Alibaba’s cloud services business poised to turn a profit on back of China’s digital economy, global expansion
- Alibaba Cloud was ranked as the world’s third-biggest infrastructure-as-a-service provider in 2019, behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure
- Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud counts more than three million customers located in more than 200 countries and territories
Alibaba Group Holding expects its cloud computing services business to become profitable before the company’s current financial year ends in March 2021, driven by demand from China’s fast-growing digital economy and strategic overseas expansion.
Hangzhou-based Alibaba Cloud – ranked by Gartner as the world’s third-biggest infrastructure-as-a-service provider in 2019, behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp’s Azure – is expected to turn a profit by the end of March next year, according to Alibaba chief financial officer Maggie Wu Wei, who spoke at the e-commerce giant’s webinar for investors on Wednesday.
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud has already become China’s biggest cloud computing services provider as well as the company’s second-largest revenue contributor behind its core e-commerce operations. Alibaba’s cloud services revenue reached 12.3 billion yuan (US$1.7 billion) in the quarter ended June, up 59 per cent from a year ago, on the back of more than three million paying customers.
“We are redefining cloud computing to integrate data with commerce and business use cases, so as to create real value for the real economy and industry verticals,” said Daniel Zhang Yong, Alibaba’s chairman and chief executive, in a separate webinar for investors on Wednesday.