Abstract Bullets:
• Alibaba Cloud is increasing its presence in Malaysia with a brand new knowledge heart and wider ecosystem.
• It’s closing the aggressive hole in cloud and AI, however nonetheless lacks native references.
Native Enlargement
On the current Alibaba Cloud AI Tech Day 2025 in Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud shared its newest initiatives within the nation together with the event of its third facility there (the primary opened in 2017). That is a part of its $53 billion funding in international AI and cloud inside the subsequent three years. The Chinese language hyperscaler can be increasing its ecosystem within the nation to strengthen its presence and additional penetrate the market. For instance, it has groomed over 50 ISVs with AI and expanded its companion community with key gamers akin to YTL, Agmo, PIKOM, and Nationwide AI Consortium (KAIN). On the occasion, the hyperscaler introduced two MoUs: with Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB), a neighborhood funding agency, and with HiSEVEN, a regional digital advertising and marketing supplier headquartered in Malaysia. Alibaba Cloud can be actively driving packages to construct skillsets particularly in new applied sciences akin to AI and cloud. It has educated over 21,000 skills within the nation and introduced Alibaba Cloud AI Hackathon this 12 months – the primary in Malaysia.
AI
Alibaba Cloud additionally showcased its newest AI capabilities. It launched its newest LLM, Qwen2.5-Max, to compete towards main fashions akin to DeepSeek-V3 and GPT-4o. It additionally launched Qwen2.5-VL, an open-source multi-modal mannequin. Each Qwen2.5-Max and Qwen2.5-VL are primarily based on its Qwen mannequin which helps 72 billion parameters. The newest releases help reasoning to deal with complicated queries. Each fashions can be found via Qwen Chat (Alibaba conversational platform) whereas APIs are accessible by builders by way of Alibaba Cloud. Primarily based on open supply, Qwen has been downloaded over 187,000 instances and has about 90,000 by-product fashions. The supplier additionally shared its agentic AI capabilities that cowl varied enterprise capabilities from buyer help to gross sales, advertising and marketing, HR, and operations. Alibaba Cloud views agentic AI as an evolution from SaaS. Early use instances embody enterprise intelligence, market analytics, and chatbots. The hyperscaler affords an agent builder to deal with enterprises’ numerous wants akin to for a particular language or market. Profitable deployments embody creating LLMs for Japanese language for business use and a collaboration with Shiseido China to boost buyer interplay by enabling human-like chatbots.
Closing the Aggressive Hole
Alibaba Cloud’s third knowledge heart will likely be key for the supplier to supply extremely resilient companies to enterprises particularly in addressing crucial purposes. The brand new facility can be necessary for Alibaba to counter opponents akin to AWS which launched a area within the nation final 12 months with three availability zones. In addition to, Alibaba Cloud’s new facility can be necessary for the supplier to counter the upcoming new areas by different gamers akin to Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. It additionally allows the supplier to remain forward of different Chinese language hyperscalers akin to Huawei Cloud and Tencent Cloud.
In AI/GenAI, whereas Alibaba Cloud remains to be catching up with different main gamers, the supplier can level to its full-stack AI capabilities (from infrastructure together with cloud, storage, and database, to platforms and fashions) to counter opponents. In addition to, it may possibly additionally spotlight its open-source fashions which may supply larger transparency and effectivity in addition to drive wider improvements with enterprises and builders.
The brand new facility mixed with its newest AI capabilities may also strengthen Alibaba Cloud’s place as an AI and cloud supplier and allow the supplier to seize the rising market alternative within the nation. AI and GenAI are nonetheless new within the nation, however the demand is choosing up quickly pushed by authorities initiatives in addition to collaborations by main business gamers. GlobalData ICT Buyer Perception Survey 2024 reveals that over two-thirds of Malaysian enterprises are prioritizing AI platforms, purposes and companies inside the subsequent two years. That is driving the AI and cloud market to develop by 55.1% CAGR to $3.2 billion in 2028 and by 25.6% CAGR to $7.6 billion (2028) respectively.
One other key space is Alibaba Cloud’s broader home ecosystem because of its wider collaborations with native companions and gamers. For instance, Agmo and Redant which specialise in AI/ML, purposes, analytics, and UI/UX design; PAIX in monetary operations, Wonderlist Know-how in studying administration programs, and Milestone in video and laptop imaginative and prescient. These partnerships can drive innovation by co-developing options tailor-made for the native enterprise wants. It additionally allows Alibaba Cloud to penetrate additional into the market, not solely with Chinese language MNCs and enormous organizations, but additionally with the SMBs.
Because the cloud chief in China, Alibaba Cloud shared a number of profitable use instances for its cloud and AI options. Nonetheless, most of its deployments are in its house nation. There’s nonetheless an absence of references China in different markets together with in Malaysia. This may very well be a aggressive drawback for Alibaba Cloud as enterprises usually search for established options and suppliers who perceive native companies and laws. There was additionally restricted concentrate on different key areas akin to cybersecurity, moral AI and ESG, at the very least on the occasion. Cybersecurity has been the highest concern out there pushed by the drastic improve in cyberattacks. In the meantime, moral AI is essential for enterprises particularly in addressing knowledge safety and privateness considerations. ESG can be changing into extra necessary within the nation. Enterprises are creating ESG technique and aligning their know-how adoption with carbon emissions.
