Joe Tsai, chairman of Alibaba Group, advised European leaders to prioritize the development of open-source artificial intelligence and local computing infrastructure. Speaking at the Wave by Vento conference in Turin on October 7, 2026, he argued that relying on foreign technology from the US and China creates significant risks for the continent.
Tsai emphasized that Europe should expand its data center capacity within its own borders to ensure digital sovereignty. He noted that while 20% to 30% of employees at major US AI labs are European, this research talent remains underutilized domestically. Additionally, he highlighted Europe's vast industrial data as a key resource for training specialized AI models.
The chairman’s position aligns with Alibaba’s strategy for its Qwen model family, which the company promotes as an open alternative to proprietary systems. Data from Hugging Face shows that developers have created 151,448 derivative works based on Qwen models. Tsai previously discussed these themes at the VivaTech conference in Paris in June 2026.
