Long before artificial intelligence became the next big thing in the tech industry, Wang Jian was crafting the foundational infrastructure that would eventually power it. In 2008, he joined Alibaba Group Holding – owner of the South China Morning Post – as chief architect and founded Alibaba Cloud in 2009, convincing the company’s leadership to invest heavily in building a cloud computing infrastructure from scratch.
Today, Wang’s purview has expanded considerably. As an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering and the director of Zhejiang Lab, a research institution backed by the Zhejiang provincial government, his focus has turned to a new frontier: space computing.
This interview first appeared in SCMP Plus. For other interviews in the Open Questions series, click here.
The current excitement over AI models is not the first wave of enthusiasm you’ve observed. How has this been different?