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Alibaba Unveils Zhenwu M890 Chip to Power Long‑Running AI Agents

Alibaba says the new stack will let Chinese companies run extended, multi‑step agent workloads on homegrown hardware.

Overview

  • Alibaba, which unveiled the products on Wednesday, May 20, introduced the Zhenwu M890 accelerator, the Panjiu AL128 rack that houses 128 accelerators, and the Qwen 3.7‑Max large language model.
  • The company says the M890 delivers about three times the performance of the prior Zhenwu 810E, increases per‑chip memory to 144 GB, and is built to handle the memory and communication needs of agentic AI.
  • Alibaba reported more than 560,000 cumulative Zhenwu shipments to over 400 customers and said the Panjiu AL128 system and Qwen 3.7‑Max are available now to Chinese enterprise users through its Bailian platform.
  • The firm published a multi‑year chip roadmap that targets a roughly threefold jump with the V900 in Q3 2027 and another threefold gain with the J900 in Q3 2028.
  • Analysts note strategic value in reducing reliance on foreign chips, but they caution that key benchmark figures remain undisclosed and that packaging, foundry and supply‑chain limits could constrain long‑term parity with top Western processors.