Alibaba has launched an AI video model anonymously, invested $293 million in a rival Chinese video startup, and opened a massive, chip-powered domestic data centre—all in the span of days, signalling a sweeping push to fill the void left by OpenAI’s shuttered Sora project.
The Group has released a new AI video generation model, HappyHorse-1.0, anonymously, The Information reported.
The latest video model is part of the Chinese technology giant’s ongoing battle with its primary competitor, ByteDance, across AI domains, including models, applications, and AI cloud services.
Although Alibaba hasn’t officially claimed responsibility for developing the HappyHorse model, its cloud computing division is gearing up to offer it to its enterprise clients, according to the report.
In early April, HappyHorse-1.0 stormed to the top of the Artificial Analysis Video Arena with an ELO of 1,332, leaving ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 trailing by 59 points.
The model’s origins remain officially unconfirmed, though HappyHorse-1.0 is attributed to a team inside Alibaba’s Taotian Group, formerly part of the Ali ATH-AI Innovation Division, led by Zhang Di, who previously led Kling, Kuaishou’s flagship AI video model.
As per Financial Content, the development team stated, “HappyHorse-1.0 proves that true innovation in AI video no longer requires closed-source walls. By focusing on real user preference rather than benchmark hype, we have built the new standard for accessible, high-performance video generation.”
Chinese companies aim to fill the gap left by OpenAI’s shuttering of its Sora project, which focused on core GPT models. Sora had been expected to serve as a competitor to TikTok, hosting computer-generated rather than human-generated content, and drew additional attention due to a now-defunct $1 billion agreement with Disney.
Whether Sora’s closure creates a durable commercial opening or simply shifts pressure to the next contender remains an open question. Reports noted that the platform may have been shut down partly because it was consuming too much of OpenAI’s capacity, a warning that ambitious video generation tools can become financial liabilities.
Separately, Alibaba Cloud moved to consolidate its position in the Chinese AI video ecosystem through investment. Alibaba Cloud’s division led a $293 million funding round for ShengShu Technology, maker of the Vidu video generator, with additional backing from Baidu Ventures and Luminous Ventures.
The capital injection came just two months after ShengShu raised 600 million yuan ($87.8 million). Vidu has reached users in over 200 countries and regions, spanning industries such as animation, advertising, and film.
Additionally, Alibaba and China Telecom are launching a data centre in southern China featuring 10,000 of Alibaba’s Zhenwu semiconductors, designed for AI training and inference, capable of supporting AI models with hundreds of billions of parameters.
Alibaba Cloud said the new cluster showed China’s advanced computing power was “moving from high-end performance breakthroughs to large-scale industrial implementation.” The data centre will start with 10,000 chips and plans to expand to 100,000.
The US has also tightened restrictions on advanced semiconductor exports, limiting China’s access to NVIDIA’s high-end GPUs, pressure that has forced a shift inward, accelerating efforts to design and deploy domestic alternatives at scale.
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