Alibaba Cloud vs Baseten

Alibaba Cloud Recognized as a Notable Vendor in Forrester's 'The Web Application Protection Platforms Landscape, Q3 2026'

Alibaba Cloud has been recognized as a Notable Vendor in Forrester's Q3 2026 Web Application Protection Platforms Landscape, highlighting its robust web security capabilities.

China's Ulanqab Data Centers: Who Pays for the Grid Wait

In Ulanqab, a Chinese AI data center hub, grid infrastructure is still under construction, causing delays between completed data centers and their power connection. Operators like GDS invest before service begins and collect no fees until billing starts. The Financial Times reports about 15 GW of committed capacity, while Goldman Sachs counted 12.5 GW. Data centers used 3.27 billion kWh in H1 2026, up 89.5% year-over-year. Power costs in Ulanqab are about Rmb 0.358 per kWh, much cheaper than Beijing's Rmb 0.80. However, substation construction can take three to five years, far longer than the 12 months to build a data center hall. The article examines the financial risk operators carry during these waits.

• About 15 GW of data center capacity has been committed in Ulanqab, according to the Financial Times.
• Goldman Sachs counted 12.5 GW of operating and planned capacity in June, up from 3.3 GW in July 2025.
• Data centers in Ulanqab used 3.27 billion kWh in H1 2026, up 89.5% year-over-year.

Joe Tsai: Open Source Is Europe's AI Opportunity

Alibaba Cloud's blog features a new post by Joe Tsai discussing open source as Europe's AI opportunity, alongside other new posts on QwenWork, Qoder, and AgentCore.

Goodfire Launches Internal AI Agent Monitors

Goodfire, a startup specializing in AI interpretability, launched on Thursday a new type of AI agent monitor that inspects a model's internal signals rather than reading its output, aiming to detect rogue behaviors more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost. The monitors are available to customers of Baseten, an AI model hosting platform. Baseten's Base Labs had previously announced a safety partnership with Goodfire and Hugging Face. Goodfire's approach uses small probes that scan a model's internal activations at each step, triggering a closer AI review only when flagged. In tests on the Kimi K3 model, Goodfire's monitors caught 94% of malicious hacking sessions and cost about $51 for 1,500 sessions, compared to $233 for a cheaper model and $10,000 for a top-tier one. The company positions the solution for open models, which can be stripped of safeguards, and sees it as critical for inference-time guardrails.

• Goodfire launched internal activation monitors for AI agents on October 8, 2026.
• Monitors are available to Baseten customers.
• In tests on Kimi K3, monitors caught 94% of malicious hacking sessions.

Announcing our partnership with OpenAI

Baseten announces a partnership with OpenAI, as featured on their blog.

Baseten, Hugging Face, Goodfire Partner for AI Safety

Baseten's research arm, Base Labs, announced a partnership with Hugging Face and Goodfire AI to establish a safety standard for open-weight AI models. The collaboration aims to develop and publish methods for training and monitoring these models, making safety an integrated feature rather than an afterthought. This comes amid rising concern over 'abliteration,' a technique that removes safeguards from open models, with Hugging Face listing over 6,000 such models. The companies have not detailed technical specifics, but Goodfire's expertise in AI interpretability is expected to play a key role. This initiative seeks to leverage openness as an advantage for safety, providing transparent controls and encouraging community contributions.

• Baseten launched a safety infrastructure standard via Base Labs.
• Partnership with Hugging Face and Goodfire AI announced.
• Hugging Face hosts over 6,000 abliterated models.