ALIBABA

Company to invest $28 billion in cloud after coronavirus raises demand

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Alibaba said it will invest 200 billion yuan ($ 28 billion) in its cloud computing infrastructure over three years after a boom in demand in China for business software amid the coronavirus pandemic .
The company said it would invest the resources to develop semiconductors and operating systems, and set up data center infrastructure.
In addition to the majority of China's office workers working from home in February, the company that dominates the cloud industry in the country has seen the use of its software soar, especially DingTalk, the chat application used by businesses and schools.
Users have complained about application delays due to high activity. The company acknowledged the problems at Weibo, the Chinese social networking site.
Alibaba Cloud Intelligence President Jeff Zhang said in a statement that the Covid-19 pandemic "has put additional stress on the overall economy across sectors" and the company hopes the investment will help companies "accelerate the recovery process" .
Alibaba's cloud division is one of the fastest growing businesses. Fourth-quarter revenue rose 62% to 10.7 billion yuan, the first time it reached 10 billion yuan in a quarter.
The technology giant had 46.4% of China's cloud market in the fourth quarter, according to research firm Canalys. Tencent Cloud and Baidu Cloud, which also saw demand for their products grow, had 18% and 8.8% of the market, respectively.

Josh Horwitz