Chinese technology companies have accelerated investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure across the Global South throughout 2026, deploying data centres and sovereign cloud capacity across the Gulf, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. As emerging markets seek localised computing power to deploy generative models, providers including Alibaba Cloud, ByteDance's enterprise arm BytePlus, Tencent Cloud, and Huawei are pitching integrated infrastructure to regional governments and businesses.
Gulf deals drive expansion
The Middle East has emerged as the central stage for recent commercial commitments. On 2 September 2026, BytePlus and Saudi telecom operator Mobily announced an investment of $120 million to $150 million, according to reports, to establish BytePlus's first public cloud region in the Middle East and Africa. Under the arrangement, BytePlus is deploying its cloud services and infrastructure across Mobily's data centre facilities in Riyadh to support media, AI, and gaming workloads.
On 1 September 2026, Tencent Cloud signed a memorandum of understanding with Saudi firm Nourah Information Technology Company to collaborate on local cloud computing and AI applications. Meanwhile, on 23 September 2026 at the Apsara Conference, Alibaba Cloud unveiled plans to expand its data centre capacity in the United Arab Emirates within the next 12 months. Huawei Cloud operates three availability zones in its Riyadh region.
Southeast Asia and Latin America footprints
Southeast Asia remains the largest operational base for Chinese infrastructure outside China. On 9 June 2026, Alibaba Cloud launched a public cloud region in Johor, Malaysia, establishing two new data centres to support enterprise AI workloads and agentic tools. In Latin America, it opened a cloud region in Mexico in February 2025 and its first Brazilian region, with two data centres in São Paulo, on 27 August 2026.
Despite these inroads, Chinese vendors face technological and geopolitical hurdles. United States export controls on advanced semiconductors limit the export of high-end accelerator chips, prompting Chinese providers to market vertically integrated stacks combining domestic accelerators, proprietary cloud software, and open-source models like Qwen. Local enterprises in the Gulf and Southeast Asia are also cautious about vendor lock-in, with many operators procuring capacity across multiple international providers to test performance and regulatory resilience.
Why it matters
The expansion of Chinese AI infrastructure offers developing economies greater bargaining power and cheaper computing capacity to build sovereign AI systems. Yet, it also embeds host nations within escalating technological friction between Washington and Beijing. Governments across the Global South must consequently balance digital development against the operational and diplomatic risks of relying on contested supply chains.
