Alibaba Cloud set to invest $1bn in overseas partnerships

Alibaba Cloud is set to invest $1 billion over the next three years to support its partners’ “technology innovation and market expansion”.

The investment from the Chinese tech giant’s cloud computing division will consist of a mix of both financial and non-financial incentives, including “funding, rebates, and go-to-market initiatives”.

In addition, Alibaba Cloud is also set to launch a “regional accelerator” program to provide its partners operating in different markets with a localized business collaboration model.

So what’s the bigger picture?

Alibaba already controls a pretty large proportion of the cloud storage market, according to statistics from Gartner (opens in new tab), it trailed only Microsoft and Amazon with its 9.5% share of the market in 2021. 

The division already has around 11,000 partners worldwide, including Salesforce, VMware, Fortinet, IBM, and Neo4j.

Alibaba Cloud was already active in terms of looking to expand its international footprint.

Under its “Global Delivery and Service Program”, it has unveiled three Customer Service Centers in 2022, located in Malaysia, Portugal, and Mexico, to support international customers during cloud adoption.

But unfortunately for investors, Alibaba’s expansion outside of its core marketplace is seeing regulatory scrutiny.

In 2022, the US government was reported as reviewing Alibaba Cloud to determine whether or not it poses a risk to national security.

According to reporting by Reuters (opens in new tab), the Biden administration’s probe looked to ascertain how the company handled the data of US clients and whether the Chinese government could gain access to US intellectual property.

But it’s not just the cloud computing market that the Hangzhou, China-headquartered company has its sights on taking over.

Alibaba has spun out a subsidiary, called Lingyang Intelligent Service Company, which it says will offer “enterprise digital intelligence services”.

The new business unit could potentially compete with the likes of Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP in the business intelligence space.