Apple’s partnership with Alibaba was reportedly confirmed on Thursday. As per the report, Alibaba chairperson Joseph Chung-Hsin Tsai confirmed the news at the recently concluded World Governments Summit 2025 held in Dubai. The Chinese e-commerce giant will reportedly offer its artificial intelligence (AI) models and infrastructure to power Apple Intelligence features in China. The two entities have reportedly co-developed several AI-powered features that will cater to Apple’s Chinese user base, and it is currently awaiting regulatory approval. No other details are currently known.
Alibaba Chairperson Confirms Partnership With Apple
According to a Reuters report, the Alibaba chairperson confirmed that the company is working with Apple to develop and support the latter’s AI features. “They talked to a number of companies in China. In the end, they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honoured to do business with a great company like Apple,” Tsai was quoted as saying.
Interestingly, the Alibaba chairperson also said that the Cupertino-based tech giant discussed the partnership with several other Chinese companies, confirming a previous report. It was said that the iPhone maker approached Tencent, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance, Baidu, and DeepSeek, however, a deal could not be struck with any of them. Apple reportedly found DeepSeek to lack the necessary manpower and experience to cater to its large user base in the country.
The report also claimed that Apple and Alibaba had co-developed several AI features and had submitted them to Chinese regulators for approval. Notably, the iPhone maker could not offer its AI features to users as China requires approval from its regulators before any company can develop or offer AI services. So far, no company outside of China has been approved by its government.
Apple reportedly decided to work with Alibaba as the e-commerce giant is said to have stored a massive amount of personal data containing its users’ shopping and payment behaviour. The Cupertino-based company reportedly believes that the data will allow it to build and provide more customised AI features and services.
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