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Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, today announced a series of new initiatives including expanded talent training for startups and rural area communities, an upgraded AI-focused partnership program and latest AI platform to boost AI adoption and fuel Malaysia’s digital transformation and innovation roadmap. This move further demonstrates Alibaba Cloud’s ongoing commitment to deepening its localisation initiative, following its announcement in May to build the 3rd data centre in Malaysia within the next three years.

Facilitated by Yang Berhormat Tuan Gobind Singh Deo, Minister of Digital Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud launched a new digital strengthening initiative, dubbed “Digital Accelerator Program” in an effort to boost the local talent AI & Tech literacy by building expanded, enhanced and inclusive ecosystem with funding, training, and technical support. 

“As a leading cloud service provider, Alibaba Cloud is actively fostering a digital transformation ecosystem that will pave the way for the nation’s digital roadmap,     ” said Kun Huang, General Manager of South APAC, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “By empowering startups, partners, and rural communities with AI-driven digital training and cutting-edge technology platform, we are committed to propelling cloud and AI technology forward and nurturing homegrown digital talents. This is the core of our strategy to ignite innovation and usher in a smarter and more efficient Malaysia driven by digital technology.” 

Alibaba Cloud is dedicated to upskilling Malaysian citizens, having trained over 20,000 people in cloud skills since 2017. As an ongoing effort to contribute to the nation’s digitalisation, the Digital Accelerator Program outlines its future commitments and initiatives in three key pillars including Startup Catalysts, Future Talents Training, and Independent Software Vendors (ISV) Growth with below highlights:

• With this program, Alibaba Cloud aims to train and certify more than 500 startups in Malaysia by the end of 2025. Eligible startups will receive up to $120,000 in funding and resources to support their digitalisation growth and success.  
• Built upon the successful collaboration with Universiti Malaya, the initiative also plans to establish Alibaba Cloud Academy Skills Centers in at least five universities in Malaysia by 2025, offering free access to digital resources for students and educators, with a focus on fields such as Generative AI, Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, and more. This will help achieve Alibaba Cloud’s goal of certifying 10,000 students by the end of 2025.
• Additionally, Alibaba Cloud is committed to providing expanded digital training for rural communities in Selangor, Johor, Penang, Sarawak, and Sabah, aiming to nurture 10,000 community students.
• The program will also focus on grooming 50 independent software vendors (ISVs) by equipping them with essential cloud knowledge, particularly in Generative AI. By building such an AI-driven ecosystem, Alibaba Cloud together with the ISVs aims to assist and onboard 1,000 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on their digitalisation journey this year. 

Separately, to satisfy the growing needs of AI adoption trends in Malaysia, Alibaba Cloud has also announced the availability of its proprietary generative AI development platform, Model Studio for international customers via its availability zones in Singapore. Through Model Studio, Malaysian customers can access Alibaba Cloud’s large language model Qwen family, including both closed-source and open-source models with multimodal capabilities, ranging from 0.5 billion to several hundred billion parameters. This will facilitate the development of custom generative AI applications across different industries in Malaysia.

As one of the world’s leading cloud service providers, Alibaba Cloud boasts a network of 89 availability zones in 30 regions across the globe, offering a highly secure, scalable, robust cloud infrastructure to support global customers embracing digital innovation while keeping sustainability in mind. Alibaba Cloud is also the first global cloud provider with twin local data centres established in Malaysia since 2017 and has launched its first cloud-based Anti-DDoS Scrubbing Center locally in 2018 serving the region.

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