China's Huawei to invest 1 billion yuan in cloud business over 3 years

HONG KONG (Reuters) - China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the world’s largest telecom-equipment maker, plans to invest 1 billion yuan ($145 million) over the next three year to develop artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities for its cloud business, it said on Friday.

People walk past a sign board of Huawei at CES (Consumer Electronics Show) Asia 2018 in Shanghai, China June 14, 2018. REUTERS/Aly Song

Zheng Yelai, president of Huawei’s cloud unit, also said the company planned to start offering public cloud service in South Africa, as it is “a strong base from which to develop cloud business in the African continent”.

Huawei established BU in 2017 to go into the public cloud service market in China, currently dominated by Alibaba.

Huawei already offers cloud services in Hong Kong, Russia and Malaysia outside mainland China.

Huawei earlier this week unveiled two AI chips that it said are more powerful than existing chips in the market in an attempt to boost its cloud business.

($1 = 6.9154 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Reporting by Sijia Jiang; Editing by Mark Potter

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