI and robotics, an area where China is already the world’s largest market for industrial robots.
