Joe Tsai: In five years, AI will blend into business like the internet

Alibaba Chairman Joe Tsai recently attended the tech and investment event Wave by Vento 2026 in Turin, Italy. He predicts that in five years, AI may no longer be discussed as a separate topic. Instead, it will blend into every part of business, just like the internet does today.

He marks 2023 as a turning point for Alibaba. Since then, the company has focused on two core businesses: e-commerce and full-stack AI. This covers three layers: computing power built on Alibaba Cloud, self-developed AI models, and AI products for consumers and business clients.

Tsai believes boosting productivity for knowledge workers is AI's most certain use case, with a total potential market of about $50 trillion. He also noted that Chinese companies' open-source AI approach benefits more firms, and European industrial companies can use open models to improve operations.

On China's AI industry, he said China accounts for about 30% of global industrial output. Factory data there can help train AI models, and the complete hardware supply chain in areas like electric vehicles and robots will become a key advantage as AI connects with the physical world.