Alibaba Debuts Cloud Computer, Delivery Robots at Cloud Computing Conference
17.9.2020 05:44:00 EEST | Business Wire | Press release
Alibaba Cloud, the digital technologies and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, today unveiled a series of innovative products at its 12th annual Apsara Conference, highlighting the technology pioneer’s commitment in helping people adapt to the more digitized world and accelerate customers’ digital transformation during and after the pandemic.
This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916006004/en/
Alibaba Debuts First Cloud Computer (Photo: Business Wire)
A highlight is Alibaba Cloud’s first cloud computer, a palm-sized personal computer which, despite being just about 60 grams and as light as an egg, offers high-performance computing, thanks to robust back-end cloud resources. By simply connecting the cloud computer with a normal computer screen, a user can access almost unlimited computing resources anytime, anywhere, while paying on a subscription model or for the actual cloud consumption.
“We hope our cloud computer can help people access resilient computing power whenever they need to, so they can conduct complex tasks which usually require sophisticated and powerful PCs, such as video editing, animation rendering, software development, and online customer services, with a tiny personal computer at hand now,” said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “As working from home becomes the new normal during and after the pandemic, we believe our innovation can also help users more easily enjoy the benefits of cloud computing anytime, anywhere, in a cost-effective yet secure way.”
With robust computing power, the cloud computer can reduce the rendering time of one frame high-resolution animation from 90 minutes using a traditional PC, down to only 10 minutes. In addition, the cloud computer’s system upgrades are conducted online, saving a big chunk of the normally heavy cost of PC machine upgrades and maintenance in traditional office settings. Through Alibaba Cloud's self-developed app-streaming protocol, which is designed for synergy between the cloud and the device, users can also purchase and access licensed apps and programs such Linux and Windows as well as various office applications. All user data will be stored on cloud for datacenter-grade security and protection measures. Available initially for enterprise customers, the cloud computers will be also available for purchase by individual consumers in the near future.
Alibaba Cloud also unveiled its autonomous logistics robot for last-mile deliveries. Developed by the Alibaba DAMO Academy, the global research initiative by Alibaba Group, the delivery robot can carry 50 packages at one time and cover 62 miles (or 100 kilometres) on a single charge. It is estimated the mobile robot should be able to deliver as many as 500 packages a day to one designated community or campus, meeting the rising demand for speedy last-mile delivery in China. Online shopping is booming there, with 200 million packages delivered daily and expectations that will rise to 1 billion packages per day in the coming years.
“We are expecting a rapid spike of delivery demands brought by the thriving New Retail and local services businesses in the increasingly digitalized world,” added Zhang. “To meet the strong delivery demand for our internal business growth and for the larger society, we have been investing in smart logistics, including logistics robots, for years. We are glad to launch our latest mobile delivery robot, which will support Cainiao, Alibaba’s logistics platform, to serve communities, campuses and business parks in China. “
“Moving ahead, we aim to support the delivery needs of our local services businesses and leverage our technologies for other types of service robots, such as service robots in the airport and tourism guide robots in scenic spots.”
Supported with reinforced learning technologies, the intelligent robot can schedule its route even in a crowded environment. With proprietary, high-definition positioning technology, the robot can operate even where there’s weak or no GPS signal. Leveraging a self-developed heterogeneous computing platform, 3D Point Cloud Semantic Segmentation (PCSS) technology and deep learning, the robot can also identify obstacles and predict the intended movement of passengers and vehicles a few seconds ahead of time to enhance safety.
Consumers can use either the Cainiao or Taobao mobile apps to select a preferred timeslot during the day for delivery. The robot then arrives at the designated destination, where users retrieve their packages simply by entering a passcode they receive in the app, once the robot arrives.
A slew of cloud-native products were unveiled during the Conference:
- Cloud Lakehouse: This is the next-generation big data architecture which can deliver significant data-based values and intelligence through cross-platform computing, intelligent cache, hot/cold data separation, storage improvement and performance acceleration.
- Sandboxed-Container 2.0: Alibaba’s cloud-native container service for Kubernetes supports clusters that provide sandboxed container runtimes. The new Sandboxed-Container 2.0 enables customers to run applications in lightweight sandboxed environments with faster speeds and reduced cost of runtime resources.
- PAI-DSW 2.0: The latest Cloud-native Machine-learning Interactive Development Platform by Alibaba. It aims to provide an optimal environment for developers that is easy to use, compatible with community plug-ins and supports multi-development environments like JupyterLab, WebIDE and Terminal.
- Lindorm: The cloud-native multi-model database that is used to support the Alibaba Group ecosystem, is introduced to benefit the wider Alibaba Cloud ecosystem. Lindorm is a cloud-native database, with affordable storage and flexible processing characteristics. It is designed for applications with massive processing requirements for a mixture of unstructured, semi-structured, and structured data.
The conference, named “Leap Into the Future of Digital Intelligence,” was entirely hosted online for the first time, with over 100 virtual forums on topics ranging from cloud computing, IoT to machine learning and industrial AI solutions.
For more information about the Apsara Conference, please visit the website: https://www.alibabacloud.com/apsara-conference-2020
About Alibaba Cloud
Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (alibabacloud.com), the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, is among the world’s top three IaaS providers, according to Gartner. It is also the largest provider of public cloud services in China, according to IDC. Alibaba Cloud provides a comprehensive suite of cloud computing services to businesses worldwide, including merchants doing business on Alibaba Group marketplaces, start-ups, corporations and public services. Alibaba Cloud is the official Cloud Services Partner of the International Olympic Committee.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200916006004/en/
Contact information
Media Contact:
Crystal Liu
Crystal.liu@alibaba-inc.com
+86 18578497650
Luica Mak
luica.mak@alibaba-inc.com
+44-7905471332
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Airship Announces Results Guarantee; Releases Commissioned Study Finding 476% ROI for Composite Organization22.7.2026 18:00:00 EEST | Press release
Airship, the mobile-first customer experience platform leader, today announced its Airship Results Guarantee, a corporate commitment to achieve predetermined business outcomes for new customers. Concurrently, the company released the results of a separate, commissioned Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Airship, July 2026. The study found that a composite organization based on interviewed customers achieved a 476% Return on Investment (ROI) with a payback period of less than six months. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260722832535/en/ Airship has launched a new results guarantee offer to stand behind its value. Alongside this offer, the team shared the results of a new Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study commissioned with Forrester Consulting illustrating that a composite organization achieved a 476% ROI with a payback period of less than six months. “We introduced
Arrakis Comes out of Stealth With $38M to Help Industrial Enterprises Compete in the AI Era22.7.2026 16:56:00 EEST | Press release
Arrakis, the AI deployment company helping industrial companies install AI agents for mission-critical operations, today announced a $30 million Series A led by Blossom Capital, with participation from existing investor Accel, which also led the company's $7.5 million seed round. The round brings total funding to around $38 million and includes backing from prominent technology leaders, including Olivier Pomel, founder and chief executive of Datadog, Olivier Godement, OpenAI’s Head of business products and Junaid Hussein, founder of Cambridge Aerospace. Founded in January 2026 by former Accel investor Rafael Quintanilla, together with co-founders Haroun Beltaifa, Romain Fouilland and Mikhail Galkov - alumni of Palantir, DeliveryHero, Revolut, Datadog and ASML - Arrakis helps industrial companies deploy AI into core operational workflows across aerospace, energy, logistics, manufacturing, construction and telecommunications markets. Across the US and Europe, governments and businesses a
Vultr and AMD Support the University of Cambridge's TESSERA AI Project to Accelerate Global Environmental Monitoring22.7.2026 16:00:00 EEST | Press release
Vultr, the world’s largest privately-held cloud infrastructure company, and AMD, a leader in high-performance and AI computing, have announced their support for the University of Cambridge's Energy & Environment Group in developing TESSERA, a groundbreaking AI foundation model designed to monitor environmental change internationally at unprecedented scale. Vultr is providing the computational infrastructure, based on AMD Instinct MI325X accelerators, necessary to generate global embeddings covering Earth's land surface from 2017 to 2025, enabling applications in agriculture, biodiversity conservation, and renewable energy infrastructure monitoring. The collaboration represents a significant advancement in applying artificial intelligence to planetary conservation challenges. TESSERA processes data from European Space Agency Sentinel satellites to create detailed embeddings - compressed AI representations - of every 10-meter square of Earth's surface. TESSERA represents the most accurat
Omilia Appoints Ryan Kam as Chief Marketing Officer to Lead Global Brand and Growth Strategy22.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Omilia, a global leader in Self-Learning Agentic CX, today announced the appointment of Ryan Kam as Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). Ryan will be responsible for Omilia's global brand, demand generation, and marketing strategy as the company scales its go-to-market presence across enterprise markets. In his new role, Kam will own Omilia's global marketing function, spanning brand strategy, demand generation, product marketing, analyst relations and communications. He joins at a moment of significant commercial momentum: Omilia has seen accelerating enterprise demand across all industries and is investing in a marketing engine built to match the pace of its growth. Ryan Kam brings more than 20 years of marketing leadership across some of the most recognized names in enterprise technology. Most recently, he served as CMO at Egnyte, a leader in cloud content security and governance. Prior to that, Kam held the CMO role at LogicMonitor, where he drove growth for one of the leading infrastruc
Echodyne Announces ATAK Integration for MESA® Radar Platform22.7.2026 15:00:00 EEST | Press release
Echodyne, the radar platform company, today announced the availability of an Android Team Awareness Kit (ATAK) plugin for its MESA® radar platform. The integration enables users to configure, control, and visualize data from Echodyne radars within the ATAK environment, supporting military, public safety, and security operations that rely on TAK for shared situational awareness. The plugin extends radar management and visualization capabilities to ATAK users, allowing high-fidelity radar data and system controls to be accessed through a familiar operational interface. By integrating radar data into existing TAK workflows, organizations can streamline deployment, reduce operator workload, and improve access to real-time situational awareness. TAK is a government-developed geospatial platform used across U.S. military, federal, state, and local government organizations, as well as by U.S. partner nations. According to the U.S. Army TAK Product Center, the TAK ecosystem supports 15 Departm
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom