Data Centers

Alibaba AI infrastructure spending expands with $10.2 billion share sale

Alibaba AI infrastructure spending is climbing again, and the company wants shareholders to fund it. The Chinese ecommerce and cloud group is selling HK$80 billion of new shares, roughly $10.2 billion, with every dollar of net proceeds going into its full-stack AI capabilities. That covers chips, data centres, and the models running on top of them. The Alibaba share placement is the largest primary follow-on offering ever from a Hong Kong-listed company. Globally it ranks third this year, behind Alphabet and Intel.

Pricing tells you how the market took it. Alibaba set 710 million new shares at HK$112.70 each, against a Friday close of HK$123. Hong Kong-listed shares dropped as much as 10 percent on Monday. Buyers at the discount get exposure to the buildout. Existing holders get dilution and a longer wait for returns. US investors were excluded from the deal.

The numbers behind the raise

Alibaba AI capex hit 67.7 billion yuan in the June quarter, up 75 percent from a year earlier. Net profit fell by the same proportion over that period, to roughly $1.5 billion, and free cash outflow reached $6.6 billion. Alibaba AI infrastructure spending sits inside a three-year plan worth at least 380 billion yuan, and the company says it has already spent close to half. CEO Eddie Wu told analysts the compute capacity has to exist before the growth can be captured.

Revenue is arriving behind the bill. Alibaba Cloud revenue from AI and compute services rose 45 percent to 48.44 billion yuan in the quarter, the fastest pace in 22 quarters. Payback on AI-related investment is now expected in about 2.5 years, down from three.

What Alibaba AI infrastructure spending means for you

Hold the stock, and you absorb the dilution today for capacity that pays later, if the demand holds. Build with AI in Asia, and the calculation flips, because more compute usually means cheaper inference and stronger models. The Qwen AI model family sits at the centre of that trade. Alibaba released Qwen 3.8-Max weeks ago, and early benchmarking points to strength in agentic coding, where bots write and repair code from high-level instructions.

China AI investment runs hot

This raise lands in a market already paying up. Chipmaker CXMT pulled in $8.6 billion at listing, and its shares rose 466 percent on debut. Humanoid robotics group Unitree raised $900 million last week, with shares climbing more than 600 percent on day one after retail demand topped 5,500 times the available allotment. Moonshot’s Kimi K3 launch last month added to the mood. China AI investment at these valuations carries real risk if earnings arrive slowly.

Washington is still a problem

Regulation shapes the rest of the story. The Pentagon in June returned Alibaba to a blacklist of Chinese companies treated as a national security risk, alongside Baidu and BYD, citing alleged links to the People’s Liberation Army. Alibaba has asked a US court to overturn the order. The company denies any PLA ties and rejects the claim it takes part in military fusion, where civilian industry works with the state defence sector. Xi Jinping and Donald Trump meet in the US next week, their second summit this year, with export controls and technology restrictions on the agenda. What comes out of that room decides how far Alibaba AI infrastructure spending can travel outside China.

By Khaled Darwish
3 min read

Media

Harry and Meghan Moving Back to Britain With Security Still Unresolved

Harry and Meghan moving back to Britain has landed on the royal household with almost no warning. The couple will relocate within weeks to a private residence somewhere outside London. Their children are already signed up at British schools. King Charles learned of the plan on Sunday. He played no part in the decision.

Nothing was said about it when Harry, Meghan and the children visited Charles at Highgrove, his private home, last month. Four media outlets in the UK, the United States and Australia broke the story on Wednesday night at the same time. The couple has not explained their reasons.

The exit six years ago carried its own shock. Harry and Meghan stepped back from working royal life in 2020 and left for North America. They pointed to media intrusion, attacks on Meghan and thin palace support. Their plan for a half-in, half-out role had been rejected by Queen Elizabeth II. Those problems have not gone away.

Harry and Meghan moving back to Britain puts protection back in play

Security is the practical question, and it is a regulatory one. Prince Harry’s UK security has been contested since February 2020, when his taxpayer-funded police protection was downgraded after he stopped working as a royal. He fought that decision through the courts and lost at the Court of Appeal last year. A separate bid to pay for the policing himself also failed, after the Home Office raised concerns about wealthy people buying state cover.

RAVEC royal protection decisions sit with the Royal and VIP Executive Committee, an independent body overseen by the Home Office. The prime minister does not make the call. Neither does the Home Secretary, who takes no part in individual cases. Because the old arrangements assumed the family lived abroad, RAVEC has to rule again.

What a new ruling could cost

The Home Office describes the UK protective security system as rigorous and proportionate. It also refuses to publish detail, on the grounds that doing so could weaken the arrangements and put people at risk. So do not expect a quick public answer.

The stakes here are money and reach. Private bodyguards in Britain cannot carry firearms. They also sit outside the police intelligence loop. If the Duke and Duchess of Sussex return without state cover, Harry pays the difference himself and works with a narrower set of tools.

Harry and Meghan moving back to Britain also reopens the media fight. Harry won legal actions against Mirror Group Newspapers and the publishers of the Sun and News of the World. In July he lost his case against the publishers of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday over unproven claims of unlawful information gathering. Relations with parts of the press are worse now than in 2020.

Family relations, still cool

There is some repair with Charles. Harry has said his father did not return his calls at points over the past six years. The Prince Harry King Charles relationship reads warmer today, though palace officials stay wary about private information reaching print.

Joe Little, managing editor of Majesty Magazine, said closer private access to his son and grandchildren is good for Charles personally, but building a reasonable degree of trust will take a long time. He said the break took more than six years, so the repair will not take six weeks.

William is the harder problem. The brothers are estranged. Peter Hunt, a former BBC royal correspondent, suggests the future king would be apoplectic at the return and at rival courts forming.

What happens next

Archie and Lilibet’s British schools start in early September, and that sets the clock. Harry and Meghan moving back to Britain restores no official duties. Charles has made clear that their status as private, non-working members of the family does not change. Any work they take on runs through their own charitable projects.

By Khaled Darwish
4 min read

Mubadala

Mubadala’s $250 million investment lifts Moove to a $2.1 billion value

Mubadala’s $250 million investment now anchors Moove, the mobility company building the operating layer for driverless transport. The Series C round it led values the firm at $2.1 billion. Woven Capital, Toyota’s Growth Fund, and Ion Pacific co-led it. For the UAE, the deal ties a sovereign backer to a company that wants to run the fleets behind self-driving cars.

The money follows a clear plan. Moove will expand its autonomous vehicle business, own more fleets, and build robotics-first depots it calls Nests. These sites charge, service, and maintain driverless cars around the clock. Fresh capital will also open new markets. Mubadala’s $250 million investment gives the company the balance sheet to move faster. The company announced today, 5th of August, the investment and the company’s vision of the company further.

Inside Mubadala’s $250 million investment

BlueCrest Capital Management, Sona Asset Management, and The Raptor Group came in as new backers. They sit alongside earlier investors such as BlackRock, MUFG, Franklin Templeton, and Uber. The Moove Series C funding builds on a stake Mubadala first took three years ago. Ali Eid AlMheiri, Executive Director of Diversified Assets at Mubadala’s UAE Investments Platform, said the fund backs scalable platforms that support economic diversification and strengthen the country’s role as a hub for advanced technologies.

Ali Eid AlMheiri, Executive Director of Diversified Assets, UAE Investments Platform at Mubadala, said: “Mubadala is investing in enabling infrastructure and scalable platforms like Moove that support economic diversification and strengthen the UAE’s role as a hub for advanced technologies. Since Mubadala’s initial investment three years ago, Moove has been a great partner, and we are glad to continue partnering with Moove in its next phase of growth.”

What does that mean for you? Mubadala’s $250 million investment places public capital behind a bet on autonomous mobility. If the bet pays off, the UAE gains a stake in how driverless transport scales worldwide.

The Waymo fleet partnership

Moove already runs cars for Waymo. Its Waymo fleet partnership covers live operations in Phoenix and Miami, with London named as the first step abroad. Self-driving firms write the software. Moove handles the work they would rather avoid, the cleaning, charging, and repair of every vehicle. That split lets each side focus on what it does best. Moove is also Uber’s largest global fleet partner, which widens its reach across the ride-hail market.

The autonomous vehicle fleet business carries real risk. Owning cars in an unsettled market ties up capital for years. Moove is betting its operating skill will hold that risk steady as fleets grow.

From Lagos to a $2.1 billion valuation

Ladi Delano and Jide Odunsi started Moove in 2020 with 76 cars in Lagos. The company now runs about 42,000 vehicles across 29 cities in 13 countries and reports $420 million in annual recurring revenue. It employs 3,300 people and has grown through deals such as Kovi in Brazil and Tokyo Taxi in Japan. The Moove $2.1 billion valuation shows how far that base has stretched.

Ladi Delano, Co-Founder, Co-CEO and Advisory Board Chairman of Moove, said: “Every major technology revolution becomes an infrastructure race. The internet required data centres. AI required compute. Autonomy requires fleets, charging, maintenance, data systems and 24/7 operations in every city – and that is what Moove is building. In our view, as autonomy scales, infrastructure ownership and operations will define the category leaders. We are building to be one of them.

From our anchor in the UAE, and backed by long-term strategic capital, Moove now has the platform to help take autonomy from breakthrough technology to everyday transportation. This is not a departure from our mission; it is the fullest expression of it.”

What comes next

Hiring tells the story. Moove plans to grow its autonomous workforce from about 150 people to about 500 by the end of the year, a rise of more than 220%. That pace shows where the company sees demand. Mubadala’s $250 million investment signals the same view: that owning and running fleets will decide who leads.

Autonomous mobility is expected to shape logistics, public transport, and city planning over the coming years, though the timeline stays uncertain. For riders and investors, the message is plain. The firms that own and run driverless fleets may matter as much as the ones writing the code.

By Khaled Darwish
4 min read

Khaled Darwish