Alibaba’s chairman, Joe Tsai, recently announced that the company’s cloud unit now serves a remarkable 80% of Chinese tech companies and half of the country’s AI language model firms. This revelation was made at the Apsara Conference, where Tsai underscored the company’s objective to utilize AI as a tool for enhancing productivity, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.
It is worth noting that Alibaba takes pride in being recognized as the world’s first large-scale internet company to shift all of its operations to the cloud. Tsai emphasized the company’s dedication to becoming the most “open cloud” in the AI era, with the aspiration of making AI development and usage more accessible and cost-effective for all.
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud has consistently endeavored to democratize computing by transforming it into a public service similar to water and electricity. The company’s cloud services unit introduced the Tongyi Qianwen 2.0, a robust generic language model with hundreds of billions of parameters, surpassing leading language models in various domains such as language understanding, arithmetic problem solving, and question-answering.
Large language models (LLMs) have the potential to revolutionize industries, according to Alibaba Cloud’s chief technology officer, Zhou Jingren. The company is dedicated to leveraging advanced technologies, including generative AI, to aid customers in seizing growth opportunities. This includes the launch of a more robust foundation model and industry-specific models to address specific challenges in various domains.
The Tongyi Qianwen 2.0 is now accessible to the public via Alibaba Cloud’s website and mobile applications, as well as for developers through application programming interfaces. In addition, Alibaba Cloud unveiled its GenAI Service Platform at the conference, designed as a comprehensive platform for building AI models, catering to the growing demand for generative AI across diverse industries.
Alibaba’s ongoing initiatives in the cloud and AI arena highlight its commitment to driving technological innovation and accessibility. As the company continues to expand its influence, it is poised to further shape and define the future of technology in China and beyond.
