China – Apple and Alibaba Group are reportedly forming a partnership that will integrate Alibaba’s artificial intelligence technology into iPhone services in China.
Alibaba Group chairman Joe Tsai announced the partnership during an interview with Jeffrey Katzenberg at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Bloomberg reported.
The report states that Alibaba’s technology will power the iPhone’s AI services in China.
“Apple has been very selective, they talked to a number of companies in China, and in the end they chose to do business with us; they want to use our AI to power their phones,” Tsai made the remark in the interview, as quoted by Bloomberg.
Tsai further explained that Apple has yet to roll out its full suite of AI features in China due to regulations that require the company to partner with a locally accredited firm.
In a separate report, Reuters highlighted that Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares surged as much as 9.2% to HK$124.3, their highest level since January 2022. The stock later pared its gains, closing up 2.6%.
According to Reuters, the landmark deal puts an end to months of speculation about Apple’s AI strategy in the region, as the iPhone maker had been in talks with Chinese tech giants such as Baidu, ByteDance, and Tencent.
It remains unclear whether Apple’s partnership with Alibaba will follow a similar model to that of iPhones outside China, which use a combination of Apple’s proprietary AI and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
This partnership is seen as a significant win for Alibaba, which is currently competing with major domestic rivals in China’s highly competitive AI market. It is worth noting that Alibaba has recently intensified its efforts in the AI race with the release of its Qwen 2.5 models, which the company claims can rival the leading open-source AI models available.
