Alibaba (BABA, Financials), the Chinese e-commerce and cloud computing company, has supplied Moonshot AI computing capacity equivalent to roughly 20,000 Nvidia chips to aid the startup in building its Kimi artificial intelligence models, per reports.
The deal includes Nvidia H200 chips, individuals familiar with the deal said. The H200 is the Hopper generation of Nvidia and is targeted at demanding AI training and inference tasks.
Alibaba denied it provided computer capacity particularly powered by H200 chips but did not deny the larger allegation that Moonshot had access to capacity equivalent to around 20,000 Nvidia processors.
The association points to a curious dynamic. Alibaba is one of Moonshot's biggest backers, but the two businesses also compete in the fast-growing Chinese AI sector.
Reports say Moonshot's latest Kimi model, K3, has outperformed Alibaba's Qwen model on some measures, even while running on Alibaba's infrastructure.
The deal might boost demand for its cloud computing services and boost its position as an AI infrastructure supplier, for Alibaba. It also highlights how big internet giants can profit from backing startups that may one day threaten their own goods.
Now investors will be watching whether Alibaba extends comparable computing agreements and how quickly Moonshot translates that capacity into greater AI goods.