Overview

• Alibaba signed a contract to supply its Pingtouge (T-Head) AI accelerators to China Unicom, according to a CCTV-posted video cited by Bloomberg.
• CCTV footage showed tens of thousands of Alibaba chips being installed in a new northwestern China datacenter alongside accelerators from MetaX and Biren Technology.
• Alibaba has earmarked 380 billion yuan over three years for AI infrastructure, and its shares jumped on the reports, extending a year-to-date gain of more than 91%.
• Financial Times reported that SMIC has begun trial runs of a domestically developed deep‑ultraviolet lithography tool from start-up Yuliangsheng.
• FT sources say SMIC is using multi‑patterning on a 28‑nm DUV system in an effort to reach 7‑nm outputs, while the ASML EUV export ban has prompted early domestic EUV efforts such as SiCarrier’s Everest project.