Alibaba Cloud Expands AI Models and Tools for Global Developers

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing services and artificial intelligence (AI) arm of Alibaba Group Holding, has introduced an extended range of AI models and development tools for international developers, as part of its efforts to expand into global markets. The company unveiled new products at its annual developer summit in Indonesia, including large language models (LLMs) like the Qwen 2.5 series and multimodal AI models such as the Qwen-VL series and Tongyi Wanxiang, now accessible to developers worldwide through APIs on its GenAI development platform, Model Studio.

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LLMs, the technology behind services like ChatGPT, are now available for developers to utilise through APIs, enabling them to streamline app development without starting from scratch. Guo Dongliang, vice-president of international business at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, expressed the company's commitment to providing value to global developers through advanced AI models, improved cloud infrastructure, and accessible support programmes.

Alibaba Cloud's recent move aligns with its broader strategy to increase investments overseas and enhance its cloud infrastructure offerings in key global markets. The company aims to collaborate with 100 ecosystem partners by 2025 to develop cutting-edge AI and cloud-computing solutions for businesses across various industries worldwide. At the developer summit, Alibaba Cloud highlighted the expanded availability of its Tongyi Lingma programming tool, powered by the Qwen 2.5-coder model, offering features like code completion, debugging assistance, and code snippet search to boost developers' productivity and creativity.

Moreover, a range of new AI development tools have been introduced on Model Studio for global developers, including Workflow to simplify complex tasks into subtasks and Agent to facilitate collaborative planning and execution tasks. As part of its increased focus on Southeast Asia, South Korea, and Mexico, Alibaba Cloud closed its data centres in Australia and India last year to concentrate on operations in other regions. The cloud unit's revenue, a crucial growth driver for Alibaba, surged by 7% to 29.6 billion yuan (US$4 billion) in the September quarter last year, marking its fastest quarterly growth in the past two years.

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• Alibaba Cloud expands suite of AI models and tools for global developers

• New products include large language models and multimodal AI models accessible via APIs

• Company aims to collaborate with 100 ecosystem partners by 2025 for innovative solutions

Source: SCMP