"Cloud + AI" Builds a New Paradigm for Entrepreneurship, Alibaba Cloud Launches the "Entrepreneur Program"

[baoshi.rao]

In just over a decade, China's cloud computing industry has grown into a massive market worth hundreds of billions. From its initial distributed computing roots to today's cloud-native technologies, the form and function of cloud computing continue to evolve. More and more enterprises are migrating their workloads to the cloud, and cloud-native is gradually becoming the underlying technological trend for digital transformation.

With the AI boom led by large models sweeping the globe, cloud computing, as an indispensable infrastructure for AI computing power, is poised to tap into a new incremental market during this AI wave. Some analysts directly point out that as enterprises continue to increase their investments in AI, underlying computing power is expected to grow by 10 to 100 times.

"Cloud + AI" is becoming a new paradigm for entrepreneurship. Alibaba Cloud has recently launched the Alibaba Cloud Entrepreneur Program, which plans to support 30,000 startups annually, with each company eligible for up to 1 million yuan in cloud resources.

(Alibaba Cloud and representatives from the first batch of partner institutions jointly launch the Entrepreneur Program. From left: Zhu Xiaowen, Partner at Plug and Play China Fund; Liu Yuan, Partner at ZhenFund; Lan Hao, Vice President of 36Kr; Chen Hongliang, Partner at Yuanjing Capital; Liu Xiangwen, President of Alibaba Cloud Marketing; Pan Liwei, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud SME Division; Zheng Xin, General Manager of GeekPark; Hu Zhonglin, Partner at Dachen Caizhi; Hao Yiwen, Managing Director at Source Code Capital; Ren Bobing, Executive Director and Head of Early-Stage Fund at Innovation Works.)

ChatGPT has sparked a global frenzy around large models. Computing power, as the "fuel" behind model training, is an essential resource for the development and deployment of AI technologies. Whether for training current large models or supporting future AI applications, computing power is indispensable.

In fact, during ChatGPT's R&D phase, Microsoft's Azure cloud services shouldered annual model training costs amounting to tens of millions of dollars. On the other hand, cloud deployment and cloud collaboration can significantly shorten the distance between technology and customers. By being deployed on the cloud, AI has the potential to become as ubiquitous as 'water, electricity, and gas,' readily accessible to all industries.

Therefore, in this AI-driven technological revolution, cloud computing is expected to serve as the 'soil' for the growth of various technologies and applications, creating the necessary conditions for the advent of a truly intelligent era. 'Cloud + AI' is poised to become the new infrastructure of the digital age.

As one of China's earliest cloud computing service providers, Alibaba Cloud started in 2009 by serving local webmasters and has since witnessed the proliferation of cloud computing across industries. Li Zhongyu, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud's Entrepreneurship and Incubation Division, shared his observations on how startups are evolving their cloud usage:

1. Increased Cloud Adoption: Cloud has become the first choice for startups. Overall cloud spending (IaaS, PaaS, SaaS) is rising, with the fastest compound growth rate compared to other IT expenditures (such as non-cloud spending on software and hardware and IT services). 'Cloud adoption is now the default for entrepreneurs, and cloud-native will be the typical state for emerging startups. New technologies and platforms will integrate with and originate from the cloud, driving demand for computing power, storage, and network resources.'

2. Deeper Cloud Utilization: A new computing system centered on 'Cloud + AI' is taking shape, and software development paradigms are undergoing transformation. Initially, companies primarily used SaaS applications. With the growth of big data and AI industries, computing demands have evolved, changing cloud usage patterns. Investment in PaaS (including big data, middleware, and cloud-native technologies) is increasing, marking a deeper phase of cloud adoption.

More startups are now 'born in the cloud' and 'grow in the cloud,' leveraging cloud services for low-cost, rapid launches and iterations, giving cloud-native enterprises faster startup speeds. Amid the current wave of AI technology, a new generation of intelligent-native enterprises is emerging from the cloud.

At the launch event of the 'Entrepreneur Program,' LeFit, a leading internet platform in China's fitness industry, was highlighted as a prime example of a cloud-native enterprise. Xia Dong, co-founder and co-CEO of LeFit, mentioned that the company has been building its digital capabilities on Alibaba Cloud since its inception. Focused on digitally transforming the traditional fitness industry, LeFit prioritizes cost efficiency, scalability, and flexibility in its operations. With Alibaba Cloud's digital and IT infrastructure, LeFit's team can concentrate on core business activities without dedicating significant resources to maintaining server infrastructure or physical data centers. Additionally, the fluctuating usage patterns of fitness users are seamlessly managed through Alibaba Cloud's cloud-native platform, enabling rapid server capacity expansion during peak hours.

DeepLang Technology, on the other hand, represents a quintessential AI-native enterprise. As a rising star in the hotly contested field of large language models (LLMs) and AI-generated content (AIGC), the company originated from Tsinghua University's Natural Language Processing Lab and the Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence. It is dedicated to developing a next-generation intelligent text processing platform based on large-scale pre-trained models. Founder and CEO Qi Fanchao noted that DeepLang has been utilizing Alibaba Cloud's PAI platform for model training and deployment from the outset. The platform's tools, such as PAI-DSW and PAI-DLC, facilitate flexible interactive programming, reducing engineering costs for model training, while EasyCkpt enables rapid model storage, minimizing losses from training interruptions. The overall experience has been characterized as user-friendly, cost-effective, and high-performance. To date, DeepLang has stably trained models for about a month on Alibaba Cloud's nearly 1,000-card GPU cluster, achieving close to 100% GPU utilization and over 50% FLOPs efficiency.

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have always been a strategic priority for Alibaba. Alibaba Cloud was the earliest domestic cloud provider to offer innovation and entrepreneurship services. In his inaugural company-wide letter, Alibaba Group's new CEO, Wu Yongming, emphasized the company's commitment to 'fulfilling its mission of serving SMEs.' On September 21, Alibaba Cloud officially launched the 'Entrepreneur Program,' marking another significant initiative following its comprehensive price reductions in April.

The 'Entrepreneur Program' targets startups, offering four key benefits: exclusive product services, cloud resource subsidies, business growth acceleration, and joint branding opportunities. Notably, the program is open to startups across all sectors, whether in AI, enterprise services, social entertainment, smart manufacturing, healthcare, or any other field requiring cloud resources. Demonstrating substantial commitment, Alibaba Cloud aims to support 30,000 startups annually under this program, with each eligible for up to 1 million RMB in cloud resources.

The 'Entrepreneur Program' addresses the core needs of startups by providing exclusive product services, cloud resource subsidies, accelerated growth support, and joint branding initiatives. This long-term support plan covers cloud services, IT expenditures, management operations, financing, and brand promotion. Since 2020, Alibaba Cloud has been rolling out cloud migration subsidies and support activities, but this program significantly amplifies its investment in startup empowerment.

Li Zhongyu, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud's Startup Incubation Division, stated that the program aims to help startups quickly build their businesses and products on a 'Cloud + AI' foundation, enabling them to share in technological advancements. He emphasized, 'The Entrepreneur Program is not just about support—it’s about Alibaba Cloud and startups exploring and growing together in the intelligent era.'

Currently, industries face challenges in adopting AI, including selecting technical pathways, understanding customer scenarios, and refining business models. As a 'Cloud + AI' platform provider, Alibaba Cloud seeks to simplify this transition with user-friendly, integrated products and services. Li Zhongyu noted, 'Achieving this goal requires not just Alibaba Cloud’s 10,000 engineers but also collaboration with countless entrepreneurs.'

Through this program, Alibaba Cloud aims to attract top entrepreneurial talent, refine its cloud services based on diverse application feedback, and rapidly iterate its technology. As a leader in cloud computing, Alibaba Cloud is redefining its role in the AI era, striving to make 'Cloud + AI' as essential as utilities.

At the program launch, Liu Xiangwen, President of Alibaba Cloud's Marketing Department, highlighted the company’s 14-year commitment to being a technology platform, investing heavily in innovation to earn market trust.

Key offerings under the program include databases, elastic computing, networking products, expert services, 24/7 DDoS attack protection, and certification training—a major highlight. Li Zhongyu stressed that startups prioritize technological differentiation when choosing cloud providers, making technical capabilities a decisive factor.

Meanwhile, continuously lowering the technical usage threshold has always been one of Alibaba Cloud's key strategies. Currently, Alibaba Cloud's products have fully adopted Serverless technology to enhance technical usability, reduce resource usage and operational barriers, allowing entrepreneurs to focus on their core business. In the rapid advancement of generative AI, Alibaba Cloud has been deeply involved, with a core focus on supporting entrepreneurs at all levels to develop and utilize large models effectively.

In November 2022, Alibaba Cloud launched the AI large model open-source community 'ModelScope' at the Yunqi Conference, introducing the concept of MaaS ('Model as a Service') and proposing a development paradigm centered on AI models. It also established a cloud computing technology and service architecture centered on AI models. Currently, Alibaba Cloud has formed an AI product and service portfolio, including the 'Tongyi Qianwen' large model, the 'ModelScope' community, the 'Lingji' model service platform, and the Alibaba Cloud PAI platform. Among these, the 'ModelScope' community has gathered over 1.8 million AI developers and more than 900 high-quality AI models.

This suite of services is fully open to large model startups and developers, providing comprehensive services including model training, inference, deployment, fine-tuning, evaluation, and productization, thereby continuously lowering the barriers for enterprises to access and utilize AI.

During the discussion session on 'How Startups Can Effectively Use AI' at the launch event, Yin Bohao, CEO of Monkey Infinite, stated, 'Beyond Alibaba Cloud's work on data, algorithms, and computing power, the entire Alibaba team has done a lot in the open-source community to lower the barriers to AI development.' Miao Zhao, CEO of Jellyfish Intelligence, added that over four years of entrepreneurship, Jellyfish has deeply collaborated with Alibaba Cloud and DAMO Academy on AI technology. Particularly since August last year, as one of the first companies to enter the AIGC application space, Jellyfish has worked closely with Alibaba Cloud on AIGC technology and compliance.

Liu Xiangwen, President of Alibaba Cloud's Marketing Department, emphasized that Alibaba Cloud has always been a company in a state of entrepreneurship. Over its 14-year journey, it has witnessed the rise and fall of trends from the internet to mobile internet and now the intelligent era, accompanying startups through different cycles. Countless enterprises have been born on the cloud and grown into unicorns. 'Our business development is inseparable from the support and trust of countless entrepreneurs. They have built their businesses on the cloud from day one. Alibaba Cloud's positioning has never changed—it remains a technology platform company, steadfastly delivering products and services. Startups are our important customer base, numerous and rapidly growing; today's startups are tomorrow's unicorns.'