appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Ben Jiang

Bien Perez

Huawei Technologies plans to accelerate the development of a reliable artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem to promote the technology’s broad adoption in enterprises across various industries, according to deputy chairman Eric Xu Zhijun.
“Huawei has years of experience with its own intelligent transformation, and we’ve been helping a wide range of industries go intelligent, too,” Xu said in his keynote speech at Thursday’s opening of the Huawei Connect 2024 event, which runs until Saturday in Shanghai. The 57-year-old Xu is set to complete a six-month stint as the firm’s rotating chairman on September 30.
“In 2024 and over the next five years, Huawei will invest even more into ecosystem development” with the firm’s partners, he added, citing the company’s “All Intelligence” strategy and mission to build AI systems “that are accessible to every person, home and organisation”.
That AI ecosystem expansion reflects how Huawei is diversifying its revenue stream and wooing more enterprise customers amid the rising demand for AI services and applications across many traditional industries, even as the Shenzhen-based company remains blacklisted by the US government.

While US tech sanctions continue to stymie China’s development of advanced semiconductors that have become more in-demand for training AI systems, Xu said Huawei has built two computing businesses over the past five years to create another option that can meet enterprises’ AI infrastructure requirements.
“The reality is that US restrictions on AI chips for China are unlikely to be lifted any time soon,” Xu said. He pointed out, however, that this situation has opened an opportunity for the company to offer computing resources via its cloud services operation.
Huawei’s Kunpeng service, which is geared towards general-purpose computing, has seen wide adoption in different industries, according to the company. Its Ascend service, designed for AI computing, provides easy-to-use tools to accelerate AI model and application development.
“We will also develop computing supernodes and clusters to sustainably meet long-term demand for computing power,” Xu said.

Cloud computing technology enables enterprises to manage or distribute over the internet a range of software and other digital resources as an on-demand service, just like electricity from a power grid. These resources are stored inside data centres.
Huawei is currently ranked as the second-largest cloud services provider in mainland China, behind Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud unit, according to research firm Canalys. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post.
Cloud computing was one of the strongest growth areas for Huawei in 2023, with its revenue rising 21.9 per cent year on year to 55.29 billion yuan (US$7.6 billion), according to the company’s latest annual report.
“Cloud services are the best option for many companies that are looking to incorporate AI into their business,” Xu said. “By providing Ascend and AI model services, we aim to give every company real-time access to on-demand AI computing power, and enable more efficient model training and inference.”
At the event in Shanghai on Friday, Huawei’s other announcements included its cloud unit upgrading the firm’s entire AI stack for industries; leveraging an autonomous driving network with partners such as China Mobile to improve network experience, as well as operations and maintenance; developing autonomous driving solutions for vehicles; and advocating and practising “AI for good”.


Huawei, meanwhile, has been designing its advanced Ascend chips as an alternative to processors from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices to help Chinese enterprises build AI models and applications.
Huawei’s Ascend 910B AI chip has been found in some tests to deliver 80 per cent of the efficiency of an Nvidia A100 graphics processing unit when training large language models, the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT, according to Wang Tao, chief operating officer at Jiangsu Kunpeng Ecosystem Innovation Centre – a Huawei facility in Nanjing, capital of eastern Jiangsu province – in a Post report in June.
Jiangsu Kunpeng has been organising a series of events to attract third-party developers and firms to join Huawei’s AI-development efforts.


China to see major shift to Huawei for AI model training in 2027: deputy chair

How Huawei plans to bypass US chip curbs with its new UnifiedBus technology

Once reliant on Samsung and SK Hynix, Chinese smartphone makers are turning to CXMT

Huawei quickens AI chip pace, promises next entrant 3 quarters early

Huawei Technologies

Huawei to step up AI ecosystem development across industries despite US tech sanctions

Huawei Technologies aims to build artificial intelligence systems “that are accessible to every person, home and organisation”. Photo: Shutterstock

Huawei Technologies rotating chairman Eric Xu Zhijun. Photo: Huawei

Cloud services enable Huawei Technologies to deliver computing resources to enterprises. Photo: Shutterstock

Huawei Cloud reshuffles leadership team as competition mounts in AI boom

Huawei is one of the leading cloud services providers in China. Photo: Reuters

A Huawei flagship store in Beijing. Photo: Reuters

Huawei revenue up by a third in 2024 amid resurgent smartphone sales in China

Customers shop at a the flagship Huawei store in Beijing after the Pura 70 series phones went on sale on April 18, 2024. Photo: Reuters

Tech war: upcoming Huawei chip unit event stokes speculation over breakthrough

A conceptual illustration of the Huawei logo on a chip mounted to a computer circuit board. Photo:  Shutterstock Images

A Kirin 9000s chip taken from a Huawei Mate 60 Pro smartphone, arranged in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on September 3, 2023. Photo: Bloomberg

A large screen advertises the new Mate 60 smartphone on a Huawei store in Shanghai, August 31, 2023. Photo: EPA-EFE

Huawei’s cloud services unit sees Asia-Pacific as a vast market for AI products

Huawei Cloud currently ranks as the second-largest cloud services provider in mainland China. Photo: Shutterstock

The Asia-Pacific is one of Huawei’s biggest geographic markets for cloud computing services. Photo: Shutterstock

Tech

Tech Trends

Big Tech

Tech War

Business

China Business

News

China Future Tech

Semiconductors

‘In 2024 and over the next five years, Huawei will invest even more into ecosystem development,’ deputy chairman Eric Xu Zhijun said


‘In 2024 and over the next five years, Huawei will invest even more into ecosystem development,’ deputy chairman Eric Xu Zhijun said.


Huawei to step up AI ecosystem development across industries despite US tech sanctions

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}‘In 2024 and over the next five years, Huawei will invest even more into ecosystem development,’ deputy chairman Eric Xu Zhijun said

‘In 2024 and over the next five years, Huawei will invest even more into ecosystem development,’ deputy chairman Eric Xu Zhijun said