Alibaba Unveils Zhenwu M890 AI Chip and Expands Domestic Hardware Roadmap

Alibaba Group has introduced the Zhenwu M890 AI chip, developed by its semiconductor design subsidiary T-Head, according to Reuters. The new processor delivers three times the performance of the earlier Zhenwu 810E and is designed for AI agent workloads that require extensive memory and communication capabilities.

Alibaba also revealed a multi-year plan for its chip lineup. The company expects to follow the M890 with the V900 in the third quarter of 2027 and the J900 in the third quarter of 2028, each expected to provide about threefold performance improvements over the previous generation.

The chip was presented at the Alibaba Cloud Summit alongside the Panjiu AL128 server, which integrates 128 M890 accelerators in one rack. The system is available immediately to enterprise customers in China through Alibaba Cloud’s Bailian platform.

T-Head has shipped more than 560,000 units of the Zhenwu series, with over 400 customers across 20 industries using the chips. Alibaba also announced Qwen 3.7-Max, an updated version of its large language model optimized for long-running AI agent tasks, capable of operating continuously for up to 35 hours without degradation.

The new hardware and model highlight Alibaba’s continued efforts to develop domestic alternatives to processors from NVIDIA as U.S. export restrictions remain in place.