Alibaba Cloud has said it will invest another 200 billion yuan (£22.7bn, $28.3bn) in its infrastructure, prompted by an increase in demand for services such as video conferencing and live streaming.

The investment will focus on expanding Alibaba Cloud’s technology, including its operating system, servers and chips, in its data centres. The company says these new technologies are expected to be largely deployed in the “coming years”.

Alibaba Cloud currently has 63 availability zones in 21 regions. It has also established the DAMO Academy, a global research institute that focuses on developing technological breakthroughs in cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other related areas.

Jeff Zhang, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence and chief technology officer of Alibaba Group, said: “By increasing our investment on cloud infrastructure and fundamental technologies, we hope to continue providing world-class, trusted computing resources to help businesses speed up the recovery process, and offer cloud-based intelligent solutions to support their digital transformation in the post-pandemic world.”

The latest investment could help Alibaba expand its product and customer base in the international market as it competes against Microsoft and Amazon. In China, the company is already facing rising competition in the cloud space from e-commerce rival JD.com.

In its last quarterly earnings report, issued in February, Alibaba said its cloud revenue reached $1.5bn.

While Alibaba is the third-largest public cloud provider globally, behind AWS and Azure, its increase in growth was higher than its competitors, with its growth rate at 62 per cent for the quarter ending December 31 2019.

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