Alibaba has made several back-to-back moves in the AI video space, almost without drawing too much attention. In the span of a few days, it rolled out a new model, put significant money into a startup, and began work on a large data centre.
The timing feels important. With OpenAI easing off its Sora project, the space suddenly looks more open, and companies are starting to move in.
A big part of Alibaba’s push is a new video generation model called HappyHorse-1.0. It didn’t come with a formal launch or branding, which is unusual. Even so, there are signs that Alibaba’s cloud business is preparing to offer it to clients, suggesting the company is behind it.
The move also fits into its growing competition with ByteDance. Both companies have been trying to stay ahead in AI, whether through models, apps, or cloud platforms. Early results show HappyHorse-1.0 doing well, even ranking above ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 in some comparisons.
There’s still no official word on who exactly built the model, but it is being linked to a team inside Alibaba’s Taotian division. The group is said to be led by Zhang Di, who has worked on video AI projects in the past.
Instead of focusing only on technical benchmarks, the team behind the model says they paid more attention to what users actually prefer. That might sound simple, but it could make a real difference in how useful the tool is.
At the same time, Chinese tech companies appear to be watching the gap left by Sora. The project had generated a lot of interest earlier and was even connected to a possible deal with The Walt Disney Company. But the cost of running such large systems seems to have become a challenge.
Alibaba is also backing other players in the space. Its cloud division recently led a $293 million funding round for ShengShu Technology, the company behind the Vidu video generator. The platform has already found users in more than 200 countries, especially in industries like advertising and film.
On the infrastructure side, Alibaba has joined hands with China Telecom to build a new data centre in southern China. The plan is to start with 10,000 of its Zhenwu chips and scale up over time.
There’s also a bigger shift happening in the background. With tighter US restrictions on advanced chips from NVIDIA, Chinese companies are increasingly working on their own alternatives.
Taken together, these moves suggest Alibaba isn’t making noise, but it is moving with purpose. As competition in AI video grows, the company seems focused on building both the technology and the ecosystem around it.
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