Alibaba Has Become A Major AI Player In China

It was to be expected that Alibaba Group Holding, which operates a fast-growing cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) business, will someday emerge as a major enabler and funder of China's AI industry. Based on the company's flagship annual Apsara Conference that concluded on 21 September, that time may have come.

Held in Hangzhou, the capital of eastern Zhejiang province, Apsara has become an important platform for the country's emerging AI start-ups, whether they are focused on large language model (LLM) development or generative AI applications. This is where they showcase their latest breakthroughs and discuss the tech trends in the AI sector.

Now in its 16th year, Apsara reflects how Alibaba has emerged as a major enabler of China's booming AI industry, with its sprawling investments in sector start-ups as well as its expanded partnerships with traditional industries. Alibaba also owns the South China Morning Post.

"The Apsara Conference ... has now become a benchmark for the development of global cloud computing and artificial intelligence," according to Liu Jie, Hangzhou's communist party secretary who delivered a speech on the opening day of the event.

This year's conference was estimated to attract more than 280 companies and an audience of over 90,000, according to Liu.

Hangzhou-based Alibaba has been putting a lot of resources on its self-developed Tongyi Qianwen LLM family, as it adopts an aggressive stance towards investing in the country's major AI start-ups.

The company has emerged as an investor in all of China's four "AI tigers" - Moonshot AI, Baichuan AI, Zhipu AI and MiniMax - which have received financial backing from domestic tech giants, venture capitalists and state-backed investors.

This year's Apsara Conference also marked the first time that many generative AI start-ups took part as exhibitors to highlight their own advantages, as the domestic battlefield for generative AI becomes increasingly crowded.