Pranav Hotkar
Paris, France – June 17, 2026 - Alibaba Cloud is strengthening its presence in Europe with plans to launch new cloud regions in France and Italy, expanding its infrastructure footprint to support growing demand for artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital transformation services across the region.
The company said the two new cloud regions, scheduled to go live in 2027, will provide customers with locally hosted cloud services, lower-latency connectivity, and enhanced disaster recovery capabilities. The expansion forms part of Alibaba Cloud's broader strategy to scale its global AI infrastructure network while addressing increasing enterprise demand for sovereign and resilient cloud deployments.
Each cloud region will comprise multiple availability zones, enabling organizations to distribute workloads across separate data centers to improve business continuity and application availability. The additional infrastructure will also support customers developing and deploying AI applications, analytics platforms, and data-intensive enterprise workloads that require scalable computing resources.
Alibaba Cloud said the France and Italy expansions will extend access to its portfolio of cloud infrastructure, storage, networking, database, security, and artificial intelligence services. Customers will also gain local access to the company's AI offerings, including its Qwen family of large language models and AI development platform, reducing latency for European users and helping organizations meet regional data residency requirements.
The announcement comes as cloud providers continue investing heavily in European digital infrastructure amid surging demand for AI computing. Enterprises are increasingly seeking cloud environments capable of supporting GPU-intensive workloads while complying with evolving regulations surrounding data sovereignty, cybersecurity, and operational resilience.
Europe has emerged as a key growth market for hyperscale infrastructure, with major cloud providers expanding data center capacity across the continent to accommodate rising AI adoption. The addition of cloud regions in France and Italy further diversifies Alibaba Cloud's European network, complementing its existing infrastructure and providing customers with greater flexibility for deploying mission-critical applications across multiple geographic locations.
Beyond supporting enterprise cloud adoption, the investment reflects broader changes in data center design driven by artificial intelligence. Modern AI workloads require higher power densities, advanced cooling technologies, and scalable network architectures, prompting cloud providers to build facilities capable of accommodating next-generation computing environments.
Alibaba Cloud has continued expanding its international infrastructure over the past year as part of its global AI strategy, announcing new cloud investments across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and Europe. The company says its worldwide network now supports customers in more than 200 countries and regions.
With the addition of new cloud regions in France and Italy, Alibaba Cloud is positioning itself to capture growing demand for AI-ready infrastructure while providing European organizations with localized cloud services designed for high availability, regulatory compliance, and next-generation digital workloads.
