Huawei is already working with weather forecasters in Thailand to adopt Pangu LLM, while also collaborating with various industries such as finance to improve efficiency and reduce costs, according to Shi.
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How Huawei’s use of 5G and AI is transforming China’s coal mining industry
How Huawei’s use of 5G and AI is transforming China’s coal mining industry
The AI expansion plan for Asia-Pacific shows Huawei’s efforts to diversify its revenue stream and woo more overseas clients amid the rising demand for GenAI services across many traditional industries, even as the Shenzhen-based company remains blacklisted by the US government.
The region is also one of Huawei’s biggest geographic markets for cloud computing services, according to Shi. It is where the company initially launched certain cloud products, such as its “serverless database” solution, before a broader international roll-out.
In September last year, Huawei launched a data centre in Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia, to provide public cloud services for clients in the country as well as other parts of the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia.
Huawei is currently ranked as the second-largest cloud services provider in mainland China, behind Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud unit, according to research firm Canalys. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Cloud computing is one of the strongest growth areas for Huawei in 2023, when this business’ revenue rose 21.9 per cent year on year to 55.29 billion yuan (US$7.6 billion), according to the company’s latest annual report.
Huawei Cloud’s Ascend AI platform is built on the company’s self-developed processors and framework, overcoming US sanctions that restrict the mainland’s access to American-origin technologies such as advanced semiconductors. On the mainland, Huawei’s Ascend AI chips now serve as an alternative to US restricted graphics processing units from Nvidia.
Cloud computing technology enables enterprises to manage or distribute over the internet a range of software and other digital resources as an on-demand service, just like electricity from a power grid. These resources are stored inside data centres.