Jeff Zhang, chief technology officer at Alibaba, unveils the company's first artificial intelligence chip called the Hanguang 800. It was announced at the Apsara Computing Conference on September 25, 2019. Alibaba

Alibaba unveiled its first chip to power artificial intelligence (AI) processes on Tuesday. The move could boost its already fast-growing cloud computing business and signals China's growing ambitions in developing its own homegrown semiconductor industry. The chip, called the Hanguang 800, can cut down computing tasks that would have usually taken an hour, down to just five minutes, the e-commerce giant claims. Alibaba said that the chip is currently being used internally within the company's business operations, especially in product search and automatic translation on e-commerce sites, personalized recommendations, advertising, and "intelligent customer services." These are areas that require extensive computing tasks and the chip can help speed things up. "In the near future, we plan to empower our clients by providing access through our cloud business to the advanced computing that is made possible by the chip, anytime and anywhere," Jeff Zhang, Alibaba's chief technology officer, said in a press release.

Growing computing business

An Alibaba spokesperson told CNBC that the company has no plans to sell the chip as a standalone product. Instead, the company is planning to use the chip in its cloud computing products. Employing the chip in its own cloud computing business could allow Alibaba to sell new cloud services to its customers. The cloud business is Alibaba's fastest-growing division and has been flagged by management as a critical area for the future.