Alibaba Cloud, the cloud services subsidiary of e-commerce group Alibaba, has pledged $1bn to an initiative to support tech startups and developers, Bloomberg reported today citing a company statement.
Project AsiaForward is intended to support some 100,000 recipients over the next three years while also providing training for prospective software developers and linking entrepreneurs to venture capital investors.
Jeff Zhang, Alibaba Cloud’s president, said: “We are seeing a strong demand for cloud-native technologies in emerging verticals across the region, from e-commerce and logistics platforms to fintech and online entertainment.
“Our focus on innovation and data centre investments, as well as talent development is in anticipation of a digital-first future.”
The move comes as Alibaba’s cloud platform is reportedly losing ground to competitors such as internet group Tencent and electronics producer Huawei as well as US rivals such as Amazon Web Services.
Alibaba Cloud has made investments in the past, having most recently contributed to a $33.3m series B-plus round for cloud services provider ZStack in August 2020 and a $61.5m series A round in March this year that hiked its stake in business management software producer Terminus to over 31%.
