• Cloud Leader Unveils 100 Open-sourced Qwen 2.5 Multimodal Models and New Text-to-Video AI Model to Bring Visual Creations to a Higher Level
• Revamped Cloud Infrastructure is Introduced to Maximize Values for Customers

HANGZHOU, CHINA – Media OutReach Newswire – 19 September 2024 – Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group, today announced it has released over 100 of its newly-launched large language models, Qwen 2.5, to the global open-source community. This significant contribution was revealed at the Apsara Conference, its annual flagship event.

In addition, Alibaba Cloud has unveiled a revamped full-stack infrastructure designed to meet the growing demands for robust AI computing. This new infrastructure includes innovative cloud products and services that enhance computing, networking, and data center architecture, all aimed at supporting the thriving development and wide-range applications of AI models.

“Alibaba Cloud is investing, with unprecedented intensity, in the research and development of AI technology and the building of its global infrastructure. We aim to establish an AI infrastructure of the future to serve our global customers and unlock their business potential,” said Eddie Wu, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

100 Open-sourced Models Unveiled

The newly released open-source Qwen 2.5 models, ranging from 0.5 to 72 billion parameters in size, feature enhanced knowledge and stronger capabilities in math and coding and are able to support over 29 languages, catering to a wide array of AI applications both at the edge or in the cloud across various sectors from automobile, gaming to science research.

The Qwen model series, Alibaba Cloud’s portfolio of proprietary large language models, has achieved remarkable traction since its debut in April 2023. To date, the Qwen models have surpassed 40 million downloads across platforms such as Hugging Face and ModelScope, an open-source community initiative by Alibaba. Furthermore, these models have inspired the creation of over 50,000 models on Hugging Face.

The Qwen 2.5 release will see over 100 models being made open-source. This extensive range includes base models, instruct models, and quantized models of various precision levels and methods, spanning different modalities such as language, audio, and vision, along with specialized code and mathematical models.

“Today marks a significant milestone as we launch our most expansive open-source initiative to date,” said Jingren Zhou, Chief Technology Officer of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. “This initiative is set to empower developers and corporations of all sizes, enhancing their ability to leverage AI technologies and further stimulating the growth of the open-source community. We remain committed to investing in advanced AI infrastructure to foster the widespread adoption of generative AI technologies across different industries.”

Alibaba Cloud also announced an upgrade to its proprietary flagship model Qwen-Max. The enhanced Qwen-Max model demonstrates performance on par with other state-of-the-art models in areas such as language comprehension and reasoning, math, and coding.

Expanding the Frontier in Multimodal

In addition to its extensive suite of large language models, Alibaba Cloud also unveiled a new text-to-video model as part of its image generator, Tongyi Wanxiang large model family. The new model is capable of generating high-quality videos in a wide variety of visual styles from realistic scenes to 3D animation. The model can generate videos based on Chinese and English text instruction and transform static images into dynamic videos. The model features advanced diffusion transformer (DiT) architecture to enhance video reconstruction quality.

The cloud leader is also deploying a significant update to its vision language model with the introduction of Qwen2-VL, capable of comprehending videos lasting over 20 minutes and support video-based question-answering. Equipped with sophisticated reasoning and decision-making capabilities, Qwen2-VL is designed for integration into mobile phones, automobiles and robots, facilitating the automation of specific operations.

For computer programming, Alibaba Cloud has also launched an AI Developer, a Qwen-powered AI assistant designed to support programmers automate tasks such as requirement analysis, code programming and identifying and fixing software bugs. This enables developers to concentrate more on essential duties and further their skills.

A Full-Stack AI Infrastructure Upgrade

The cloud pioneer has also announced a slew of innovative updates to its full-stack AI infrastructure covering green datacenter architecture, data management, model training and inferencing:

• Next-Gen Data Center Architecture for Surging AI Development: To meet the increasing and diverse demand for high-performance computing power driven by the global AI boom, Alibaba Cloud has revealed its next-generation data center architecture, CUBE DC 5.0. The new CUBE architecture increases energy and operational efficiency with a set of advanced and proprietary technologies such as wind-liquid hybrid cooling system, all-direct current power distribution architecture and smart management system and reduces deployment times by up to 50% compared to traditional data center builds through prefabricated modular designs.
• Open Lake Solution to Maximize Data Utility: As organizations face challenges in managing vast amounts of data amidst the growing demand for generative AI, Alibaba Cloud introduces Alibaba Cloud Open Lake which can seamlessly integrate big data engines into a unified solution, maximizing data utility especially for generative AI applications. By integrating workflows, performance optimization, and robust governance in a single platform, it achieves efficient resource usage through compute-storage separation, clear data governance, and significant cost and time savings.
• AI Scheduler with Integrated Model Training and Inference: Alibaba Cloud has launched PAI AI Scheduler with integrated model training and inference, a proprietary cloud-native scheduling engine designed to enhance computing resource management. Through utilizing intelligent integration of diverse computing resources, flexible resource scheduling, real-time tasks adjustments, and automatic fault recovery, it can achieve over 90% of effective compute utilization rate.
• DMS for Unified Management of Metadata: To help organizations efficiently manage their data and unleash values, Alibaba Cloud introduced DMS: OneMeta+OneOps, a platform that enables a unified management of over 40 types of data sources in database, data warehouse, and data lake across multiple cloud environments. The platform will boost data utilization rate by 10 times, significantly enhancing the efficiency of transforming data into valuable intelligence.
• More Powerful Elastic Compute Service: Alibaba Cloud also introduced the 9th Generation Enterprise Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance during the conference. The latest generation of ECS instances has notable performance enhancements, including a 30% increase in search recommendation speed and a 17% improvement in the effectiveness of reading and writing Queries Per Second (QPS) when applying to database products compared to the previous generation.

These updates are designed to provide more comprehensive support for customers and partners to maximize the benefits of the latest technology has to offer for building even more efficient, sustainable and inclusive AI applications.

Hashtag: #AlibabaCloud

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About Alibaba Cloud

Established in 2009, Alibaba Cloud (www.alibabacloud.com) is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group. It offers a complete suite of cloud services to customers worldwide, including elastic computing, database, storage, network virtualization services, large-scale computing, security, big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) services. Alibaba has been named the leading IaaS provider in Asia Pacific by revenue in U.S. dollars since 2018, according to Gartner. It has also maintained its position as one of the world’s leading public cloud IaaS service providers since 2018, according to IDC.

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 19 September 2024 – Victoria Dockside, K11 Art and Cultural District ushers in a new era of luxury. Several of the world’s most prestigious luxury brands plan to significantly expand their footprint at K11 MUSEA, underscoring their confidence in K11 Group’s pioneering “Cultural Commerce” business model which seamlessly integrates culture and retail. Over the next 4 years, brands such as Audemars Piguet, Balenciaga, Brunello Cucinelli, Loewe, Saint Laurent and Van Cleef & Arpels will give their stores a facelift, while Prada is set to unveil their inaugural store at K11 MUSEA, collectively doubling the luxury footprint of these 7 brands at K11 MUSEA.

Taking advantage of K11 MUSEA’s prime location, high visitor sales, and growing foot traffic, the latest stores by some of the world’s most renowned luxury brands add to the allure of this unique art and cultural destination while expanding their footprint to more than 30,000 square feet. This underscores K11 MUSEA’s enduring appeal as a destination for luxury shoppers seeking an unparalleled shopping experience with new featured duplexes and new concept stores.

“We are excited that many leading luxury brands are expanding at K11 MUSEA, especially in the context of current Hong Kong retail sector,” said Richard Cheung, Executive Vice President of K11 Group. “This is largely the result of the strong performance and very high sales productivity at their current stores at K11 MUSEA. This reinforces our commitment to the cultural commerce model which benefits both customers and brand partners at the K11 Art and Cultural District.”

Victoria Dockside is known for collaborating with esteemed luxury brands to create show-stopping events in the city. Over the past year, visitors were treated to the first ever Louis Vuitton’s Men’s Pre-Fall 2024 Show, the magical Dior Carousel of Christmas Dreams, and Gucci’s first collection under the helm of new creative director Sabato De Sarno, Gucci Ancora. Time and time again, luxury brands choose to leverage K11 Group’s unique cultural retail concept while taking advantage of the breathtaking Victoria Harbour backdrop to launch large-scale events. These brands can also choose to tap into K11 Group’s database of high-end customers known as KLUB 11 Black Card members, inviting them to exclusive trunk shows and jewelry events that are supported by K11 Group’s VIP facilities.

Throughout the year, Victoria Dockside stands out as a must-visit destination as it successfully hosts mega events that bring in international tourists and day visitors. Most recently this summer, “100% DORAEMON & FRIENDS” Tour (Hong Kong) exhibition presented by AllRightsReserved (ARR) and Fujiko Pro, led K11 MUSEA to report food and beverage and retail sales up by nearly 30% and tourists’ sales increased by 10%.
Hashtag: #K11

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About K11 Group

K11 Group is a global cultural brand founded in 2008 by renowned entrepreneur Dr Adrian Cheng. The company’s unique and original business model, “Cultural Commerce”, blends culture, art, and commerce to create an ecosystem that caters to all walks of life. With its headquarters in Hong Kong, the Group has expanded its reach and influence, achieving a significant presence across Greater China. Upholding its core values of Art, People, and Nature, the Group aims to democratise art, incubate cultural talents, advocate sustainable development, and inspire the new generations. In addition to its groundbreaking multi-development project in Hong Kong, Victoria Dockside, K11 Art and Cultural District, the Group operates a wide range of businesses, including retail, workplace, hospitality, and luxury residence.

Looking ahead to the future, K11 Group is expected to attain a footprint of 38 projects with an approximate GFA of 3 million square meters in 12 cities across Greater China upon completion, and it continues setting new standards in “Cultural Commerce”.

HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 19 September 2024 – AIA is excited to announce its partnership with Coldplay for the highly anticipated Music Of The Spheres World Tour in Hong Kong, set to take place in early April 2025 at the Kai Tak Sports Park.

Recognised as the most highly attended tour by a group of all time, Coldplay’s Music Of The Spheres World Tour has been captivating audiences globally, having sold over 10 million tickets since its kickoff in March 2022.

Coldplay’s live performances are renowned for their visual, emotional, and melodic impact and compelling energy. This World Tour has received rave reviews from fans and critics alike, with The Times recognising it as “the greatest live music show ever”.

Mr. Alger Fung, Chief Executive Officer of AIA Hong Kong & Macau, said, “AIA is dedicated to creating memorable and delightful experiences that encourage individuals to live ‘Healthier, Longer, Better Lives.’ We are honoured to be in this partnership to bring extraordinary world-class musicians like Coldplay to Hong Kong. With their performance taking place at the brand-new Kai Tak Sports Park, we believe it will create a refreshing experience for all participants, appealing to both locals and tourists, supporting the mega-event economy, and benefiting Hong Kong in multifaceted ways.

“Our sponsorship of the Music Of The Spheres World Tour in Hong Kong, which serves as a role model for sustainable events, also aligns with AIA’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) commitment, emphasising sustainability and community well-being. By promoting sustainability through inspiring events like the Music Of The Spheres World Tour in Hong Kong, we aim to enhance the overall experience for concert-goers while contributing positively to society.”

AIA Hong Kong has been playing an active role in supporting Hong Kong’s mega-event economy. Besides hosting the signature AIA Carnival, AIA Hong Kong was the main sponsor of BLACKPINK’s BORN PINK World Tour Hong Kong in 2023, creating priceless moments and delights for customers and the community.
Hashtag: #AIAHongKong

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About AIA Hong Kong & Macau

AIA Group Limited established its operations in Hong Kong in 1931. To date, AIA Hong Kong and AIA Macau have nearly 17,000 financial planners¹, as well as an extensive network of brokerage and bancassurance partners. We serve over 3.6 million customers², offering them a wide selection of professional services and products ranging from individual life, group life, accident, medical and health, pension and personal lines insurance to investment-linked assurance schemes with numerous investment options. We are also dedicated to providing superb product solutions to meet the financial needs of high-net-worth customers.

¹ As at 30 June 2024
² Including AIA Hong Kong and AIA Macau’s individual life, group insurance and pension customers (as at 30 June 2024)

• Located in the heart of Ras Al Khaimah, Mira Coral Bay marks a new chapter in the emirate’s luxury lifestyle segment
• The project of significant investment stands out for its expansive land area, prestigious brands, and substantial Gross Floor Area.
• Mira Coral Bay boasts one-of-a-kind architecture and facilities that are inspired by the surrounding environment and the natural form of coral.

RAS AL KHAIMAH, UAE – Media OutReach Newswire – 19 September 2024 – Marjan, the master developer of freehold properties in Ras Al Khaimah, has announced the launch of Mira Coral Bay, a new large-scale waterfront project in the Al Mairid area. Developed in partnership with Mira Developments, known for its branded property portfolio, this ambitious project is a mixed-use destination that will redefine Al Mairid’s status as an investment and tourism hub. Mira Coral Bay is a substantial investment in the waterfront residential community, underscoring Marjan’s commitment to enhancing the emirate’s real estate landscape.

Mira Coral Bay comprises multi-use properties developed in collaboration with various reputable lifestyle brands. The partnership with Mira Developments marks a significant milestone for Marjan’s subsidiary, the RAK Dredging Company, which is developing Al Mairid into a unique destination with world-class infrastructure in line with Ras Al Khaimah’s vision of emerging as a leading tourism and investment magnet in the region.

With a masterplan by Marco Casamonti & Partners / Archea Associati, a studio with over 200 architectural works worldwide, including the Antinori Winery in Italy and the Li Ling World Ceramic Art City in China, Mira Coral Bay is poised to turn into a landmark destination in Ras Al Khaimah, attracting discerning investors, residents, and tourists from around the globe.

Each property in Mira Coral Bay, developed in collaboration with world-leading lifestyle brands, will ensure the highest standards of luxury, design, and service. Located just 10 minutes from Downtown Ras Al Khaimah, Mira Coral Bay will offer residents and visitors unparalleled access to the emirate’s vibrant city life while providing a serene waterfront retreat.

Mira Coral Bay features a 5-star branded spa hotel with 100 keys, a resort hotel featuring 250 rooms, a state-of-the-art yacht club, and two exclusive branded beach clubs. A grand jewel in the Al Mairid area, Mira Coral Bay will also have six clusters of villas comprising 165 units, two clusters of townhouses with 128 units, four clusters of apartments totalling 650 units, and 10 premium branded restaurants. The mixed-use development will include underground parking and scenic walkways with a unique architecture that incorporates the environment and outdoor facilities while keeping in mind the comfort of pedestrians. The master plan is a homage to Al Mairid’s unique landscape, featuring a serene waterfront set against towering majestic mountains.

Aligned with RAK Vision 2030, Mira Coral Bay is designed to reinvigorate the local economy and boost the emirate’s business and tourism development prospects. The ambitious project marks the beginning of a new chapter for Marjan as the one-of-a-kind infrastructure and architecture positions Al Mairid as a futuristic residential and leisure destination that will unlock job opportunities and redefine the luxury lifestyle in Ras Al Khaimah.

Hashtag: #MiraDevelopments #Marjan #RasAlKhaimah #UAE

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About Mira Developments

Mira Developments is a UAE-based company and a part of the Mira Group. It engages in residential and commercial property construction projects with a strong focus on collaborations with the world’s leading lifestyle brands and fully furnished homes. Among its most notable projects are the Mira Villas designed by Bentley Home, a gated lagoon community in Meydan, Dubai, just 15 minutes from Burj Khalifa and Trussardi Residences in Al Furjan, Dubai, the world’s first residential property by the Italian fashion icon.

About Marjan

Marjan is the master-developer of freehold property in Ras Al Khaimah, responsible for path-breaking developments such as Al Marjan Island aimed at positioning Ras Al Khaimah as one of the region’s leading tourism and investment destinations. Mandated with developing waterfront, urban and mountain destinations that will add to the competitiveness of the emirate, Marjan’s strategic master-planning approach is to leverage Ras Al Khaimah’s natural assets and lay the foundations of the emirate’s future expansions.

Joint Effort Aims to Accelerate Growth and Expansion of Thai Companies in Singapore

SINGAPORE – Media OutReach Newswire – 19 September 2024 – SUNRATE, an intelligent global payment and treasury management platform, announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the Singapore-Thai Chamber of Commerce (STCC Thailand) to empower Thai companies seeking to scale and operate in Singapore.

As part of the partnership, members of Singapore-Thai Chamber of Commerce can now leverage SUNRATE’s technological resources and the expertise of its business development representatives to navigate the complex landscape of international business expansion. This support includes the ability to make payments via SUNRATE’s business account to more than 190 countries and regions, transact in over 130 currencies, and benefit from global collection services available in over 30 currencies. Additionally, companies can collect funds in more than 10 major international currencies as if they were local payments. Foreign companies can also open SUNRATE’s THB collection business accounts.

Li Tao, Head of Growth at SUNRATE said, “On the ground, we understand that many Thai companies face challenges in setting up or scaling their business operations across borders, particularly in Singapore. As the leading global B2B payment platform for Emerging Asia, we are perfectly positioned to empower these companies, especially regarding their business payment needs.”

Marciano Birjmohun, Vice Chairman of the Singapore-Thai Chamber of Commerce, said “The Singapore-Thai Chamber of Commerce actively supports its members and affiliates, particularly Thai companies, by providing them with greater access to professional services essential for seamless business expansion. This strategic partnerships with SUNRATE ensures that companies receive tailored guidance, resources, and expertise. This facilitates smooth entry into new markets, strengthens cross-border collaboration, and enhances the overall experience of expanding business operations within the region”

Hashtag: #SUNRATE

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About SUNRATE

SUNRATE is an intelligent global payment and treasury management platform for businesses worldwide. Since its inception in 2016, SUNRATE has been recognised as a leading solution provider and has enabled companies to operate and scale both locally and globally in 190+ countries and regions with its cutting-edge proprietary platform, extensive global network, and robust APIs.

With its global business headquarters in Singapore and offices in Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, and Shanghai, SUNRATE partners with the top global financial institutions, such as Citibank, Standard Chartered, Barclays, J.P. Morgan, and is the principal member of both Mastercard and Visa.

To learn more about SUNRATE, visit https://www.sunrate.com/

About Singapore-Thai Chamber of Commerce

Singapore-Thai Chamber of Commerce (STCC) was founded as a non-profit organisation in 1993 by a group of Bangkok-based Singaporeans.

Besides maintaining close relationships with the Singapore Embassy and Enterprise Singapore (ES), an initiative by the Singapore government to promote trade, STCC aims to promote economic and social relationships by bringing Thai, Singapore and foreign companies which are stationed in Thailand together. From a macro perspective, STCC aims to be the bridge connecting the two countries, which will lead to the betterment of both Singapore’s and Thailand’s economy.

Our current corporate members consist of over 200 companies, from an extensive and diverse range of sectors like Banking and Finance, Hospitality, Properties, Professional Services, Electronic, Manufacturing and industries. Our vast network of members increases interactions and business opportunities and investment activities and opportunities between Singapore and Thailand.