TechPression

Tag: Alibaba Cloud

  • Alibaba Cloud’s 85% price slash for Qwen-VL-Max set to transform AI in healthcare, finance

    Alibaba Cloud’s 85% price slash for Qwen-VL-Max set to transform AI in healthcare, finance

    On December 31, 2024, Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing division of Alibaba Group, announced significant price reductions for its visual reasoning AI model, Qwen-VL-Max. 

    This initiative is set to transform how businesses approach AI technology, particularly in industries such as healthcare and finance. 

    Alibaba’s founder, Jack Ma, has long envisioned the company as a leader in technological innovation, and this latest move underscores that commitment.

    Read also: Alibaba enters African market with Morocco as strategic launchpad for e-commerce expansion

    Competitive pricing strategy

    Alibaba Cloud’s price cut of up to 85 per cent for Qwen-VL-Max positions it at just 0.003 yuan (approximately $0.00041) per thousand tokens. 

    This significant reduction aims to make advanced AI capabilities more accessible to a broader range of businesses. 

    The move comes as part of a series of adjustments throughout the year, reflecting Alibaba’s proactive approach in a highly competitive market. 

    Recent reports highlight that “These cuts are primarily focused on inference costs,” which are critical for real-time AI applications, as first mentioned in a report on September 25, 2024, during Eddie Wu’s speech at the 2024 Apsara Conference.

    This aggressive pricing strategy is particularly beneficial for startups and mid-sized companies that may have previously found the costs prohibitive. 

    By lowering these expenses, Alibaba Cloud is enhancing its service offerings and encouraging innovation and experimentation among businesses looking to leverage AI for growth.

    Read also: UK firms slam Microsoft with £1 billion suit over alleged anti-competitive cloud practices

    Expanding AI capabilities

    Qwen-VL-Max is designed to process text and images, making it a versatile tool for various applications ranging from content creation to data analysis. This capability allows businesses to harness the power of AI in ways that were not feasible before due to cost constraints. 

    With the growing demand for AI solutions across different sectors, Alibaba Cloud’s pricing overhaul is expected to attract a diverse clientele eager to explore new possibilities.

    Industry analysts believe this strategic pricing will help Alibaba Cloud maintain its competitive edge against rivals like ByteDance and Tencent.

    One expert noted, “Lowering costs while enhancing capabilities is a winning formula in today’s fast-paced tech environment.” This sentiment reflects the broader trend in the tech industry, where companies increasingly focus on making advanced technologies accessible to all.

    The announcement has sparked excitement among developers and businesses alike, who look forward to integrating these advanced AI tools into their operations without breaking the bank. 

    With Jack Ma’s vision guiding Alibaba Cloud’s direction, the company is poised to continue its role as a key player in the global tech arena.

  • Alibaba Cloud unveils Qwen-VL and Qwen-VL-Chat for AI 

    Alibaba Cloud unveils Qwen-VL and Qwen-VL-Chat for AI 

    Alibaba Cloud, the pioneering digital technology and intelligence arm of Alibaba Group has once again pushed the boundaries of artificial intelligence (AI) with the launch of two groundbreaking open-source models – Qwen-VL and Qwen-VL-Chat. 

    These models represent a leap forward in AI capabilities, as they seamlessly combine language and vision understanding, making them a powerful tool for a wide range of applications.

    Qwen-VL, an abbreviation for “Qwen Vision-Language,” is a multimodal marvel that builds upon the success of Alibaba Cloud’s 7-billion-parameter model, Tongyi Qianwen. Unlike its predecessor, Qwen-VL has the remarkable ability to comprehend not only text but also images, allowing it to interact with both in English and Chinese. This opens up a world of possibilities, from answering questions about images to generating image captions.

    Qwen-VL-Chat takes this fusion of language and vision to a higher level. It is designed for more complex interactions, such as comparing multiple images and engaging in multi-round question answering. Leveraging advanced alignment techniques, this AI assistant can flex its creative muscles by writing poetry and stories based on input images, summarizing the content of multiple pictures, and even solving mathematical questions displayed in images.

    Read also: BCX and Alibaba Cloud Distribution Agreement Deal for South Africa

    Democratizing AI for All

    In a remarkable move to democratize AI technologies, Alibaba Cloud has generously shared the code, weights, and documentation of these models with academics, researchers, and commercial institutions worldwide. These valuable resources can be accessed through Alibaba’s AI model community, ModelScope, and the collaborative AI platform Hugging Face. For commercial applications, companies boasting over 100 million monthly active users can request a license from Alibaba Cloud.

    This commitment to open source not only accelerates the development of AI but also promotes inclusivity, enabling a broader community to harness the power of these models for various purposes.

    Enhancing Accessibility for the Visually Impaired

    The introduction of Qwen-VL and Qwen-VL-Chat marks a significant milestone in AI. Their unique ability to extract meaning and information from images has the potential to revolutionize how we interact with visual content. For instance, in the future, these models could provide invaluable assistance to visually impaired individuals during online shopping. By understanding images and answering questions about them, they could make the digital world more accessible and inclusive.

    Setting New Benchmarks

    Qwen-VL was pre-trained on a vast dataset comprising both images and text. What sets it apart from other open-source large vision language models is its ability to handle image inputs at an impressive resolution of 448*448, resulting in superior image recognition and comprehension. It has demonstrated exceptional performance on various visual language tasks, including zero-shot captioning, general visual question answering, text-oriented visual question answering, and object detection.

    Qwen-VL-Chat has not lagged behind either. In benchmark tests conducted by Alibaba Cloud, it achieved leading results in both Chinese and English for text-image dialogue and alignment levels with humans. The test involved a substantial dataset, including over 300 images, 800 questions, and 27 categories.

    A Continuation of Open Source Excellence

    Earlier this month, Alibaba Cloud set a high standard for open-source AI by releasing its 7-billion-parameter LLMs, Qwen-7B and Qwen-7B-Chat. Within just a month of their launch, these models have been downloaded over 400,000 times, illustrating their tremendous impact and popularity within the AI community.

    Alibaba Cloud’s commitment to advancing AI through open source contributions is clear, and the release of Qwen-VL and Qwen-VL-Chat reinforces this dedication to innovation and inclusivity.

    In conclusion, Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen-VL and Qwen-VL-Chat are not merely AI models; they represent a giant leap forward in the capabilities of AI, with the potential to reshape how we interact with technology and improve accessibility for all. Through open source, Alibaba Cloud is not only fostering innovation but also inviting the world to join in shaping the future of AI.

  • BCX and Alibaba Cloud Distribution Agreement Deal for South Africa

    BCX and Alibaba Cloud Distribution Agreement Deal for South Africa

    The business unit responsible for the integration of information technology at Telkom South Africa, known as BCX, has entered into a strategic collaboration with Alibaba Cloud, the division of Alibaba Group responsible for digital technology and cloud services.

    As part of the deal, BCX will have the exclusive right to sell Alibaba Cloud products and services across South Africa.

    In a joint statement, the companies explained that Alibaba Cloud provides a wide variety of cloud computing products and services for the entire spectrum of information and communications technology (ICT) applications. These applications include databases, networking, security, analytics, big data, application services, and more.

    According to the statement, “This is Complementary to BCX’s Offering as a Vendor-Agnostic SystemsIntegrator that Develops Solutions for Its Clients Based on Their Exact Use Case Across a Wide Range of Technology and Vertical Sectors.” This adds to what BCX has to offer as a vendor-neutral systems integrator that makes solutions for

    “We are happy to build a partnership with BCX to bring advanced, secure, and reliable cloud services and technologies to businesses in South Africa and beyond,” said Daniel Jiang, general manager of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence for the Middle East and Africa. “BCX is a leader in the cloud computing industry, and we are excited to work with them.”

    Read also: Response Architects Partners with Alibaba to launch Livestream Shopping across Africa

    BCX CEO Jonas Bogoshi said, “The partnership gives us the chance to expand our reach and services and create new revenue streams. This is part of our larger plan to grow our business and grow our partner ecosystem. ”

    The partnership is beneficial for BCX

    According to the continuation of the statement, the South African market will benefit from competitive pricing, increased variety, and cloud technologies. Telkom SA said that the ICT solutions industry was having trouble with supply-chain problems, so this partnership could also help BCX.

    The IT business remains challenging due to the lingering impact of COVID-19 and the global shortage of chips, which led to BCX being unable to fulfil backorders for IT hardware in the first nine months of the financial year, “the operator said,” explaining why BCX was unable to fulfil backorders for IT hardware during the first nine months of the fiscal year.

    BCX, which Telkom purchased in 2015 for 2.7 billion South African rand (about US$205 million at the time), saw its revenue dip by 3.6% in Q3 to roughly R3.8 billion ($242 million) as a direct result of the worldwide supply issues.

    At the end of the statement, it said that the companies plan to combine their technological skills, areas of expertise, and competencies to create services that help businesses use cloud computing technologies to grow and expand.

    About BCX

    Business Connexion (Pty) Ltd., BCX, is an information and communications technology (ICT) firm with its headquarters in South Africa. Additionally, the BCX stock can be found on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE). The ICT business has a significant global presence, with operations across Africa, Europe, and the Middle East. In Africa, Bcx grows in Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Zambia and Tanzania. In addition to having offices in the Middle East, this organization also has locations in the United Kingdom. The capacity of the BCX data centre is the highest of any in Southern Africa.

    Jack Ma intends to relinquish control of Ant Group

    About Alibaba

    Alibaba Group Holding Limited is a Chinese multinational technology business that specializes in e-commerce, retail, the Internet, and technology. It was founded in 1999. The company was established on June 28, 1999, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, and it offers consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales services via web portals. Additionally, the company offers electronic payment services, shopping search engines, and cloud computing services. It is the owner and operator of a varied portfolio of firms located worldwide and engaged in various business activities.