Aliyun Drops $1bn On AliCloud Big Data Push With Nvidia

AliCloud, the cloud computing division of China’s Alibaba, is spending $1 billion to boost its cloud computing credentials in partnership with Nvidia over the next three years.

AliCloud’s investment will focus particularly on big data analysis and machine learning, the company said in a statement Wednesday.

The move comes as AliCloud, FKA Aliyun, looks to compete with Western competitors such as Amazon in cloud and web services.

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AliCloud wants to make big data services more accessible in China, and is launching a new platform for enterprises to use computing services in the country. The ‘Big Data Platform’ will reportedly go live with 20 initial services. Alibaba also plans to hire at least 1,000 developers to work on the project.

The news comes after AliCloud opened its second cloud data centre in Silicon Valley last October, adding to its eight other data centres around the world.

The plan, which was announced at a press conference in Shanghai, will see these services also dished out from AliCloud’s global data centres.

According to the South China Morning Post, which Alibaba bought last December, AliCloud president Simon Hu said: “The Big Data Platform fulfills our vision of sharing our vast data troves that will create immense value to our users.

“What we want to do at Alibaba is turn the data-processing capacity and data-security capabilities that we’ve accumulated over the last decade into a product, so that data becomes a resource and a service that we can provide our clients.”

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