Alibaba adds Europe data centres after taking two regions offline

What happened

On September 23, 2026, at Alibaba’s Apsara conference, Alibaba Cloud said it will establish first cloud regions in Türkiye, Finland, and the Netherlands over the next twelve months, with the first Netherlands facility aimed around October, according to the South China Morning Post. The same push adds capacity in Malaysia, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, France, and Hong Kong, matching Alibaba Cloud’s own community post and TechNode Global synthesis. Bloomberg framed the same day as an overseas AI capacity buildout.

Feifei Li, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence’s chief technology officer and president of international business, told the Apsara audience the company wants compute closer to customers. She did not address the 2024 India and Australia shutdowns in that day’s coverage.

Alibaba’s own numbers put the cloud footprint at roughly 107 availability zones across 31 regions. Treat those counts as company-reported. Separate Apsara color from group AI infrastructure: Eddie Wu has talked about a long-horizon global data-center capacity target above 20 gigawatts by 2032. That is conference backdrop, not proof of any single new region.

Europe is not a blank map for Alibaba Cloud. Public ECS regions already include Frankfurt, London, and Paris (Paris launched mid-2026 per Alibaba press). Türkiye, Finland, and the Netherlands deepen that European footprint. They do not invent a first European presence.

Two years earlier, the same cloud business deleted two other pins. An official Alibaba Cloud notice said it would cease India and Australia data-center operations while enhancing investment in Southeast Asia and Mexico. India (Mumbai) ended service after 15 July 2024, 24:00 UTC+5:30. Australia (Sydney) ended after 30 September 2024, 24:00 UTC+10. Customers were told to migrate to Singapore or other regions; resources would be unavailable after the deadlines. Contemporaneous reporting from The Register, Network World, SCMP in June 2024, and Mingtiandi matches that notice. Alibaba’s stated line was infrastructure strategy toward Southeast Asia and Mexico. Coverage elsewhere talks about hyperscaler competition as industry context; that is not Alibaba’s official reason for the exits.

Network World’s close-era reporting carried Forrester-style and peer analyst notes on migration cost and on the chance that AWS and Azure would pick up India IaaS share. Those are analyst views, not customer quotes.

After Sydney closed, Alibaba pointed users at Singapore. Jakarta also exists as an Asia-Pacific region. That is fair latency and sovereignty color for Oceania customers. It is not a claim that Alibaba abandoned Oceania forever.

Canada still has no Alibaba Cloud public ECS compute region on current regions-and-zones docs; Toronto and Vancouver appear as Global Accelerator nodes, not full compute regions. For buyers who need non-U.S. residency options, that gap matters in one careful sentence.

One more adjacent fact, kept separate: on August 20, 2026, Bloomberg reported Alibaba’s profit diving about 75 percent after AI capital expenditure hit roughly US$10 billion in the quarter. That is the bill for AI infrastructure showing up in earnings. It is not proof that Europe’s new pins are funded by the India and Australia exits.

The September 23 writeups from Bloomberg, SCMP, and Alibaba’s own Apsara release framed an overseas AI capacity buildout. None of those pieces paired that map with the 2024 Mumbai and Sydney shutdowns.

Why it matters

Adding regions after deleting two others is not the same story as growth everywhere. One step forward for Europe and the Middle East. Two steps back for Asian customers already forced off Mumbai and Sydney onto Singapore or another region. The pitch that compute will sit closer to customers works for the new pins. It is a harder sell for the ones who already had to move.

For readers tracking China cloud and AI capital spending, the Europe deepening (Frankfurt, London, and Paris already live; Türkiye, Finland, and the Netherlands next) sits beside a real 2024 retreat from India and Australia while Southeast Asia and Mexico were named as investment priorities. Residency and latency are product features, not slogans. Canada still lacks a public ECS compute region. Oceania users were pointed at Singapore after Sydney closed.

What to watch is whether the Netherlands October target lands as a live region on Alibaba’s regions list; whether Türkiye and Finland open on the twelve-month clock; whether capacity adds in Germany, France, the UAE, Malaysia, and Hong Kong show up as usable zones rather than brochure pins; and whether any later Alibaba or major-outlet piece finally puts the 2024 exits next to the 2026 map in the same story.