Alibaba Cloud’s successful Cloud+AI strategy

"Cloud + AI" strategy accelerates external client revenue, achieving double-digit public cloud growth and triple-digit YoY growth in AI-related product revenue for the fifth consecutive quarter.

Alibaba Cloud is expected to most likely continue with its Cloud+AI development strategy in 2025 after witnessing substantial growth in external client revenue in 2024. The digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group recorded double-digit increases in its public cloud services. For AI-related product revenue, Alibaba Cloud achieved triple-digit growth for the fifth consecutive quarter year.

The success of the strategy is amplified further after the Chinese public cloud company was named a Leader in the Forrester Wave: Public Cloud Platforms Q4, 2024 report for the first time. The designation recognizes the depth of its cloud and AI offerings and strategy, its significant global presence, as well as the ability to provide its global customers with a wide range of products and services.

“Alibaba has upped the ante on serverless beyond AI, packaging its powerful cloud-native infrastructure into more accessible offerings for both developers and operators, with data and analytics as a standout,” said Forrester in the report.

“Alibaba is a good fit for Chinese-based enterprises or international corporations requiring cloud scale across APAC and parts of Africa, Europe, and Latin America,” the report added.

According to the report, the Chinese public cloud showed capacity for AI innovation with homegrown AI models, breadth of foundation model choices and model-as-a-service (MaaS) innovation. The report also states that the core infrastructure and model-as-a-service capabilities enable Alibaba Cloud to provide a major model repository for AI across China.

The success of Cloud+AI

As businesses continue to embrace AI and the cloud, key areas of focus include improving operations and customer engagement strategies. For Alibaba Cloud, its revamped AI infrastructure to proprietary Qwen LLM series and advanced AI analytics have grown to be the catalysts for a digital transformation, enhancing customer experiences and operational efficiencies across the Asian landscape.

“We are thrilled to witness our robust cloud infrastructure and AI offerings empowering organizations across a diverse range of industries to further drive transformation in 2024 with our partners together,” commented Selina Yuan, President of International Business, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

Yuan mentioned that Alibaba Cloud remains committed to helping customers enhance their operations and deepen their connections with consumers, while collaborating with its ecosystem partners to unlock the full potential of AI and cloud technologies for businesses of all sizes.

Taking a look at some of the customer success stories in the region, Alibaba Cloud believes that it has the potential to continue to support businesses in the years to come. For example, in Japan, Lightblue, a University of Tokyo startup that develops AI solutions such as image analysis and natural language processing with the aim of AI democratization, has utilized Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen to support the development of its Japanese-language LLMs.

In Malaysia, Pictureworks, a leading provider of innovative photography imaging solutions, has harnessed Alibaba Cloud's extensive AI and cloud technologies to revolutionize the flexibility and quality of high-resolution image capture. By utilizing Alibaba Cloud’s Platform for Artificial Intelligence (PAI), Function Compute, and Object Storage Services (OSS), Pictureworks has produced over 150,000 photos at an award-winning theme park in Hong Kong.

Another successful customer that benefited from Alibaba Cloud is Singapore’s Atlas, an innovative B2B travel technology provider. By utilizing Alibaba Cloud’s LLM Qwen and Model Studio platform, Atlas has implemented a digital chatbot that offers 24/7 customer support, efficiently addressing partner inquiries related to booking processes and payment options. Atlas has also achieved a remarkable 45% reduction in operational costs.

Meanwhile, customers in China have also leveraged Alibaba Cloud to enhance their products and services. Drunk Elephant, a renowned skincare brand acquired by Shiseido in 2019, deployed Alibaba Cloud’s latest foundation model Qwen-max in its new customer chatbot named DRUNKGPT to enhance customer interactions in China.

Consumer health company Haleon China is also utilizing Alibaba Cloud’s Large Language Model (LLM) Qwen, along with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) technology to launch a specialized AI nutrition assistant solution called iNutrition for its Chinese consumers.