China's first! Apple teams up with Alibaba to train a proprietary AI large model exclusively for China.

According to MacRumors, Apple is training its own proprietary large language model tailored for the Chinese market with technical assistance from Alibaba, shifting away from its previous plan to rely solely on third-party domestic models. The company will now adopt a dual-track strategy combining its self-developed model with Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen to deliver Apple Intelligence.

If the reports are confirmed, Apple would become the first overseas tech company approved to deploy its own large language model in China.

In the global market, Apple uses a combination of its on-device self-developed model and overseas large models. For the China version, the initial plan was to rely entirely on Alibaba's Tongyi Qianwen for all AI capabilities, with a brief appearance of related integration tutorials on Mac that were quickly removed.

The strategy has now been adjusted: lightweight on-device system AI features will be handled by Apple's locally self-developed model, while Tongyi Qianwen serves as a cloud-based supplement for high-complexity tasks such as long-text processing and multimodal generation.

This arrangement not only meets domestic regulatory compliance requirements but also allows Apple to maintain control over the AI interaction experience on its China-market devices.

Sources familiar with the matter indicate that the full suite of Apple Intelligence features is expected to roll out to China-market iPhones, iPads, Macs, and Vision Pro devices via system updates in the coming months. The related generative AI services have already completed domestic filing and approval processes last month, clearing key obstacles for the feature launch.

The collaboration between Apple and Alibaba officially began in 2025, taking over a year to complete model optimization and regulatory review. Alibaba's contributions primarily include training computing power, Chinese-language scenario data, and compliance verification support.

Against the backdrop of intensifying AI feature competition in the domestic smartphone market, a self-developed local model also helps Apple narrow the functional gap with its competitors.