Alibaba signs full-stack AI partnership with Hisense for TVs and smart home

Under the agreement, Alibaba Cloud becomes Hisense's AI provider across the full stack. Alibaba supplies the infrastructure and compute, model services built on the Qwen family, agent frameworks and ecosystem integration. Hisense, one of the world's largest TV makers, will use the stack to build conversational and agentic features into its TVs and connected home appliances.

The deal shows Alibaba's strategy of embedding Qwen into consumer hardware through manufacturer partnerships instead of relying only on its own apps. A 'full-stack' agreement typically means device-side inference for low-latency tasks and cloud-side models for heavier reasoning, with Alibaba operating the agent layer that links them.

Competitively, it echoes the Samsung–Google arrangement in which Gemini powers Galaxy AI, and Apple's reliance on Alibaba for AI features in China. TechNode reports the Apple partnership has had a rough ride. Apple's public rollout of China AI tools is reportedly planned for December 2026. Device partnerships give Chinese model providers distribution at scale while domestic competition among DeepSeek, Moonshot and others intensifies.

What to watch: which Qwen model generation ships on devices, especially if Qwen 4 lands soon, how quickly features reach consumers, and whether Alibaba replicates the deal with other appliance makers. The financial terms were not disclosed.