On Wednesday, Alibaba shares rose following reports that the company secured a major AI chip deal with China Unicom. The contract involves deploying Alibaba’s Pingtouge accelerators to power new data centers in northwestern China, competing with Huawei’s Ascend series and Cambricon Technologies. Alibaba plans to invest around 53.5 billion dollars over three years to expand its AI infrastructure, reduce dependence on Nvidia, and strengthen its position in the AI market.