Alibaba Cloud opens fifth Tokyo data center and first Paris region in rapid global expansion

Alibaba Cloud has launched a fifth data center in Tokyo, Japan, and opened its first cloud region in France with two availability zones in Paris. The company announced the Tokyo facility on June 19 and the Paris region earlier the same week in June 2026.

The Tokyo addition comes just three months after Alibaba expanded its Japan footprint with a fourth availability zone in March 2026. Alibaba first entered the Japanese market with a Tokyo region in 2016, meaning it has added four data centers in the past decade.

Targeting retail, gaming, and manufacturing in Japan

The new Tokyo facility is targeting Japanese customers in the retail, gaming, entertainment, and manufacturing sectors, according to the company. Takeshi Kurita, general manager of Alibaba Cloud for Japan and South Korea, said Japanese enterprises are showing “unprecedented demand” for agentic AI tools. The center will also offer local access to Alibaba’s Model Studio and its latest AI models.

• Paris region marks Alibaba Cloud’s third European hub, after Germany (2016) and the UK.
• Earlier in June 2026, Alibaba added a new two-availability-zone region in Johor, Malaysia, its second in the country.
• The company is spending approximately $52.7 billion to $69 billion on a “unified global cloud network,” as confirmed by CEO Eddie Wu in June 2025.

EU data sovereignty rules drive Paris expansion

The Paris launch aligns with the European Union’s stricter regulations on foreign cloud providers, including the Data Act and Gaia-X sovereignty requirements. By establishing local infrastructure in France, Alibaba Cloud can offer data residency compliance to EU-based customers in retail, finance, and public sector. The company has operated in Germany since 2016 and the UK since 2018, but this is its first French data center presence.

Alibaba Cloud’s rapid pace of build-outs shows no sign of slowing. With the Tokyo, Paris, and Johor facilities added in the same month, the company now operates data centers across 29 regions globally. The next likely expansion targets include Latin America and the Middle East, where Alibaba has already inked partnerships for local cloud services. Industry analysts expect Alibaba Cloud to reach 35 regions by the end of 2027.