Alibaba subsidiary, Alibaba Cloud announced its plans to invest USD $1billion across several Asia Pacific countries in developing a digital talent pool and empower the growth of 100,000 startups in the technological field. Current disclosed countries to be involved in the investment plans are Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore.

The investment strategy is part of Alibaba Cloud’s AsiaForward core project, DigiTalents Forward with a focus on infrastructure, technological innovation, and talent development to help in the economic growth of the local arena. AsiaForward has two more projects under its wing being AI Forward, and DigiEntrepreneurs Forward.

Alibaba will partner with Handsprofit, Malaysia in developing its very first international innovation centre in the country. This will become an opportunity for Malaysian startups, and SMEs a platform for innovation opportunities. The platform will be offering various cloud technology, leadership training, and venture capital networking.

The data centre investment in Indonesia will be the third launch by Alibaba Cloud that offers database, security, network, machine learning, and data analytics services. It is mentioned that the new centre allows better support for local businesses in adopting cloud technology and encourages Indonesia’s push for a digital community.

As for development in the Philippines, the first data centre is estimated to be launched by end of 2021. Similar to the development plans of Malaysia and Indonesia, it will be a huge support for the digitalization of local businesses through services such as elastic compute service, database, global network solution, content delivery network, and storage services. This establishes Alibaba Cloud’s stand on prioritizing the country’s banking, fintech, retail, logistics, education sectors, and others.

In Singapore, Alibaba Cloud plans a kick-off of the DigiTalents Forward program. This is said to be a collaboration with Singapore’s School of Computer Science and Engineering, and NTU-Alibaba Singapore Joint Research Institute at the Nanyang Technological University. Programs will include the focus of various AI courses under NTU’s MiniMasters program.