Alibaba Group Holding Limited ( BABA ) shares are trading higher Wednesday after reports indicating the company secured China Unicom as a major client for its artificial intelligence (AI) chips.

What To Know: According to Bloomberg, Alibaba ( BABA ) has signed a contract with China Unicom — the country's No. 2 wireless carrier — to deploy its "T-Head" or Pingtouge AI accelerators in a new datacenter in northwestern China, alongside chips from MetaX and Biren Technology.

It is unclear how large Alibaba's ( BABA ) deployment will be, but visuals show tens of thousands of its AI chips going into Unicom's datacenters. The technology is intended to compete with Huawei's Ascend series and chips from Cambricon Technologies.

Alibaba ( BABA ) is investing heavily in AI infrastructure — setting aside about 380 billion yuan (roughly $53.5 billion) over three years — in part to reduce dependence on Nvidia's designs.

See Also: Meta Connect Preview: How To Watch Mark Zuckerberg Speech, What’s Next For AI, Smart Glasses & Metaverse

BABA Price Action: At the time of publication, Alibaba ( BABA ) shares are trading 2.81% higher at $166.77, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

Image via Shutterstock