HONG KONG (AP) — China’s Alibaba said that growth accelerated for both its artificial intelligence and cloud businesses in the latest quarter, driven by the AI boom, even though overall revenue rose just 3% to 243 billion yuan ($36 billion).Revenue from its Cloud Intelligence Group, which focuses on cloud computing and AI developments, jumped 38% in the January-March quarter from a year ago to 41.6 billion yuan ($6.1 billion). That was faster than the 36% and 34% growth in the previous two quarters, respectively.However, Alibaba recorded an overall of 848 million yuan ($125 million) loss from operations for the quarter, a key measure of profitability of its core operating businesses, which was down sharply from a 28.5 billion yuan gain the same period last year.Growing technological investment was one of the main reasons for rising expenses that weighed on profitability, as technology companies globally race to invest to boost infrastructure in supporting the ballooning AI demand.
The Hangzhou-based company, which has about 130,000 employees, last year pledged investments of at least 380 billion yuan over three years in cloud computing and AI infrastructure.
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