In sum – what to know:
France expansion – Alibaba Cloud has launched a new cloud region in Paris, adding two availability zones and expanding its European infrastructure footprint.
Sovereignty focus – The launch comes as European governments and enterprises place increasing emphasis on data sovereignty, local cloud capacity and regulatory compliance.
Global ambitions – The France deployment forms part of Alibaba’s broader international cloud expansion strategy, which includes major planned investments in global cloud and AI infrastructure.
Chinese company Alibaba Cloud has launched a new cloud region in France, expanding its European infrastructure footprint and adding another location to its growing global network.
The new region is located in Paris and consists of two availability zones. With the addition of the France deployment, Alibaba Cloud now operates 105 availability zones across 32 regions worldwide.
According to the Chinese company, the new region has been designed to meet European requirements around data privacy and sovereignty while supporting compliance with regional regulations.
The launch comes as European businesses and policymakers place growing emphasis on digital sovereignty and local control of data. Demand for cloud services hosted within Europe has increased as organizations seek to comply with regional regulations and reduce dependence on foreign technology infrastructure.
Earlier this month, the European Commission unveiled its technology sovereignty package, aimed at strengthening the bloc’s position in artificial intelligence and safeguarding its digital independence. As part of that initiative, the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act identified limited data center capacity as a potential obstacle to Europe’s broader digital transformation ambitions.
“The expansion of our cloud infrastructure into France reinforces our ongoing commitment to empowering European businesses with sovereign, secure, and intelligent solutions,” said Feifei Li, CTO and president of international business at Alibaba Cloud.
“This expansion, alongside the introduction of our agentic AI services to Europe, aligns with our broader strategy to bring our full-stack AI+Cloud ecosystem to global customers as we enter the agentic era,” the executive added.
Alibaba Cloud did not disclose the data center operator hosting the new cloud region.
The company entered the European market in 2016 with a cloud deployment in Frankfurt, Germany. Alibaba Cloud subsequently expanded its German presence and launched cloud services in the U.K. in 2018 through facilities in London.
The France launch comes as Alibaba continues to invest heavily in global cloud infrastructure. In 2025, CEO Eddie Wu had said the company planned to invest approximately $52.7 billion to establish a unified global cloud network, with subsequent reports indicating the investment could increase to $69 billion.
Speaking during the company’s latest earnings call, Wu said Alibaba expects its data center requirements to expand significantly over the coming years due to AI adoption. “Essentially, I think if you compare where things were in the year 2022 before this explosive growth in AI models and what we expect to need in 2033, I think we’re talking about a ten times increase. We need ten times the amount of data center infrastructure compared to what we had in 2022.”
Alibaba Cloud has recently launched a new public cloud region in Johor, Malaysia, adding two data centers as it expands its infrastructure to meet increasing demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence services in Southeast Asia.
The company said the new facilities provide a range of cloud services, including compute, storage, networking, databases, big data, and cloud-native capabilities. The launch increases Alibaba Cloud’s presence in Malaysia to five data centers, making it the company’s largest infrastructure footprint in Southeast Asia.
The company also plans to introduce a suite of agentic AI services in Malaysia during the second half of the year. The offerings are intended to support enterprises developing and managing AI agents while providing tools for security, operations and lifecycle management.
