Alibaba Cloud Revenue Skyrockets by 34%: AI Surge Fuels Growth in Chinese Tech
Chinese tech titan, Alibaba Group, has reported an impressive 34% growth in its cloud computing sector for the July-September quarter. This growth has been primarily driven by a surging demand for artificial intelligence services.
The cloud division, which is the home of Alibaba’s flagship Qwen AI platform, generated a revenue of 39.8 billion yuan ($5.6 billion) – a figure that exceeded analyst expectations. Meanwhile, the overall company revenue touched 247.8 billion yuan ($35 billion), marking a 5% increase year-over-year. However, profits saw a dip of 52% due to the fierce competition in China’s e-commerce market.
CEO Eddie Wu underscored that “significant” investments in AI infrastructure have been instrumental in driving the company’s revenue growth. Alibaba’s AI chatbot Qwen, which is designed to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, achieved a significant milestone with 10 million downloads in its first week post public launch.
The company has pledged to invest at least 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over the next three years to further advance its cloud computing and AI infrastructure.
The robust performance of the cloud division comes at a time when Chinese tech companies are increasingly competing with U.S. rivals in the AI space. Alibaba’s stock has seen a surge of over 90% this year, fuelled by optimism about its progress in AI.
Source: Bloomberg