Alibaba Cloud, a provider of AI infrastructure and the intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, announced the launch of its cloud region in France. Featuring two availability zones, this launch addresses accelerating demand from European customers across key sectors – including retail, software development, AI-powered creative platforms, and sports tech – for advanced cloud and digital solutions located in Europe. The new facilities in Paris mark Alibaba Cloud’s third European hub, complementing its existing infrastructure in Germany and the UK.

The France region delivers a comprehensive suite of enterprise-grade cloud computing services, spanning elastic computing, storage, containerization, networking, security, databases, and advanced developer tools. Built with strict data privacy and sovereignty in mind, the infrastructure adheres to rigorous European regulatory frameworks and standards, including data privacy, cybersecurity, resilience, and sovereignty.

Now fully operational, the France region equips European businesses with HA, operational resilience, and robust disaster recovery capabilities. This launch expands Alibaba Cloud’s global network to 105 availability zones across 32 regions, reinforcing its commitment to providing a secure, scalable, and sustainable foundation for global digital innovation.

To meet the growing demand for enterprise agents, Alibaba Cloud plans to launch a suite of agentic AI services in European markets in the second half of this year. The lineup includes AgentRun, a one-stop development platform for AI agents; STAROps, a comprehensive intelligent operations platform; ACS Agent Sandbox, which provides hardware-level security isolation while reducing operational costs of AI agents; Agent Security Center, which ensures agent build-time integrity and supply chain transparency; AI Security Guardrails 2.0, designed for safe model interactions, local compliance, and runtime risk interception; and Agentic SOC, a solution enabling automated threat response and closed-loop auditing. These products are designed to streamline the development and operation of enterprise-scale agents within a secure environment, offering full lifecycle management from development and debugging to deployment, real-world operations, and end-to-end security protection.

“The expansion of our cloud infrastructure into France reinforces our ongoing commitment to empowering European businesses with sovereign, secure, and intelligent solutions,” said Dr. Feifei Li, CTO and president, international business, Alibaba Cloud. “This expansion, alongside the introduction of our agentic AI services to Europe, aligns with our broader strategy to bring our full-stack AI+Cloud ecosystem to global customers as we enter the agentic era.”

Alibaba Cloud has served European markets since 2016, supporting prominent multinationals in expanding globally while helping local businesses stay competitive. For example, SAP collaborates with Alibaba to jointly accelerate enterprise innovation and digital transformation, with an initial focus on the China market and a rollout planned for Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Additionally, Alibaba Cloud has been working with local technology partners to deliver tailored cloud and digital solutions across Europe.

During the Olympic Games Paris 2024, Alibaba Cloud served as the Worldwide Olympic Partner and Official Cloud Service Provider, driving the digital transformation of the Games through its cloud and AI innovation. Notably, in partnership with Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), Alibaba Cloud launched OBS Cloud 3.0. The initiative made the work of OBS and Media Rights-Holders (MRHs) easier and more efficient, and delivering of live signals over OBS Live Cloud became the main method of remote distribution to broadcasters for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games.

In May 2026, Alibaba announced a multi-year partnership with the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and UC3, the joint venture between UEFA and European Football Clubs (EFC) that controls and manages the strategic marketing, sales, and delivery of commercial rights for UEFA club competitions. The partnership, starting immediately with UEFA and in 2027 with UC3, will see the deployment of Alibaba’s advanced AI capabilities to support fan engagement and media and content management via its Qwen Large Language Model (LLM). Together with its cloud computing infrastructure and global e-commerce platform, Alibaba will power an immersive fan and content experience worldwide across UEFA’s flagship men’s competitions.

Alibaba Cloud’s expanded presence in Europe underscores its unwavering commitment to driving digital innovation in the region. By providing local businesses with leading AI+Cloud solutions to efficiently build, deploy, and manage AI agents, Alibaba Cloud aims to accelerate their transition from traditional automation to agent-led intelligent operations. At its recent international Qwen Conference, the company unveiled major updates across its foundation models, AI infrastructure, cloud-native tools, and enterprise agent products, helping global enterprises rapidly deploy practical AI agents into day-to-day business environments.