Morgan Stanley China CIO Survey: Interest in Qianwen and Alibaba Cloud significantly increases among enterprises, Qianwen expected to surpass DeepSeek within three years

Morgan Stanley China CIO Survey: Interest in Qianwen and Alibaba Cloud significantly increases among enterprises, Qianwen expected to surpass DeepSeek within three years

China’s enterprise AI market is experiencing a structural transformation from “model trials” to “cloud-based deployment,” and Alibaba may become the biggest winner in this shift.

On November 27, Morgan Stanley released its latest CIO (Chief Information Officer) survey report for the second half of 2025. Morgan Stanley found that as IT budgets continue to expand through 2026, enterprise clients deploying generative AI are quickly shifting from independent model developers to hyperscale cloud providers with full-stack capabilities.

In this reshaping of the landscape, Alibaba, with its “cloud foundation + Qwen” combination, is identified by Morgan Stanley as “China’s best AI enabler.” Morgan Stanley’s analysis suggests that Alibaba’s appeal in the B2B sector is rapidly catching up to and may surpass the current market favorite DeepSeek within three years.

Cloud Giants Surpassing “Model Startups”

The core marginal change in this survey is the shift in B-end (enterprise) customer selection logic.

As AI applications move from experimentation to scaled deployment, 47% of CIOs now prefer hyperscale cloud providers to support large model deployment, up 10 percentage points from the first half of 2025. In contrast, interest in independent AI model developers has dropped by 7 percentage points to 40%.

This means that in deeper waters, enterprise clients value deep integration of computing infrastructure and models, rather than just the advantage of individual model algorithms.

Morgan Stanley points out that 40% of CIOs plan to deploy GenAI via public cloud in the next 12 months, far higher than 28% half a year ago.

For infrastructure giants like Alibaba Cloud, this is undoubtedly good news.

Forecast: Qwen May Reach the Top

The “dominance” of major model providers in the B-end is undergoing dramatic changes.

According to Morgan Stanley’s survey, CIO interest in DeepSeek has dropped sharply by 20 percentage points, currently falling to 45%. Meanwhile, Alibaba/Qwen’s intention rate has jumped from 18% in the first half to 30%, the fastest growth among its peers.

Based on these survey results, Morgan Stanley offers a more aggressive prediction: Within three years, Alibaba/Qwen is expected to take the lead with a 37% market share, surpassing DeepSeek (28%), Huawei (13%), and ByteDance (12%).

Currently, in the large model field, Qwen’s latest flagship model Qwen3-Max is already among the global top three; in consumer applications, the Qwen app surpassed ten million downloads in its first week; academically, the Qwen team won Best Paper at NeurIPS, known as the “Oscars” of AI.

This “technology + application” dual engine is building Alibaba’s moat in the B2B sector.

RMB 380 Billion Capex May Still Be “Conservative”

CIO voting is translating into tangible financial expectations for Alibaba.

As the leader of China’s AI cloud market, Alibaba Cloud accounted for 35.8% of the market share in the first half of 2025 (Omdia data), surpassing the combined total of its second to fourth biggest competitors.

Thanks to strong survey results, Morgan Stanley has given Alibaba Cloud high growth expectations:

  • Revenue Acceleration: Alibaba Cloud's revenue growth rate is expected to accelerate to more than 35% in the second half of FY2026, and further climb to 40% in FY2027.
  • Computing Power Hunger: Management revealed token usage doubles every 2-3 months. Morgan Stanley’s analysis points out that even though Alibaba has planned RMB 380 billion in capex for three years, such exponential demand means this number “may still not be enough to meet current demand.”

This suggests that Alibaba’s future investment capacity and corresponding revenue conversion potential may surpass current consensus expectations in the market.

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