Alibaba will partner with Apple to support iPhone AI services in China, its chairman said on Thursday.
The agreement comes as Apple looks to boost smartphone sales in a key market where it faces growing competition from domestic manufacturers.
Alibaba Chairman Joseph Tsai said the company was selected after Apple held discussions with multiple Chinese tech firms, including Baidu, ByteDance, and Tencent.
“They talked to a number of companies in China. In the end, they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honoured to do business with a great company like Apple,” Tsai said at the World Government Summit in Dubai.
Apple has integrated its proprietary Apple Intelligence and OpenAI’s ChatGPT into iPhones outside China, but Tsai did not confirm whether the Alibaba partnership would follow a similar model. In China, consumer-facing AI services require regulatory approval, and reports indicate that Alibaba and Apple have already submitted materials to authorities.
Alibaba’s Hong Kong-listed shares rose as much as 9.2% to HK$124.3, their highest since January 2022, before closing up 2.6%. Apple did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The AI integration comes as Apple’s iPhone sales decline in China, where it lost its position as the country’s top smartphone vendor. For its fiscal first quarter ended Dec. 28, Apple’s Greater China sales fell 11% to $18.51 billion.
Alibaba has gained investor attention in early 2025, with its stock rising over 40% this year. In late January, the company launched an updated version of its Qwen 2.5 AI model, which it claims surpasses the functionality of DeepSeek-V3.
