Citi has issued a research report maintaining a "Buy" rating on Alibaba-W (09988) with a US-listed target price of $190 and an H-share target price of HK$189. The firm highlighted that the first day of Alibaba's 2026 Apsara Conference underscored accelerating AI momentum across its self-developed chips, super nodes, and the dual-track Qwen model, reinforcing its vertically integrated full-stack AI ecosystem.
To support management's goal of reaching 20 gigawatts of AI infrastructure capacity by 2032, Citi assumes capital expenditures and operating expenses will be shared on a 50/50 basis with partners. Using a $30 billion per gigawatt calculation, the bank raised its capital expenditure forecasts for Alibaba's fiscal 2027, 2028, and 2029 to RMB 258 billion, RMB 283 billion, and RMB 282 billion, respectively.
Citi noted that under a 40% revenue-to-gigawatt ratio assumption, external AI cloud revenue could reach $168 billion by fiscal 2033, implying a compound annual growth rate of 40% from fiscal 2026 to 2033. Should the ratio range between 30% and 50%, external cloud revenue would fall between $126 billion and $210 billion.
Additionally, as of September 2026, Alibaba Cloud's MaaS customer base grew sixfold year-over-year to 6 million, with annual recurring revenue accelerating to RMB 20 billion. Meanwhile, T-Head unveiled the Zhenwu V900 accelerator and Lingjun super node, while Qwen advanced its flagship 2.4-trillion-parameter Qwen3.8-Max model and expanded its multimodal ecosystem.
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