Alibaba is looking to work closer with US chipmaker Intel to develop products and services in the emerging areas of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT) and smart hardware.

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang met Intel CEO Brian Krzanich in Hangzhou at the Tmall 11.11 Global Innovation and Smart Living Summit.

“With everything in today’s world becoming smart and connected, we have a great opportunity to innovate and transform our everyday experiences,” said Krzanich. “Intel looks forward to working with Alibaba to drive continued innovation for the world and push the boundaries on key areas such as artificial intelligence and IoT.”

The e-commerce giant and Intel established a joint innovation centre focusing on research and development of chips, cloud computing and the Internet of Things. As a global partner of Alibaba Cloud (AliCloud), Intel released the first customised CPU for the platform earlier this year to satisfy Alibaba’s increasing performance demand.

“Through our strategic collaboration with Intel over the years, we have made significant progress in cloud computing and operating systems,” Zhang said. “Cultivating a deeper relationship with Intel will help both companies stay at the forefront of the AI and IoT sector, and provide better services to partners on our platform.”

A recent example of Alibaba’s efforts in these areas is the Smart City Brain programme to tackle traffic congestion jointly developed by AliCloud and the Hangzhou municipal government. The smart traffic management system provides real-time recommendations of the best travel routes based on video and image data collected and analysed by the system. A pilot programme was launched in September.