Alibaba Cloud to invest $1b in Asia start-ups
Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing and artificial intelligence unit of the eponymous Chinese internet giant, has pledged to invest $1 billion in Asia Pacific start-ups over the next three years.
The $1 billion figure is described as an initial commitment. The goal is to “cultivate a million-strong digital talent pool, empower 100,000 developers and the growth of 100,000 technology startups,” according to a statement.
This is part of Alibaba Cloud’s strategy to invest in infrastructure, technological innovation, and talent development to contribute to local economic growth through digital transformation. One of the strategy’s three pillars is described as connecting promising business ideas with venture capital and practical development opportunities.
“Innovative technology is critical to the recovery from COVID-19 while a strong pipeline of talent well versed in digital applications is needed to support the sustainable development of today’s digital economy,” said Jeff Zhang, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
“We are seeing a strong demand for cloud-native technologies in emerging verticals across the region, from e-commerce and logistics platforms to fintech and online entertainment.”
The funding initiative was unveiled alongside a concerted push into Southeast Asia. Alibaba Cloud will open its first data center in the Philippines by the end of this year and build an international innovation facility in Malaysia aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), start-ups, and developers. In addition, it recently launched its third data center in Indonesia.
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, from elastic computing to large-scale computing, and from database and storage to big data analytics and machine learning. The company was China’s leading provider of public cloud services by revenue in 2019, including platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).
Most of China’s technology giants – as well as some well-funded start-ups – have entered the PaaS space, providing middle platform infrastructure that allows enterprise customers to run business applications from outsourced cloud-based systems. Geographical expansion is a logical target, tapping into rising demand for data storage and processing capabilities, and therefore data centers, across the region.
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