Alibaba Beijing Office
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Alibaba The company said on Thursday it was expanding its global cloud computing availability, while the head of the unit’s international unit saw the company’s artificial intelligence products as a way to drive growth.
The Chinese technology giant said it has expanded the availability of its cloud computing products to Mexico for the first time and will build new data centers in key markets such as Malaysia, Thailand and South Korea over the next three years.
“We want to make more efforts and investments in our international data centers,” Selina Yuan, president of Alibaba Cloud’s international department, told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday.
The growth comes after a tumultuous period for Alibaba Cloud, which saw the unit cancel a planned initial public offering and undergo a management shakeup.
Alibaba’s cloud unit began expanding internationally in 2015, with mixed results so far. AmazonMicrosoft and letterGoogle, owned by Google, holds about 67% of the global cloud market, according to Synergy Research Group. Alibaba occupies less than 5% of the space.
However, in China, Alibaba holds 39% of the market and the company is one of the leading players in Asia, according to Canalys.
Former CEO Zhang Yong and current senior management regard the cloud unit as an important business for Alibaba’s future. But growth has slowed significantly in recent quarters. This month, Alibaba executives said on an earnings call that the cloud division would resume “double-digit growth” in the second half of the fiscal year.
To reignite the momentum, Alibaba is betting on its artificial intelligence products and signing up more customers. Alibaba expanded partnerships with French luxury brands on Wednesday LVMHwhich has begun using the Chinese tech giant’s artificial intelligence tools in China.
In 2023, Alibaba launched a large language model (LLM), a software trained on large amounts of data that can support artificial intelligence applications – Uni-President Qianwen.version, looks to be keeping pace with other Chinese rivals Baidu and Tencentand U.S. tech giants MicrosoftOpenAI and Google.
Alibaba’s top management, including CEO Eddie Wu, has spoken about the company’s potential in artificial intelligence. Like Microsoft and Google, Alibaba sells its artificial intelligence products through its cloud unit.
“We believe that artificial intelligence is the future and is definitely a trend. How do we support artificial intelligence and large language models? Cloud computing,” Yuan told CNBC.
“We think it’s a really good time for Alibaba Cloud. We have cloud computing… We have a very clear strategy. We have large language models, and I think we can do more for the business, for our customers and partners thing”.
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