Huawei is eyeing the Asia-Pacific region as a key market for its AI products, as its public cloud services in the region have expanded 20-fold over the past four years despite U.S.-led sanctions.
“As our next step in the region, we will continue to provide comprehensive AI solutions,” Jacqueline Shih, president of Global Marketing and Services at Huawei Cloud, announced at a media briefing in Bangkok on August 15. These include Ascend Cloud Service, ModelArts AI development platform, and Pangu, Huawei's proprietary large-scale 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 sectors, including finance, to increase efficiency and reduce costs.
The AI-focused strategy in the Asia-Pacific region signals Huawei's efforts to diversify its revenue streams and attract more international customers amid growing demand for generative AI services across traditional industries, and comes as the Shenzhen-based tech giant remains on a U.S. government blacklist.
The Asia-Pacific region is one of Huawei's largest markets for cloud computing services, according to Shi, and the region has served as a launch pad for certain cloud products, such as the company's “serverless database” solution, before its broader international expansion.
Huawei's global expansion continues, with the company launching Egypt's first public cloud service in Cairo in May and also opening an Arabic-language master's in law program. In September 2022, Huawei established a data center in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to provide public cloud services to customers in the country and the region.
In mainland China, Huawei is the second-largest cloud services provider after the cloud unit of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., which notably owns the South China Morning Post, according to research firm Canalys.
According to Huawei's latest annual report, cloud computing is one of the company's most promising growth areas in 2023, with revenue from the division surging 21.9% year-on-year to RMB 55.29 billion (US$7.6 billion).
Huawei's AI solutions are built on self-developed processors and frameworks, allowing it to circumvent U.S. sanctions that limit mainland China's access to American-origin technology, such as advanced semiconductors. In mainland China, Huawei's Ascend AI chips serve as an alternative to Nvidia's graphics processing units, which are restricted in the United States.
(Photo: PL)
Also read: Huawei's next chip could break China's 7nm barrier
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