Alibaba Leads $293 Million Investment in AI Video Startup ShengShu

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.'s cloud computing division led a 2 billion yuan ($293 million) funding round for ShengShu Technology, a Chinese startup developing artificial intelligence video generation tools. The investment marks one of the largest funding rounds in China's AI sector this year and underscores the intense competition among Chinese tech giants to dominate the generative AI market. ShengShu is among a growing number of startups building text-to-video AI systems that can create footage from written prompts. Alibaba has been aggressively investing in AI infrastructure and startups as it seeks to compete with rivals including Baidu and ByteDance in the generative AI space. The company's cloud division has positioned itself as a major provider of AI computing services for developers. ShengShu will use the funding to expand its research and development efforts and scale its computing infrastructure. The startup is part of a wave of Chinese AI companies building alternatives to Western systems like OpenAI's Sora. China's AI video generation market has become increasingly crowded, with multiple startups and established tech companies launching competing products in recent months.