Alibaba Group Holding Ltd in a fresh announcement says it will invest $28 billion in its cloud infrastructure over three years, a plan that follows a boom in demand for business software as the Coronavirus outbreak peaked in China.
The company further explained it will spend the funds on semiconductor and operating system development as well as building out its data centre infrastructure.
While most of China’s white collar employees were working from home throughout February, the country’s dominant cloud player saw usage surge for its software.
At one point, users complained of lags on the app due to the high volume of activity.
Alibaba Cloud Intelligence president Jeff Zhang said in a statement that the COVID-19 pandemic “has posed additional stress on the overall economy across sectors” and the company hoped the investment would help businesses “speed up the recovery process”.
Alibaba’s cloud division is one of its fastest growing businesses. Fourth-quarter revenue climbed 62% to 10.7 billion yuan, the first time it has topped 10 billion yuan in a single quarter.
