Alibaba disclosed its investment in technology research and development: over 100 billion yuan per year!
On September 30, at the 2020 Alibaba Global Investor Conference, Alibaba Group Chief Financial Officer Wu Wei disclosed for the first time that in recent years, Alibaba’s investment in technology and research and development has exceeded 100 billion yuan each year .
The integration of technology and business has become the core driving force of Alibaba’s evolution. In the 21 years of Alibaba , the birth or development of every new business and new species has the support and creation of technology behind it.
Eleven years ago, Alibaba was the first to invest in cloud computing research and development under the background that the industry was not optimistic. Alibaba’s core systems have all been run on Alibaba Cloud’s public cloud, and the cloud has become the technical base of Alibaba’s commercial operating system. Based on this, Ali’s business modules and key capabilities can be directly reorganized, migrated and opened up on the cloud, resulting in continuous improvement of overall efficiency. At the same time, Alibaba Cloud ranks first in the world in many technical strengths, and the market share is the top three in the world, making it the first choice for enterprises and organizations to go to the cloud. Seven years ago, Alibaba and its partners established Cainiao. Through continuous investment in IoT , artificial intelligence, big data and other technical fields, Cainiao has established an intelligent logistics backbone network that can digitally cover more than 40 billion parcels a year , Not only to become the logistics infrastructure for tens of millions of small and medium-sized enterprises on Alibaba’s China and global retail and trade platforms, but also to create a digital era in the logistics industry, which greatly reduces the circulation costs of the entire society. Nowadays, the dividends of technology are infiltrating into various business scenarios of Alibaba like water. For example, small companies on Alibaba International Station talk to foreign customers using artificial intelligence real-time translation; original merchants and new brands on Taobao and Tmall. The growth of the company is assisted by intelligent recommendation algorithms; a handful of fresh vegetables in the Hema store is the result of the selection of big data technology.
Zhang Yong, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Group, once said that Alibaba is a company that perfectly combines technology and business. Through continuous investment in technology research and development, incubating new businesses, allowing technology to be verified in the market, and promoting new business “self-blood” , And then feed back technology and realize innovative “crawler development”.
Ali’s continuous investment in technology research and development not only promotes its own efficiency improvement and body evolution, but also continues to consolidate the digital infrastructure of the entire society. Alibaba Cloud has deployed hundreds of cloud data centers around the world, and its self-developed Feitian operating system manages millions of servers, making it the number one cloud service provider in the Asia-Pacific region and the world’s top three cloud service providers. In April this year , Alibaba Cloud announced that it would invest 200 billion yuan in the next three years to sprint the world’s largest cloud infrastructure.
Ali is also increasing investment in cutting-edge technology and basic scientific research, and using technology to solve new problems related to human development. The Dharma Academy, established in 2017, carries Ali’s dream of facing the future. After years of continuous investment, Dharma Academy now has more than 10 IEEE Fellows and more than 20 well-known university professors, covering artificial intelligence, quantum computing, chip technology, autonomous driving and other fields, and has won more than 60 top international technical events . First, more than 500 papers have been published in top international conferences . Dharma Academy also successfully incubated the top domestic semiconductor company Pingtou, and has launched a variety of products such as the AI inference performance chip Hanguang 800 .
