Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud computing unit on Monday launched a new advertising campaign in China featuring top executives from start-up Moonshot AI and online recruitment platform Zhilian Zhaopin, amid fierce competition in the local market.
The ads – currently displayed at airports in Beijing and Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province – promoted the market leader’s capability of supporting artificial intelligence (AI) development at well-known Chinese companies with the slogan, “Alibaba Cloud is the cloud I use”.
In one ad, Yang Zhilin – founder of Moonshot AI, one of the country’s top start-ups dubbed the “new AI tigers” – praised Alibaba Cloud’s “robust computing power” and large-model service platform for enhancing the efficiency of its Kimi model.
Alibaba, owner of the South China Morning Post, is a major backer of Moonshot AI, having spent around US$800 million to acquire a 36 per cent equity interest in the start-up. Kimi Chatbot, launched last October and powered by Moonshot AI’s self-developed model, is seen as one of China’s most promising answers to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Another ad showed Zhang Yuejia, group president at Zhilian Zhaopin, crediting Alibaba Cloud for helping the firm quickly adopt large AI models in human resources applications.
China’s cloud giants have been engaged in an intensifying competition since last year, as rivals slashed prices to lure clients ranging from big names to small and medium-sized enterprises.
While Alibaba Cloud at the end of 2023 maintained its leading position in the domestic market with a 39 per cent share, growth slowed to 3 per cent compared with Huawei Cloud’s 23 per cent and Tencent Cloud’s 27 per cent, according to researcher Canalys.
In the March quarter this year, sales from Alibaba Cloud rose 3 per cent year on year to 25.6 billion yuan (US$3.5 billion).
Alibaba Cloud and others are gunning for a market that is expected to expand faster this year, thanks partly to the popularity of generative AI, said Canalys.
Start-ups that train their own AI models typically spend up to 80 to 90 per cent of their early venture capital on cloud providers, according to Silicon Valley-based venture firm Andreessen Horowitz.
Alibaba, which has developed its own AI models, has also invested in the other three AI tigers, Baichuan AI, Zhipu AI and Minimax.
“We focus on AI as the single most powerful element that will change and accelerate the growth of our businesses,” wrote Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai and CEO Eddie Wu Yongming in a letter to shareholders in May.
Moonshot AI’s Yang and Zhilian Zhaopin’s Zhang joined a list of notable industry figures who previously appeared in Alibaba Cloud ads. They include Baichuan AI founder Wang Xiaochuan, advertising firm Focus Media founder Jason Jiang Nanchun, and education technology firm Gaotu Group’s CEO Chen Xiangdong.
