Huawei sees Asia Pacific as a prime market for its AI offerings, boosted by a 20-fold increase in its public cloud service in the region over the past four years despite U.S. sanctions.
Jacqueline Shi, president of global marketing and services at Huawei Cloud, announced at a press conference in Bangkok on August 15, “For our next step in the region, we will continue to provide comprehensive AI solutions.” These include Ascend Cloud Service, AI development platform ModelArts, and Pangu, Huawei’s proprietary language model that underpins generative AI services similar to ChatGPT.
The company is already working with Thai weather forecasters to implement Pangu LLM and is partnering with various industries, including finance, to improve efficiency and reduce costs.
The AI-focused strategy for the Asia-Pacific region demonstrates Huawei’s efforts to diversify its revenue streams and attract more international customers amid growing demand for generative AI services in traditional industries. The move comes even as the Shenzhen-based tech giant remains blacklisted by the U.S. government.
According to Shi, the Asia-Pacific region is one of Huawei’s largest markets for cloud computing services. It has served as a springboard for some cloud products, such as its “serverless database” solution, before a broader international rollout.
Huawei’s global expansion continues, with the company launching Egypt’s first public cloud service in Cairo in May, as well as an Arabic-language LLM. In September 2022, Huawei established a data center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to provide public cloud services to customers in the country and surrounding regions.
In mainland China, Huawei ranks second among cloud service providers, behind Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud unit, according to research firm Canalys. Notably, Alibaba owns The South China Morning Post newspaper.
Cloud computing has emerged as one of Huawei’s strongest growth areas in 2023, with revenue from the division surging 21.9% year-on-year to 55.29 billion yuan ($7.6 billion), according to the company’s latest annual report.
Huawei’s AI solution relies on its own processors and infrastructure, allowing it to circumvent U.S. sanctions that limit mainland China’s access to U.S.-sourced technologies such as advanced semiconductors. In mainland China, Huawei’s Ascend AI chips are now serving as an alternative to Nvidia’s graphics processing units, which are subject to U.S. restrictions.
(Photo by PL)
See also: Huawei’s Next Chip Could Break China’s 7nm Barrier
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