Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. is accelerating its data center expansion in Europe and the Middle East as part of a 20-gigawatt global infrastructure buildout. Alibaba executive Li Feifei said at the company's Apsara conference in Hangzhou on Wednesday that the Chinese e-commerce leader will set up its first cloud regions in Turkey, Finland and the Netherlands over the next 12 months. The company will also expand its data center footprint in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France and Hong Kong, boosting its ability to provide localized cloud and AI services. The push puts Alibaba increasingly head-to-head with Western competitors such as Amazon.com Group Inc. and Alphabet Inc. beyond Asia. Alibaba has outlined a $53 billion, three-year AI investment plan and aims to build a 20-gigawatt global data center network by 2032, which Citigroup estimates could drive more than $160 billion in external cloud revenue.
Applied Digital Fair Value Cut to US$68.35 as Analysts Split on AI Buildout
Applied Digital's Fair Value estimate has been trimmed from US$73.36 to US$68.35 within the Simply Wall St valuation model, a reset of expectations tied to the debate over contracted capacity, funding risk, and how much of the AI data center cycle is already priced into the stock. The revision reflects a Revenue Growth assumption cut from 96.07% to 70.17%, a Net Profit Margin assumption raised from 4.86% to 9.79%, a Future P/E multiple lowered from 288.36x to 104.72x, and a Discount Rate lifted from 9.52% to 11.07%. On the bullish side, Wells Fargo initiated Applied Digital with an Overweight rating and a US$50 price target, B. Riley raised its target from US$66 to US$75 with a Buy rating, and Morgan Stanley lifted its target to US$37.50 from US$36.50 while keeping an Equal Weight rating. On the bearish side, Rothschild & Co Redburn initiated the stock at Neutral with a US$22 price target, flagging a gap between bullish generative AI infrastructure sentiment and rising credit-market risk signals. The model also weighs long-term AI hyperscaler leases including 15 year CoreWeave contracts, power-efficient campuses in the Dakotas, and risks around crypto related revenue exposure and debt funded expansion of about US$688.2m.
Phillip Picks DELTA, KCE, HANA as Standouts on AI Theme, Rates Them Outperform
Phillip Securities (Thailand) has issued an "outperform" rating on the electronics sector, selecting DELTA as its Top Pick for the third quarter of 2026, citing its share price lagging the sector and its strongest exposure to the AI theme. KCE and HANA stand to benefit from higher PCB selling prices and their expansion into High Density PCBA and Power Management. First-half sector profit came in at 16 billion baht, up 46.2% year on year, with growth spread across nearly every company, and the bulk of the profit came from DELTA, which benefited from greater recognition of revenue tied to AI and data centers than a year earlier. Other companies showed a picture of revenue recovering more strongly in the second quarter of 2026. For the third-quarter 2026 outlook, DELTA's profit is expected to rise quarter on quarter on higher AI product shipments, helped by a low base in the second quarter of 2026. In the U.S. stock market, investors are watching the CPU stock theme after GPT-6 Astra shifted fully into Agentic AI competition, forcing the CPU-to-GPU ratio up to 1:1, which supports the appeal of INTC and AMD. Cybersecurity names such as CRWD and PANW are also looking more attractive amid the push to enforce rules governing AI usage.
Nvidia and Aolani to Deploy 22,000 GPUs Across Southeast Asia AI Factory Hubs
Nvidia and Aolani have agreed to deploy 22,000 GPUs across new AI factory sites in Southeast Asia, part of a buildout that will add over 100 megawatts of new AI factory capacity. The rollout includes major hubs in Malaysia and the Philippines and is intended to position Southeast Asia as a global node for AI compute and data center infrastructure. The 22,000 GPU deployment is one part of the broader Nvidia story, and the company is embedding its full stack into facilities that cloud providers and enterprises can rent as ready-made compute capacity rather than selling chips in isolation. The key marker ahead is whether Aolani meets its early 2027 target to bring those 22,000 GPUs online across Malaysia and the Philippines at the planned 100 megawatt plus capacity, with progress updates on site construction, GPU installation timing and initial customer occupancy indicating how quickly the commitment converts into live, billable compute.
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd
Amazon.com Inc
Alphabet Inc Class C
Citigroup Inc.
