TMTPOST --   Alibaba   Group   Holdings Lts.   is jumping   on the robotic bandwagon   as   the world ’ s leading tech   companies   are   racing to add   artificial intelligence   ( AI )   to their arsenal   to   transfer   their cutting-edge technologies to the physical products.

Credit：Alibaba Cloud

In his   X post on Wednesday, Junyang Lin, a   technology   head at   Alibaba ’ s   Qwen, said he has   built a   team   for robotics   and embodied   AI   inside   the   team of   Alibaba ’ s flagship large language model ( LLM )   and multimodal model series. Lin   is responsible for building Qwen   and   the   opensource   of the models, according to his LinkedIn   profile.   

Lin is his post suggested the   new   robotic   team is working on   accelerate physical AI and   robotics.   "Multimodal foundation models are now being transformed to foundation agents that can leverage tools and memory to perform long-horizon reasoning thanks to reinforcement learning. they should definitely step from virtual world to physical world!"   he wrote.

Lin didn ’ t provide details about the new team. Alibaba   last month   demonstrated their ambitious AI   bets,   including its   first foray into robotics.

Chinese humanoid startup X   Square   Robot   on September   8 announced   it secured around $100 million in funding led by   Alibaba. That is the company ’ s eighth   funding round since it was founded in December   2023, and the   latest   deal brings total investment   in it   to   about   $280 million,   Chief   Operating Officer   Yang Qian   told CNBC.  

Alibaba   would increase spending   on AI and cloud infrastructure   beyond   the RMB380 billion   ( $53 billion )   it had committed   in   February,   to be   deployed over   the next three years,   said the   CEO Eddie Wu at the annual Apsara Conference in Hangzhou   on   September   24.   Alibaba ’ s spending plan resulted   from the   AI frenzy   trend.   Wu   said the global spending on AI computing capacity is likely to reach $4 trillion within five years, with consolidation leaving only "five or six"   super cloud computing platforms worldwide.  

Coincidentally, SoftBank   Group   Corp., one of Alibaba ’ s earliest   investor   and a major shareholder in   more than two decades,   on   Wednesday   said   it   signed   an agreement with   ABB Ltd., to acquire   the Switzerland engineering group ’ s robotics business for $5.375 billion.

SoftBank   in its statement   said the takeover   deal had   been approved by its board of directors   and pending for   approvals from regulators in the   European   Union, China and the United States. It expected the deal to conclude in mid-to-late 2026.

"SoftBank ’ s next frontier is Physical AI. Together with ABB Robotics, we will unite world-class technology and talent under our shared vision to fuse Artificial Super Intelligence and robotics — driving a groundbreaking evolution that will propel humanity forward,"   said   SoftBank   CEO Masayoshi Son in   the statement.

"ABB and SoftBank share the same perspective that the world is entering a new era of AI-based robotics and believe that the division and SoftBank ’ s robotics offering can best shape this era together,"   said   ABB CEO Morten Wierod. "ABB Robotics will benefit from the combination of its leading technology and deep industry expertise with SoftBank ’ s state-of-the-art capabilities in AI, robotics and next-generation computing. This will allow the business to strengthen and expand its position as a technology leader in its field."

Son in June last year first laid out his vision for a world fearing his dubbed Artificial Super Intelligence, or ASI. While the artificial general intelligence ( AGI ) is likely to be one to ten times smarter than humans and will be here in the next three to five years, with ASI, "you will see a big improvement,"   said Son. Various ASI models that interact with each other in a human brain will lead to AI that is 10,000 times smarter than any human genius, he said.