HONG KONG -- China's Alibaba Group Holding announced on Wednesday that it would start manufacturing its first self-developed artificial intelligence inference chip in the second half of 2019, as Chinese technology groups increase their efforts to shrug off threats posed by competition between the U.S. and China and seek leadership in cutting-edge solutions.
While Alibaba did not disclose details about its upcoming AI chip, the company told participants at a conference in Hangzhou that a subsidiary had been established to make customized chips and embedded processors to support its own cloud computing services and provide solutions to other businesses such as makers of self-driving cars.
