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Alibaba's Joe Tsai: Optimistic US & China relations won't devolve into 'race to the bottom'

CNBC International Live4:50

Transcription

I absolutely share Eddie's uh uh enthusiasm for uh the future of AI because just in the last couple of years we see potential demand for AI uh growing in our home market in China and there's a couple of things going on uniquely uh in China. Uh that's I don't think you see elsewhere in the world.

Uh number one, there's a proliferation of consumer applications. China as you know is a country where uh from e-commerce to social networking to mapping apps to food delivery uh there's consumers always uh online uh on their mobile apps mobile payment right and uh so uh you have AI enabled uh applications that uh uh is really delighting the consumers and it's really catching on the adoption rate is very very fast uh so that's number one.

The number two thing is I think is also unique to China is uh China has is a big manufacturing base. Uh 30% of world industrial production comes from China. Uh so uh to develop good AI you need to have good data. So where can you find all the great industrial data uh it's in China and we think in the future the manufacturing sector in China would really benefit from the adoption of AI.

Uh so I think in the future you know you'll see uh um you know you always have this sort of debate of uh uh who's going to win the AI race. Uh I believe having a large adoption is the most important thing in terms of uh benefiting from AI.

>> We heard a figure 53 billion. Has the higher amount been set?

>> We have not said about a higher amount. Uh but our CEO Eddie did Eddie uh Eddie Woo did say that uh from 2022 which is when the transformer architecture came to the market uh from that point on looking out 10 years which is 2032 uh our compute facility will increase by 10 10 times and uh uh you know that is a very bullish forecast on the potential demand. And of course in a uh new field like AI uh the dispersion of demand you know could be very wide. Uh you never know whether you're overinvesting or underinvesting but for us uh $53 billion of uh capital expenditure over the next few years is pretty much right on target and we want we're very committed to uh building out that infrastructure.

How does Alibaba navigate making global business decisions given the geopolitical tensions and also now the US government shutdown?

>> Well, we really focus on what we can control and if you look at Alibaba's business on the e-commerce side of things, uh we are doing a lot of things crossborder. Uh we help American brands and businesses uh sell to Chinese consumers. uh annually we sell about $50 billion worth of American products to Chinese consumers. And then on the other hand, we're also helping Chinese small businesses uh to tap into uh the markets around the world through our uh both wholesale and retail platforms. Uh so there's a lot of uh world trade going on.

Uh when it comes to geopolitics I mean you're looking at US China are the two largest economies in the world and I think the two countries leaders have the wisdom uh to come to a point where they recognize that this is a hugely symbiotic relationship and uh I'm uh quite actually quite optimistic that uh we're not going to uh devolve into kind of a race to the bottom and uh I look forward to in the future uh the the two countries uh uh governments talk to each other and uh that'll be good for business.

>> Joe Tai there chairman of Alibaba. I was speaking to him on the sidelines of the NBA preseason games as you know he is the owner of the Brooklyn Nets if you're curious. Uh the first game went to the Phoenix Suns in overtime. The second game went to the Brooklyn Nets and the NBA is back and you know who else is back? Jack is back. He was caught center court at the game. Of course, he was one of the big fans there, NBA fans. We have a picture of him together with David Beckham right there. You could see all the action. It was an epic weekend in Macau. I got a chance to speak to some key stakeholders and I put all of that together. Catch CNBC on Assignment. NBA China Games 2025 airing this weekend on the times on your