Chinese tech giant Alibaba said Monday it will spend more than $50 billion on artificial intelligence and cloud computing over the next three years, a week after co-founder Jack Ma was seen meeting President Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n
Investors have piled into Chinese technology stocks since the start of the year, with Alibaba — which runs some of the country’s biggest online shopping platforms — seeing its shares soar to three-year highs.<\/p>\n
The gains have been boosted since the Hangzhou-based firm announced robust sales growth last week, adding to signs that the sector is staging a comeback from years of gloom sparked by a government crackdown. <\/p>\n
Alibaba plans to “invest at least 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over the next three years to advance its cloud computing and AI infrastructure”, a company statement said.<\/p>\n
The firm said its strategy was aimed at “reinforcing (Alibaba’s) commitment to long-term technological innovation… (and) underscores the company’s focus on AI-driven growth”.<\/p>\n
The statement did not detail how the company would allocate the funds or what specific projects would be supported.<\/p>\n
It did add that the investment would exceed its total AI and cloud spending over the past decade.<\/p>\n
Alibaba last week reported an eight percent bump in revenue for the three months through December, beating estimates to reach 280 billion yuan — and triggering a 14 percent surge in its Hong Kong shares on Friday. <\/p>\n
CEO Eddie Wu said last week that the quarterly results “demonstrated substantial progress in (Alibaba’s) ‘user-first, AI-driven’ strategies and the re-accelerated growth of our core businesses”.<\/p>\n
The company and its industry peers endured years of dampened investor confidence after Beijing launched an aggressive regulatory crackdown on the tech sector in 2020.<\/p>\n
But they have been riding higher in recent months, buoyed by the launch of a chatbot by Chinese startup DeepSeek that has upended the AI industry.<\/p>\n
The turnaround comes as the world’s second-largest economy continues to battle sluggish consumption and persistent woes in the property sector. <\/p>\n
At a rare meeting with business luminaries last week, Xi hailed the private sector and said the current economic problems were “surmountable” — a move widely interpreted as a show of support for big tech.<\/p>\n
Ma remains an influential figure despite no longer being an Alibaba executive and shunning the limelight since authorities brought down affiliate Ant Group’s high-stakes IPO in 2020.<\/p>\n
His inclusion in the meeting hinted at the billionaire magnate’s potential public rehabilitation following the tangle with regulators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chinese tech giant Alibaba said Monday it will spend more than $50 billion on artificial intelligence and cloud computing over the next three years, a week after co-founder Jack Ma was seen meeting President Xi Jinping. Investors have piled into Chinese technology stocks since the start of the year, with Alibaba — which runs some of the country’s biggest online shopping platforms — seeing its shares soar to three-year highs. The gains have been boosted since the Hangzhou-based firm announced robust sales growth last week, adding to signs that the sector is staging a comeback from years of gloom sparked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-908686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=908686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/908686\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=908686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=908686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/telecomlive.in\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=908686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}