Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and electric vehicle startup Xpeng are opening a computing center to train software for driverless cars, the two companies said Tuesday.
Xpeng will use technology from Alibaba’s cloud division for its computing needs. For Xpeng, the move marks its ambitions to pull ahead in the fiercely competitive electric vehicle market in China and attempt to challenge giants Tesla and Warren Buffett-backed BYD. Alibaba, an investor in Xpeng, has been trying to bolster its cloud computing division amid a slowdown in its core commerce business.