(Yicai) March 24 -- The ultimate goal of developing artificial intelligence is not to create the most advanced models but to ensure AI applications are widely used and beneficial to society, Joseph Tsai, chairman of Alibaba Group Holding, said at the China Development Forum.

One of the key reasons for China’s success in AI is its adherence to the open-source philosophy of mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, Tsai told the forum which ended in Beijing yesterday. By breaking down technological barriers through open-source models, intelligent technology can truly become a public good for all humanity, driving global economic growth and improving living standards, he said.

Another key to China’s AI success is its deep integration with the world’s largest manufacturing system, he said, noting that this vast production network is rapidly being made digital and intelligent, generating huge amounts of industrial data every day that has become a core resource for AI training.

Alibaba’s revenue from AI-related products has maintained triple-digit year-on-year growth for 10 consecutive quarters, according to its financial report released on March 19. The internet giant aims to swell annual revenue from its cloud computing and AI commercialization businesses sixfold within five years, from CNY100 billion (USD14.5 billion) to USD100 billion, Chief Executive Eddie Wu said on its earnings conference call.

The Hangzhou-based company has adopted an "all-in-AI" approach, repositioning itself around the technology as a core growth driver and investing across the full stack, from large language models such as Qwen to chips and cloud infrastructure, while restructuring itself to accelerate execution and targeting large-scale commercialization through enterprise-focused applications.

The firm recently announced that it has set up the Alibaba Token Hub business group to give AI a core strategic priority. Overseen directly by Wu, it will beef up strategic coordination across Alibaba’s AI businesses and speed up the implementation of its AI strategy.

Han Xinyi, chief executive of Alibaba affiliate Ant Group, also spoke about the financial technology firm’s AI development strategy at the two-day forum. Ensuring AI delivers shared prosperity requires addressing four major challenges, he said.

The first is energy consumption resulting from the rapid expansion of computing power. The second involves model and data security. The third is ensuring AI applications genuinely benefit humanity. The fourth concerns how humanity will evolve in the AI era.

Ant committed in 2021 to achieving net-zero emissions by 2030, but the additional energy demand for AI development has made this target more challenging, Han said. Ant is working to build a green computing technology system to reduce the generation of invalid tokens and lower the unit energy consumption of valid tokens to help achieve its net-zero goal, he added.

Editors: Dou Shicong, Emmi Laine