Apple Intelligence Gets the Green Light in China, Powered by Alibaba's AI
Chinese regulators have approved Apple's AI features for the country, with local tech giant Alibaba supplying the underlying models. For Apple, it's a meaningful win in one of its biggest markets.
Key points
- Chinese regulators approved Apple Intelligence for launch in China in 2025, with Alibaba as the local AI partner.
- Alibaba will provide its Qwen AI models, the trained software that reads your request and produces a reply, to power the service inside Apple's apps.
- The deal marks Apple's first major expansion of its generative AI platform, software that produces text and answers from plain-language prompts, into China.
- Chinese iPhone users have been waiting for AI features already available in the United States, the United Kingdom, and dozens of other markets.
Apple's AI assistant features are coming to China. Regulators there have approved the service, and the partnership pairs Apple with Alibaba, one of China's largest technology companies, first reported by TechCrunch AI.
Alibaba will supply its Qwen AI models to the service. Apple's operating systems, including iOS on iPhones and macOS on Macs, will use Qwen to run Apple Intelligence features that Chinese users tap into. We've followed Qwen's rise closely: AI2Day has published eight stories tagged "Qwen" since 15 July 2026, including our earlier look at how China has woven AI into daily life at speed.
Without a local partner cleared by regulators, Apple couldn't legally offer those features on the mainland at all. That's the constraint this deal resolves.
What should Chinese iPhone users expect?
They should expect Apple Intelligence features to arrive in a future software update, running on Alibaba's Qwen models rather than the OpenAI technology Apple uses elsewhere. The experience inside the apps should look familiar. What happens beneath the surface differs: requests will be processed by Alibaba's systems, not OpenAI's.
That distinction matters. Different infrastructure means different privacy policies, different data-handling rules, and different regulatory oversight. Chinese users who care about where their data goes should check Apple's local privacy documentation once the update rolls out. Worth noting too: our report on Apple's rebuilt Siri from 13 July 2026 explains what the underlying Apple Intelligence layer can do before any localisation is layered on top.
For Apple as a business, this matters. China is among its largest iPhone markets, and falling behind on AI features risked making the device look dated against local competitors that already ship AI tools as standard.
For Alibaba, Qwen in front of hundreds of millions of Apple users is a scale few AI partnerships reach. The company already counts PixVerse, which raised $439 million in June, among its customers.
The broader pattern is familiar: global AI products get localised through approved partners when governments require it. China, given its specific rules around AI services and its sheer market size, was always the hardest version of that problem. What to watch next is whether Apple's privacy commitments in other markets hold any practical weight when the processing shifts to a Chinese partner under Chinese law.
