Huawei to invest $100 million in start-up ecosystem

Chinese multinational technology company, Huawei has announced its plan to invest US$100 million in start-up support at the inaugural HUAWEI CLOUD Spark Founders Summit. The summit took place simultaneously in Singapore and Hong Kong.

The investment, which will groom start-ups, could grow Huawei’s share of the region’s cloud computing market.

Attended by representatives from many prominent Asian start-ups, academia, as well as more than 50 regional top venture capitalists and over 300 startup founders, the summit focused on social value.

Discussing the social value of this start-up ecosystem, the event highlighted how start-ups can promote technological and ecosystem innovation, contribute to local communities and drive socioeconomic development.

Building a sustainable start-up ecosystem

Huawei said the investment would go towards its Spark Program in the Asia Pacific region. This program aims to build a sustainable start-up ecosystem for the region over the next three years.

Through the program, Huawei has been helping Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand build their start-up hubs.

Senior Vice President and Board Member at Huawei, Catherine Chen, opened the summit by emphasizing how important startups are to social advancement and what Huawei is doing to support startups: "Startups and SMEs are the innovators, disruptors, and pioneers of our times. 34 years ago, Huawei was a startup with just 5,000 dollars of registered capital.” 

“Recently, we have been thinking: How can we leverage our experience and resources to help more startups address their challenges? Doing so would allow them to seize the opportunities posed by digital transformation, achieve business success, and develop more innovative products and solutions for the world," she continued.

Cloud collaboration fostering technological innovation

At the summit, Huawei also announced its Spark Program would go on to focus its efforts on developing four additional start-up hubs. These hubs, which will be in Indonesia, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam, aim to recruit a total of 1,000 start-ups into the Spark accelerator program and shape 100 of these start-ups into scale-ups.

To support these new start-up hubs, Huawei will provide cloud resources as well as partnering them with venture capitalists and incubators to fund bidding ideas.

Ramping up its support for start-ups across the globe, Huawei also launched its Cloud-plus-Cloud Collaboration and Joint Innovation Program at the summit. The company plan to devote ongoing efforts and leverage its complete business portfolio in the Cloud-plus-Cloud collaboration space. 

Discussing Cloud-plus-Cloud collaboration Zhang Ping'an, CEO of Huawei's Cloud Business Unit, said: "Starting today, we are stepping up our support for startups through four new initiatives, aimed at cloud-plus-cloud collaboration, continuous tech innovation, global and local services, and high-quality business ecosystems. Today, we launched our Cloud-plus-Cloud Collaboration and Joint Innovation Program, through which we will support startups with US$40 million worth of resources.”

This space will foster technological innovation, global and local services and business ecosystems to accelerate the growth of start-ups.

Adding to the success of HUAWEI CLOUD

Three additional initiatives under the Asia Pacific Spark Program was launched by Huawei at the event:

• The Spark Developer Program: this aims to nurture a developer ecosystem powered by HUAWEI CLOUD in the Asia Pacific region
• The Spark Pitstop Program: this is designed to onboard and support start-ups on HUAWEI CLOUD to accelerate product development
• The Spark Innovation Program: this is focused on facilitating enterprise innovation through the Spark start-up ecosystem

Ping'an also noted, "Since its launch in 2017, HUAWEI CLOUD has been the world's fastest-growing cloud, and has driven the growth of countless startups."