Chinese tech giant launches first cloud region

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing unit of Chinese tech heavyweight Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, has announced plans to launch its first cloud region in Mexico and to establish additional data centers in Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and South Korea in the next three years.

The company said the new investment to build new cloud and AI infrastructure across key international markets aims to enhance the cloud and AI product suite for its worldwide customers while enhancing global partnerships and fostering AI talent development to nurture future digital expertise.

"With the rapidly rising demand for AI across industries, we are reinforcing our commitment to expanding our AI infrastructure and enhancing our cloud capacities worldwide," said Selina Yuan, president of international business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

China’s leading cloud service providers are betting big on overseas expansion as profits dwindle in their saturated home market. Photo: VCG

To better enable enterprises and developers to develop AI models and applications, Alibaba Cloud's generative AI development platform, Model Studio, will soon be available for international customers via its availability zones in Singapore.

Through Model Studio, customers can gain access to Alibaba Cloud's large language model Qwen, including closed-source and open-source models featuring multimodal capabilities to facilitate the development of generative AI applications.

Alibaba Cloud also announced it has deepened its collaboration with German tech company SAP to launch a one-stop enterprise solution for small and medium-sized enterprises in Asia to reap the benefits of digital transformation with rapid deployment and on-demand expansion capabilities.