‘Cloud infrastructure is critical to the future of society’ and Alibaba wants to play its part, says CEO Daniel Zhang

The e-commerce giant is enabling more companies to become digital, data-driven enterprises

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Daniel Zhang Yong, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Alibaba attends the Alibaba debut ceremony at Exchange Square in Central, November 19, Photo: SCMP

Published: 10:45am, 28 Nov 2019Updated: 4:23pm, 28 Nov 2019

After a successful listing in Hong Kong this week, Alibaba Group Holding chief executive Daniel Zhang Yong said he remains focused on the long term and empowering people through technology.

“Today, because of digital technology, we can enable people and our merchants to do business in a digital way. We are able to help traditional companies transform themselves into a digital, data-driven company,” Zhang told the South China Morning Post this week. “That was our mission from day one. We have a huge digital infrastructure and we want to use this for good, rather than just build scale.”

Zhang said Alibaba is focused on trying to help its partners transform their entire business – including sales, transactions, product innovation, cloud infrastructure and supply chain management.

By the end of the annual 24-hour Singles’ Day shopping extravaganza on November 11 this year, the Chinese technology giant reported a record-shattering 268.4 billion yuan (US$38.4 billion) of sales.

All of this took place with “zero downtime”, thanks to its cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI) technology, Alibaba Cloud said in a statement following the event.