[News] Alibaba Unveils RISC-V XuanTie C950 CPU for AI Agents, 5nm Chip Reportedly Made by TSMC

Alibaba is ramping up its push into AI chips as demand for AI agents surges in China. According to Nikkei, Alibaba Group unveiled its latest CPU, XuanTie C950, designed for AI applications, as demand for AI agents, driven by the popularity of OpenClaw, continues to rise. Alibaba said the XuanTie C950 has been verified on a 5nm process. It did not disclose the manufacturing partner, but sources cited by Nikkei note it may be produced by TSMC.

As the report highlights, the chip is based on RISC-V, an open-source architecture positioned outside the two dominant ecosystems: x86, led by Intel and AMD, and Arm, which powers most mobile processors.

The XuanTie C950 leverages RISC-V and integrates a self-developed AI acceleration engine. It natively supports large-scale models with hundreds of billions of parameters, such as Qwen3 and DeepSeek V3, marking RISC-V’s entry into high-end AI computing, as highlighted by Hong Kong China News Agency.

The launch is aimed at benchmarking against mainstream server-grade products as Alibaba seeks to enter the high-end segment. Despite rapid growth in IoT and embedded applications, RISC-V has yet to break into the core of high-performance computing, as noted by Jiemian.

XuanTie C950 Performance and Market Implications

In terms of performance, the XuanTie C950 features an 8-instruction decode, a 16-stage pipeline, and an out-of-order window exceeding 1,000 instructions. Its single-core performance surpasses a score of 70 in the SPECint2006 benchmark, with a maximum clock speed of up to 3.2GHz, enabling it to handle mainstream cloud workloads, Jiemian News adds.

As noted by CNBC, Alibaba’s DAMO Academy said the XuanTie CPUs can be tailored to specific inference patterns, allowing customers to customize them for their own workloads. It added that, compared with some mainstream products, the CPU delivers more than a 30% performance gain, driven by its flexibility for targeted use cases.

Analysts cited by CNBC said the significance of the XuanTie CPU lies mainly in enhancing supply chain resilience amid limited computing capacity. However, they added that the chip is unlikely to materially boost Alibaba’s revenue, as capacity constraints limit its ability to scale production significantly.

Meanwhile, Alibaba’s in-house chip efforts under T-Head are also gaining traction. According to EE Times China, the chips have entered large-scale production, with 470,000 units delivered as of February 2026 and annualized revenue surpassing RMB 10 billion. Addressing market speculation about a potential spin-off, CEO Wu Yongming said an IPO for T-Head remains possible, though no specific timeline has been set.

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(Photo credit: Alibaba)