At the 2026 Apsara Conference in Hangzhou, Alibaba Cloud spotlighted its growing roster of partners across Asia Pacific. The collaborations span various industries including logistics, gaming, entertainment, and manufacturing. Alibaba Cloud also announced plans to expand its data centre footprint in both Malaysia and Hong Kong over the next 12 months.
For Feifei Li, the push goes beyond capability. It is also about proximity. “We are expanding our global cloud footprint to bring computing resources closer to customers and partners, while continuing to evolve our AI technologies to help enterprises deploy models, optimize multi-model workloads and create new AI-powered applications,” said the Chief Technology Officer and President of International Business of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.
In Indonesia, Lion Parcel offers a clear example of AI at work behind the scenes. The logistics provider turned to the Qwen-VL-Plus model on Alibaba’s Model Studio to automate its finance and document workflows with staff no longer needing to transcribe data by hand.
Malaysia’s Loomi Entertainment Group has taken a more creative route. It built Alibaba’s Wan and HappyHorse models into Imaginary, the group’s cinematic AI engine. The two companies have already hosted two Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) hackathons and trained more than 100 local creators. The two companies are also exploring Wan for Loomi’s micro-drama production pipeline.
“Alibaba Cloud’s advanced AI models give creators new ways to turn ideas into engaging content more efficiently. Through this partnership, we look forward to bringing AIGC capabilities to more creators in Malaysia and the wider region, while exploring new possibilities for AI-powered content production,” said Ivan Tan, CTO of Loomi Entertainment Group.
The Loomi deal adds to earlier ties in Malaysia. Last December, Alibaba Cloud became the cloud backbone for AI-powered Ryt Bank and formalised a partnership with the EV arm of national carmaker Proton, PRO-NET.
Smaller businesses stand to gain too. SHAKE, a US-based company that provides agentic resource planning tools for SMBs, is developing its own AI model on Qwen as it grows across APAC. Its services will also be available on the Alibaba Cloud Marketplace.
