Alibaba Cloud named a leader in Omdia's latest GenAI report
Alibaba Cloud is named one of four leaders among nine global vendors evaluated in Omdia's report, receiving the highest 'Advanced' rating in seven out of nine categories. Among the four companies designated as "Leader," Alibaba Cloud received the most "Advanced" ratings. The report evaluated nine key dimensions, including GenAI models, model optimization, GenAI infrastructure, development platforms, deployment, security, and developer community engagement.
'Alibaba Cloud offers end-to-end technology capabilities, including foundation models, GenAI platform, infrastructure, and applications. This positions it as a significant competitor in the global GenAI landscape,' said Omdia in the report.
The Omdia report highlighted Alibaba Cloud's strong position in the GenAI market, pointing to its full-stack GenAI solutions, comprehensive and developer-friendly AI platform offering and open source initiatives. Through its Model Studio and Platform for AI (PAI), Alibaba Cloud offers enterprises a user-friendly environment for building and deploying GenAI applications, supported by cutting-edge infrastructure including the PAI-Lingjun Intelligent Computing Service, according to the report.
'GenAI has captured the imagination of businesses in Asia and around the world, and we are grateful to be recognized for our leadership in helping companies implement its capabilities. Our commitment to open source is central to this, driving innovation through one of the largest AI ecosystems in the world. As we accelerate into the AI era, we want to make it as easy as possible for companies to harness the power of this technology and will continue to enhance our model family and solutions to ensure they have the support they need to thrive,' said Jingren Zhou, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
Since August 2023, Alibaba Cloud has actively contributed to the open-source AI community, releasing over 200 advanced AI models. These open-source efforts have resonated widely, as evidenced by the Qwen family surpassing 400 million downloads on platforms like Hugging Face and ModelScope and over 140,000 models built on Qwen by third parties, making it one of the most prominent AI model families worldwide.
As of January 2025, more than 290,000 customers across various sectors, including robotics, healthcare, education, finance, and automotive, have adopted Qwen models via Model Studio, Alibaba's generative AI development platform. This momentum underscores Qwen's role in accelerating AI-powered digital transformation across industries in China.
Omdia's report also notes that the GenAI software revenue in Asia & Oceania is estimated to be $5.5 billion in 2025. The market is expected to grow more than four times, reaching $19.8 billion in 2029. Currently, 27% of enterprises in Asia & Oceania are already deploying GenAI solutions, with an additional 33% piloting GenAI in at least one business function.
For more information and to access the full report, please refer to this link.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Zawya
13 minutes ago
- Zawya
Zoho Launches Zia LLM and Deepens AI Portfolio with Prebuilt Agents, Custom Agent Builder, MCP, and Marketplace
Homegrown, Business-Optimized Technology Addresses Needs for Developers and End Users While Enhancing Platform Capabilities SINGAPORE - Media OutReach Newswire - 28 July 2025 - Zoho Corporation, a global technology company, announced additional investments and offerings in AI, including Zia LLM, a proprietary large language model; Zia Agents, with 25+ ready-to-deploy AI-powered agents available in Agent Marketplace; Zia Agent Studio, a no-code agent builder; and a model context protocol (MCP) server to open up Zoho's vast library of actions to third-party agents. These capabilities and investments are designed to help organizations fully realize and maximize the value of contextual, assistive and agentic AI technology. Immediately impacting daily workflows for diverse roles and use cases, Zoho's latest AI developments deliver operational and financial efficiencies across entire organizations. "Zia LLM is a unique Enterprise LLM, this investment furthers Zoho's longstanding aim to build foundational technology focused on protection of customer data, breadth and depth of capabilities, and value," says Gibu Mathew, VP and GM of Zoho APAC. "Because Zoho's AI initiatives are developed internally, we are able to provide customers with cutting-edge tool sets without compromising data privacy and organizational flexibility, democratizing the latest technology on a global scale. For businesses, AI needs data integration at a DNA level, the Zoho platform is built with exactly that future and vision." Zia LLM, Built from the Ground Up and Optimized for Business Zoho has launched its own large language model, Zia LLM, built completely in-house by leveraging NVIDIA's AI accelerated computing platform. Trained with Zoho product use cases in mind—ranging from structured data extraction, summarization, RAG, and code generation—Zia LLM is comprised of three models with 1.3 billion, 2.6 billion and 7 billion parameters, each separately trained and optimized for contextual applicability that benchmark competitively against comparable open source models in the market. The three models allow Zoho to always optimize the right model for the right user context, striking the proper balance between power and resource management. This focus on right-sizing the model is an ongoing development strategy for Zoho. In addition to Zia LLM, Zoho is announcing two proprietary Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) models for speech-to-text conversion for both English and Hindi. Optimized to perform on a low computer load without compromising on accuracy, the models benchmark up to 75% better than comparable models across standard tests. Language support for additional languages will be coming in the future. While Zoho supports many LLM integrations for users, including ChatGPT, Llama, and DeepSeek, Zia LLM continues Zoho's commitment to data privacy by allowing customers to keep their data on Zoho servers, leveraging the latest AI capabilities without sending their data to AI cloud providers. Zia LLM will be deployed across Zoho's data centers in the US, India, and Europe. The model is currently testing for internal use cases across Zoho's broad app portfolio, and will be available for customer use in coming months. Effective Native AI Agents Ready for Use To enable immediate adoption of agentic technology, Zoho has developed a roster of AI agents contextually baked right into its products. These agents can be used across various business activities, handling relevant actions based on real-life organizational roles (including sales development, customer support, and account management). Agents available today include: New Version of Ask Zia: The latest version of Zoho's platform-wide conversational AI assistant, Ask Zia 's new BI skills are tailored to data engineers, analysts, and data scientists, yet supports any user within an organization. Ask Zia is now equipped with capabilities that directly address the unique pain points faced by each persona, whether it's building end-to-end data pipelines for engineers, analyzing data, creating reports and dashboards in an interactive conversation mode for analysts, or helping to jump start building ML models for data scientists. Customer Service Agent: With the ability to process incoming customer requests, understand the context behind them, and either answer them directly or triage them to a human rep, the Customer Service Agent for Zoho Desk provides an efficient yet reliable first line of assistance, paving the way for quicker responses and resolutions. AI Agent Studio and Marketplace First announced earlier in 2025, Zoho has further simplified the Zia Agent Studio experience to be fully prompt-based (with the option to use low-code) and include ready-made access to over 700 actions across Zoho's products. Agents built by users can be deployed autonomously, triggered through button click or rule-based automation, or summoned within customer conversations. At the time of deployment, an agent can also be provisioned as a digital employee. Digital Employees respect defined user access permissions, maintaining the same permissions structures already defined within the organization. Admins are able to perform behavioral audits as well as performance and impact analyses on Digital Employees, ensuring that every agent is working as effectively as possible and within clear guardrails. Zoho Marketplace, which supplies over 2500 reliable extensions and integrations for Zoho users, now houses the Agent Marketplace, a dedicated section for AI agents that can be deployed by customers quickly. Ecosystem partners, ISVs, and individual developers will soon be able to create agents and host them on the Zia Agents Marketplace, further simplifying the adoption of agentic technology by organizations. Some pre-built agents created with Zia Agent Studio (and available on the Zia Agent Marketplace) are: Revenue Growth Specialist: Uncovers opportunities for upsell and cross-sell across existing customers, recommending the best marketing approach for each customer. Deal Analyzer: Analyze deals and provide insights such as win probability, next best action, and follow-up suggestions. Candidate Screener: Intelligently identifies and ranks the most suitable candidates for a specific job opening based on role requirements, skills, experience, and other key attributes. Zoho will continue to add more pre-built agents to the Agent Marketplace over time to cover several valuable core and utility use cases across various business functions. The full list of available agents can be found under Additional Documentation. With over 55 applications across one ecosystem, users can build agents to meet their organization's every need, no matter how specific. With Zia Agent Studio, Zoho users have access to the same tools as Zoho's developers, ensuring that any agent a customer dreams of can be created with ease. Interoperability with MCP Zoho has adopted the model context protocol (MCP), offering its own MCP server with a rich action library across several applications, allowing any MCP client to tap into data and actions from various Zoho apps while respecting the customer's defined permission structures. Zoho's MCP server has a library of actions from more than 15 Zoho applications exposed during Early Access. With Zoho Flow, third party tools are also exposed. Additional Zoho applications will be onboarded in the coming months. Furthermore, Zoho Analytics now offers support for a local MCP server. Roadmap In the short term, Zoho will regularly scale Zia LLM's model sizes, starting with the first of several planned parameter increases by the end of 2025. Future planned releases include expanding the available languages used by the speech-to-text model, beginning with languages spoken primarily across Europe and India, as well as the introduction of a reasoning language model (RLM). Additional skills will be added to Ask Zia, allowing it to act as an assistant to Finance teams and Customer Support teams, with more skills added in the future. Support for the Agent2Agent (A2A) protocol will be implemented, allowing for Zia Agents to interact and collaborate with each other, as well as collaborate with agents on other platforms. Additional Documentation Zia Agent Marketplace - Full list of available agents at launch Disclaimer All trademarks, product names, and company names cited herein are the property of their respective owners. Availability and Pricing Zia LLM will be available to Zoho customers in the coming months. Zia Agents, Zia Agent Studio, Agent Marketplace, and Zoho MCP Server are being rolled out to customers who are currently on the early access waiting list. General availability for these offerings is expected towards the end of 2025. Zoho expects to study the usage patterns of these customers across use cases, industries, geographical regions, and sizes during this early access phase. A pricing structure for these offerings can be expected at the time of general availability. Zoho Artificial Intelligence Differentiation Zoho is committed to designing and incorporating artificial intelligence guided by the principles of customer privacy and value. Our generic AI models across contextual, assistive, and agentic AI, are not trained on consumer data and do not retain customer information. Zoho builds AI tools with usefulness in mind, striking a balance between providing AI technology that assists workers while right-sizing models that don't require burdening consumers with additional costs. Hashtag: #zoho The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. About Zoho With 55+ apps in nearly every major business category, Zoho Corporation is one of the world's most prolific technology companies. Zoho is privately held and profitable with more than 18,000 employees globally with headquarters in Austin, Texas and international headquarters in Chennai, India. Zoho APAC HQ is located in Singapore. For more information, please visit: Zoho respects user privacy and does not have an ad-revenue model in any part of its business, including its free products. The company owns and operates its data centers, ensuring complete oversight of customer data, privacy, and security. More than 100 million users around the world, across hundreds of thousands of companies, rely on Zoho everyday to run their businesses, including Zoho itself. For more information, please visit: Zoho Corporation
Zawya
7 hours ago
- Zawya
HKSTP Takes Nine Game-Changing AI Tech Ventures to WAIC 2025 to Advance China's AI Plus Vision in Transforming Business and Industry
HONG KONG SAR / SHANGHAI, CHINA - Media OutReach Newswire - 27 July 2025 - Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) is embarking on a mission to advance China's AI Plus vision with nine Hong Kong AI park companies at the World AI Conference & High-Level Meeting on Global AI Governance (WAIC) 2025, taking place from July 26-29 in Shanghai, China. In collaboration with the Hong Kong Trade Development Council and Cyberport, HKSTP is leveraging Hong Kong's growing global AI innovation hub status to advance the China's strategic AI initiative and applying AI and big data to transform old and new industry sectors to boost a new era of growth. Mr. Eric Or, Acting Chief Corporate Development Officer, HKSTP, said: "Hong Kong is a crucible for world-class AI innovation and our unique HKSTP ecosystem provides an ideal platform to empower AI tech firms with global fluency and pave the way for global expansion. By taking local tech companies on a global growth journey and attracting more international startups to land Hong Kong and integrating into the Mainland China or even the Asia markets means a growing critical mass of world-class AI innovators is created. This influx of global talent and technology will accelerate the country's high-tech industry and economic development, further fueling the national drive for new quality productive forces." The nine park enterprises participating in the Hong Kong Pavilion cover technologies in life and health tech, fintech, entertainment, aerospace tech, digital education and more, highlights included: Hong Kong Space Robotics and Energy Centre Limited (HKSRE) is an InnoHK R&D centre focuses on aerospace technology R&D to foster international collaboration for the Chang'e-8 mission. It brings together institutions from local and overseas to jointly develop the mission's Hong Kong-operated robot—a multifunctional lunar surface operations and mobile charging system. Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR) Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation Chinese Academy of Sciences is another InnoHK R&D centre, showcases MicroNeuro, the world's first flexible robotic system for minimally invasive neurosurgery to address challenges of fragile brain tissue and confined spaces, surpassing human surgical limits. Digital Domain, a global leader in Hollywood visual effects and AI virtual human technologies, showcases the AI-powered video creation solution "HANBAO" and "AI DOMAIN", an all-in-one content creation platform, empowering creators to tailor high-quality short videos for online platforms. Digital Domain has set up its state-of-the-art R&D centre in Hong Kong, driving the innovative development among entertainment and cross-industry. In addition to the showcase of tech firms, HKSTP also hosted a provoking panel discussion at WAIC 2025, exploring the theme of: "From Hong Kong to global impact: Shaping the future with AI and New Quality Productive Forces for Cross-industry Growth", moderated by Ms Pheona Kan, Director of Business Development at HKSTP with the fellow scientists and experts from the field. The discussion highlighted how Hong Kong has a unique role in global AI development by uniting international talent and technology behind the city's AI vision which also aligns with China's vision to transform industry through quality productive forces. As the largest I&T ecosystem in Hong Kong, HKSTP is home to over 500 AI startups, including home-grown unicorns that are shaping the future of artificial intelligence. In alignment with Hong Kong's bold vision for technological leadership, the HKSTP San Tin Technopole Campus—a 20-hectare site within the soon-to-be-built San Tin Technopole—will serve as a critical catalyst for the city's next wave of innovation. Strategically located in the heart of the Northern Metropolis, the Campus is poised to become a flagship landmark for AI+ and beyond, aiming to promote its widespread development and application across sectors. This year, WAIC 2025, themed "Global Solidarity in the AI Era," will bring together top scientists, global leaders, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and innovators in the AI ecosystem. KSTP's participation at WAIC 2025 is a testament to Hong Kong's role as a bridge between Chinese and global innovators, fostering collaboration and exchange of ideas, technologies, and governance philosophies. Appendix 1: List of park companies at Hong Kong Tech Pavilion Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Hong Kong Institute of Science & Innovation, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAIR) ClusterTech Limited Digital Domain Hong Kong Centre for Cerebro-cardiovascular Health Engineering (COCHE) HK INBOT TECHNOLOGY LIMITED Hong Kong Space Robotics and Energy Centre Limited MattVerse Limited Metapool Technology Limited Ultipa Hong Kong Limited Hashtag: #HKSTP The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement. About Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) was established in 2001 to create a thriving I&T ecosystem grooming 13 unicorns, more than 15,000 research professionals and over 2,300 technology companies from 26 countries and regions focused on developing healthtech, AI and robotics, fintech and smart city technologies, etc. Our growing innovation ecosystem offers comprehensive support to attract and nurture talent, accelerate and commercialise innovation for technology ventures, with the I&T journey built around our key locations of Hong Kong Science Park in Pak Shek Kok, InnoCentre in Kowloon Tong and three modern InnoParks in Tai Po, Tseung Kwan O and Yuen Long realising a vision of new industrialisation for Hong Kong, where sectors including advanced manufacturing, micro-electronics and biotechnology are being reimagined. Hong Kong Science Park Shenzhen Branch in Futian, Shenzhen plays positive roles in connecting the world and the mainland with our proximity, strengthening cross-border exchange to bring advantages in attracting global talent and allowing possibilities for the development of technology companies in seven key areas: Medtech, big data and AI, robotics, new materials, microelectronics, fintech and sustainability, with both dry and wet laboratories, co-working space, conference and exhibition facilities, and more. Through our R&D infrastructure, startup support and enterprise services, commercialisation and investment expertise, partnership networks and talent traction, HKSTP continues to contribute in establishing I&T as a pillar of growth for Hong Kong. More information about HKSTP is available at Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation
Gulf Today
8 hours ago
- Gulf Today
US and China to resume tariff talks in effort to extend truce
Senior US and Chinese negotiators meet in Stockholm on Monday to tackle longstanding economic disputes at the centre of the countries' trade war, aiming to extend a truce keeping sharply higher tariffs at bay. China is facing an August 12 deadline to reach a durable tariff agreement with President Donald Trump's administration, after Beijing and Washington reached a preliminary deal in June to end weeks of escalating tit-for-tat tariffs. Without an agreement, global supply chains could face renewed turmoil from duties exceeding 100%. The Stockholm talks, led by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, take place a day after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen meets Trump at his golf course in Scotland to try to clinch a deal that would likely see a 15% baseline tariff on most EU goods. Trade analysts on both sides of the Pacific say the discussions in the Swedish capital are unlikely to produce any breakthroughs but could prevent further escalation and help create conditions for Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping to meet later this year. Previous US-China trade talks in Geneva and London in May and June focused on bringing US and Chinese retaliatory tariffs down from triple-digit levels and restoring the flow of rare earth minerals halted by China and Nvidia H20 AI chips and other goods halted by the United States. So far, the talks have not delved into broader economic issues. They include US complaints that China's state-led, export-driven model is flooding world markets with cheap goods, and Beijing's complaints that US national security export controls on tech goods seek to stunt Chinese growth. 'Stockholm will be the first meaningful round of U.S.-China trade talks,' said Bo Zhengyuan, Shanghai-based partner at China consultancy firm Plenum. Trump has been successful in pressuring some other trading partners, including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, into deals accepting higher US tariffs of 15% to 20%. He said there was a 50-50 chance that the US and the 27-member European Union could also reach a framework trade pact, adding that Brussels wanted to 'make a deal very badly'. Two of Trump's top trade officials, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, will attend the Scotland talks and then travel to Stockholm. Analysts say the U.S.-China negotiations are far more complex and will require more time. China's grip on the global market for rare earth minerals and magnets, used in everything from military hardware to car windshield wiper motors, has proved to be an effective leverage point on US industries. In the background of the talks is speculation about a possible meeting between Trump and Xi in late October. Trump has said he will decide soon whether to visit China in a landmark trip to address trade and security tensions. A new flare-up of tariffs and export controls would likely derail any plans for a meeting with Xi. 'The Stockholm meeting is an opportunity to start laying the groundwork for a Trump visit to China,' said Wendy Cutler, vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. Bessent has already said he wants to work out an extension of the August 12 deadline to prevent tariffs snapping back to 145% on the US side and 125% on the Chinese side. Still, China will likely request a reduction of multi-layered US tariffs totaling 55% on most goods and further easing of US high-tech export controls, analysts said. Beijing has argued that such purchases would help reduce the US trade deficit with China, which reached $295.5 billion in 2024. China is currently facing a 20% tariff related to the US fentanyl crisis, a 10% reciprocal tariff, and 25% duties on most industrial goods imposed during Trump's first term. Bessent has also said he would discuss with He the need for China to rebalance its economy away from exports toward domestic consumer demand. The shift would require China to put an end to a protracted property crisis and boost social safety nets to encourage household spending. Michael Froman, a former US trade representative during Barack Obama's administration, said such a shift has been a goal of US policymakers for two decades. 'Can we effectively use tariffs to get China to fundamentally change their economic strategy? That remains to be seen,' said Froman, now president of the Council on Foreign Relations think-tank. Reuters
