HUGE PLAN FOR THE NEXT FIVE YEARS

Chinese multinational tech giant Tencent, has disclosed it plans to invest 500 billion yuan (US$69.9 billion) in digital infrastructure over the next five years.

The investment focuses on cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructures which will spur the roll-out of large data center projects. Tencent also plans to extend its focus to areas such as blockchain, supercomputer, Internet of Things (IoT), 5G networks, and quantum computing to support Beijing’s “new infrastructure” push, which its government announced last month.

As China plans to boost its economy in the post-pandemic era with the acceleration of public investments, Beijing is also planning to leverage such opportunity in pushing for a technology-driven structural upgrade of its economy, boosting industry productivity and innovation which encompasses 5G, artificial intelligence, data centers and electric-vehicle charging stations.

This announcement is also coming about a month after the leading Chinese cloud giant Alibaba, disclosed plans to invest 200 billion yuan (US$28 billion) in its cloud computing arm over the next three years.

Although Tencent cloud services is having less than half the market share of Alibaba cloud, this approx. $70 billion investment program has the potential of pushing Tencent cloud services to the market frontline.

The ability to raise fund for such huge investment is not an issue of intense debate, knowing that Tencent is the world’s largest video game company, China’s largest music services provider, and a significant global tech investor.

Tencent also owns the popular messaging service WeChat, which is more of an integrated services system than a messaging platform, as the app allows users to pay bills, order goods and services, transfer money to other users, and pay in stores.

With more than one billion active users, WeChat is integrated in partnership with the Chongqing municipal government to enable the app users to apply for passports, marriage registrations, birth registrations and more.

Earlier this week, Tencent announced that it already have $12 billion of bonds under this program and would issue up to $20 billion of new bonds to professional investors to raise capital.