Alibaba's TSMC-Built 5nm RISC-V Chip, XuanTie C950, Now Runs Qwen-3.8 27B Model Natively, Unlocking Massive Vertical Integration Tailwinds

Alibaba's TSMC-Built 5nm RISC-V Chip, XuanTie C950, Now Runs Qwen-3.8 27B Model Natively, Unlocking Massive Vertical Integration Tailwinds

Alibaba appears to be emulating NVIDIA's well-established vertical integration playbook by bringing day-zero support for its highly capable Qwen-3.8 27B AI model - one that can run on just 32GB of VRAM - to its bespoke RISC-V chip, called XuanTie C950. Alibaba can now run its Qwen-series AI models on its own chips, carving out a hefty moat for itself in one of the world's most competitive AI markets Alibaba unveiled the XuanTie C950 in March 202…